Some fans are saying that BYU should have made the CFP over Miami and Notre Dame

Some fans are making the argument that BYU actually should have gotten into the College Football Playoff over Miami, and they are not being quiet about it. Once the 12-team field locked in on Sunday with Miami at No. 10 and BYU stuck at No. 12, Cougars fans and some national voices started pointing at the numbers and asking why the Hurricanes got the last at-large spot.

The argument for BYU over Miami and Notre Dame

BYU finished 11-2, reached the Big 12 championship game and ended up No. 12 in the final CFP rankings after a 34-7 loss to Texas Tech. Miami went 10-2, did not play in the ACC title game and landed No. 10, which translated into a first-round road trip to Texas A&M as an at-large bid.

BYU's loss column is probably one of the better points to their argument. Both defeats came against Texas Tech — the Big 12 winner who finished 12-1 and earned the No. 4 seed and a first-round bye. Tech beat BYU in Provo earlier in the year and then hammered the Cougars again in the conference title game in Arlington. While the games weren't close, there isn't a loss to a bad team on the schedule.

Miami, on the other hand, has two losses that look worse at first glance. The Hurricanes fell 24-21 at home to Louisville and 26-20 in overtime at SMU. Both of those teams finished 8-4 and near the top of the ACC standings, but neither appeared in the final CFP top 25. That gives ammo to anyone who wants to say BYU's two losses to a top-four team are "better" than Miami's losses.

Computer models also generally agree that BYU played a slightly tougher schedule. Most give BYU a small edge over Miami in that department. It's mainly due to the Big 12 grading out a little higher on average than ACC schedules this season. BYU fans are also making a strength of record argument.

Should BYU have made the CFP over Miami?

So if BYU has more wins, a slightly tougher schedule by some metrics and at worst a comparable strength of record, why is Miami the one going to the playoff? It's for a few reasons. The first being the CFP format/selection process. The second is Miami's wins.

The five highest-ranked conference champions are automatic qualifiers. Everyone else, including BYU, is fighting for seven at-large spots. The group that BYU was in included Alabama, Miami, Notre Dame, Texas and others. BYU is not being compared in a vacuum and in the final rankings they also found themselves below Notre Dame.

The committee also weighed how the seasons ended and needed to make a decision on if they wanted to punish a team for playing an extra game (the Big 12 conference championship in this case). BYU had a chance to remove all doubt in the Big 12 title game and instead got blown out by Texas Tech, surrendering 34 unanswered points after an early lead.

Miami did not play on championship weekend but closed the regular season with four straight wins by a combined 158-41 and sat in the clubhouse at 10-2. The optics of a 27-point loss in front of the committee on the last day of data did BYU no favors. And it was paired with a 29-7 loss to them earlier. The committee probably felt like BYU just simply couldn't compete with playoff-caliber teams and the margin of defeat certainly factored into their decision.

On top of that, the Hurricanes had something that BYU couldn't really match. They beat Notre Dame head-to-head back on Aug. 31. That win, along with wins over USF, Pitt, and others, was more than BYU had on the year. For a team like Alabama that also suffered a big loss in its conference championship game, they were saved by the wins they already had. So, the losses that they took weren't something that could sink their resume. It should be noted that the Utah victory certainly helped the Cougars' resume as the year went on, but at the end of the day it could only do so much for them.

BYU fans have a reasonable gripe. They have a resume of a team that looks like it should play in the 12-team playoff, but it makes sense why the committee made the move when looking a little deeper.