College Football Playoff selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek finally said what Miami Hurricanes fans have been waiting for. Once Miami jumped BYU, the committee compared the Hurricanes directly against Notre Dame. At that point, he said, the resumes were basically the same and the head-to-head win became the tiebreaker.
CFP Chair Hunter Yurachek:
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) December 7, 2025
“Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, we had that side-by-side comparison (with ND) that everyone had been hungering for.”
Called Miami and Notre Dame’s resumes “almost equal.”
He added: “The one metric we had to fall back on was the head-to-head.”
"As I mentioned last week in last week's rankings, we thought Notre Dame was better than BYU and deserved to be ranked higher than BYU. We thought BYU deserved to be ranked higher than Miami and that's the way that laid out. After the championship game in the Big 12 with the way BYU performed against Texas Tech, we felt like Miami deserved to be ranked ahead of BYU and then you had the direct head-to-head comparison of those teams, Miami and Notre Dame, sitting respectively at 10 and 11 in our poll."Hunter Yurachek
The explanation came just after the bracket reveal, when Miami was slotted as the No. 10 seed in the 12-team field, earning its first College Football Playoff trip and a first-round game at No. 7 Texas A&M on Dec. 20 at Kyle Field. Notre Dame landed at No. 11 as the first team out, while Alabama grabbed the No. 9 seed and BYU was left home after a blowout loss to Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game. Indiana, Ohio State, Georgia and Texas Tech earned the four byes.
The committee eventually did what many coaches and analysts had been saying it should do. The CFP protocol says head-to-head is especially important when teams are tightly bunched.
This is validation for Miami. The Hurricanes not only broke through for their first CFP appearance, they also get to play a Texas A&M team that they can compete with. For Notre Dame, it is truly a brutal twist, even if it may have been the right decision.