Notre Dame's playoff snub could trigger seismic shifts across college football: Telander

100 Yards with Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman

Marcus Freeman took Notre Dame to the national championship game in his third year as head coach. He goes 100 Yards with FOX 32's Tina Nguyen and talks about sustaining success at an iconic football program.

CHICAGO - Notre Dame got screwed.

The Fighting Irish—with a 10-2 record featuring 10 straight wins, all by double digits--were left out of the 12-team National Championship playoffs. And in the modern college football world, that’s all that matters.

I’m not often sympathetic to Notre Dame. That’s partly because, as a long-ago college football player who had his butt beaten by the Irish (with that damn leprechaun dancing about), it’s still hard to feel kindly toward the place. But the side-eye is also because of the program’s integrity, scholarship, sanctity and general aloofness, which is displayed symbolically by the football program being the lone superpower still an independent.

It's true Notre Dame tried to join a conference several times in the past, but was rejected, in part because of anti-Catholicism. But now the school has honed itself into an elite Midwestern Ivy League palace, believing it would lower itself if its football team joined, say, the Big Ten or the SEC.

And there’s the rub.

Since there’s no conference championship Notre Dame can win to guarantee FCS post-season entry, the team floats at the whim of the playoff selection committee. And those guys decided 10-2 Miami and 10-3 Alabama were more deserving of the tournament.

The Hurricanes, you’ll recall, embarrassingly lost to SMU—which lost to middling Cal, which lost to San Diego State, which lost to New Mexico, which lost to 3-9 San Jose State, and so on. Alabama lost to 5-7 Florida State and got squashed in their finale against Georgia, 28-7. These teams are better than Notre Dame? Really? Perhaps. But for sure? No way.

"There is no explanation that could possibly be given to explain the outcome," Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo of the devastating vote.

Well, there is this: Notre Dame lost its first two games, by a total of four points, to Miami and Texas A&M, two schools now with a combined 21-3 record. Bizarrely, the opening day, late-field goal loss to Miami, 27-24, basically doomed the Irish to this dismal outcome five calendar months later. A narrow loss to a nationally-ranked team, with nearly a month of summer left, is the justification for the December/January exclusion.

And what about Miami losing to middling SMU and Louisville? Trumped by sneaking past Notre Dame so long ago.

The furious Irish have declined to play in what would likely be the Pop-Tarts Bowl (Holy Father and ye saints, can you really blame them?). Notre Dame can sit back and watch James Madison and Tulane do their playoff things, instead.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman during a college football game between the Syracuse Orange and Notre Dame Fighting Irish on November 22, 2025 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, IN. (James Black/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images / Getty Images)

What's next:

So, beyond the anger of Notre Dame’s football team, its student backers and subway boosters across America (and the world), plus the loss of TV eyeballs, here’s what might transpire from the slight:

Notre Dame might rethink joining a conference.
Notre Dame might at least rethink the stupidity of starting its season against a pair of potential national champs. Like, try cupcakes? The Irish’s 2025 season was over after two games. There was nothing they could do except hope Miami lost and lost.
Notre Dame might rethink its entire schedule. Whipping 2-10 Purdue, 2-10 Arkansas, 2-10 Boston College, 3-9 Syracuse, and 4-8 Stanford—after losing to Miami and Texas A&M—didn’t mean much.
Lesser bowls should beware. Notre Dame’s snub only makes their irrelevance more obvious.
Someone in power should realize that college football teams—with teenagers and 20-year-olds on them—are not remotely the same at the end of the season as they are at the start. Growth, injury, recovery, understanding—all change dramatically in four months.
The rich guys—think Power Five conferences—want to own everything. If they are allowed to, they’ll eat up the universe. The lesser schools better scramble for a wee slice of the pie.
The NCAA basically means nothing. Just rules and game organizing and bureaucracy. If the Power Five wanted to—and I wouldn’t put it past them—they could do away with it all and be their own football kingdom. Share their billions? Why?
As colleges realize nothing means anything except the national tournament, some might say, "Enough. We can’t compete with Ohio State and oil-money Texas schools. We quit." They’ll be out of football and into education. How weird.
The playoffs will expand to 16 teams. Then 24. Then 32. Then 64. Then all-comers from anywhere with players not yet in the NFL.
Everyone will realize, finally, that college players are not amateurs involved in—excuse me, NCAA--an "extracurricular activity." They’re pros. Young pros. Quarterbacks go for millions. Smart, needy schools will buy one.
And finally, for the love of God, we might bury the made-up, BS, NCAA-created word "student-athlete."