Notre Dame fans won't have to live through this kind of heartbreak again. Not next year.
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If the Irish land inside the top 12 of the College Football Playoff rankings in 2026, they're in. Automatic. That's the big reveal from a memorandum of understanding signed by CFP executives, as Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports.
Which means in this year's scenario, where Miami slipped in at No. 10 and the Irish sat at No. 11, Notre Dame would have taken that spot instead. And if the playoff eventually expands to 14 teams? Notre Dame gets in as long as it finishes No. 13 or higher. It's a built-in safety net for a program that just got blindsided.
And blindsided is the word. Notre Dame didn't play last weekend and somehow took the punishment for it. Alabama stayed at No. 9 after getting crushed by Georgia. BYU got hammered for losing to Texas Tech. Miami climbed because of a head-to-head win from Labor Day weekend even though Notre Dame had been ranked ahead of them for weeks. You can see why Irish fans feel like they got spun around and shoved out of line.
Bevacqua didn't sugarcoat anything. He told Yahoo the process made no sense, that the weekly rankings were meaningless theater, and that the committee "shattered" the team's hopes without offering a real explanation.
Notre Dame's response was strong. The school announced it will decline any bowl invitation, sticking to the belief that its playoff shot "was stolen."
Next year, at least, the rules change. And they favor the Irish.
