One day removed from learning that Notre Dame had been left out of the College Football Playoff’s 12-team field, Fighting Irish athletic director Pete Bevacqua was still fuming.
In addition to reiterating his frustrations with the CFP ranking process, Bevacqua also turned his ire on the Atlantic Coast Conference during a Monday morning appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show.”
“We were mystified by the actions of the conference, to attack, you know, their biggest, really, business partner in football and a member of their conference in 24 of our other sports,” Bevaqua said. “And I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t say that they have certainly done permanent damage to the relationship between the conference and Notre Dame.”
With the exception of football and men’s hockey, all Notre Dame athletic teams are members of the ACC. While the Irish football team has maintained its status as an independent, it has had an agreement since 2014 to play games against at least five ACC teams each season.
Miami, on the other hand, is a full-fledged member of the ACC.
Notre Dame opened the season Aug. 31 with a 27-24 loss at Miami, followed by a one-point loss to Texas A&M the next week. But the Irish went 10-0 to finish the season, beating their opponents by an average of nearly 30 points (a number that was bolstered by their 70-7 win over Syracuse on Nov. 22).
Miami also finished the regular season at 10-2. Despite the head-to-head win over Notre Dame months earlier, the Hurricanes were ranked below the Irish every week since the 2025 CFP rankings launched in early November — until this week, when Miami jumped to No. 10 and the Irish landed at No. 11.
With No. 20 Tulane and No. 24 James Madison getting automatic bids as the American Athletic Conference and Sun Belt Conference champions, respectively, that left Notre Dame out of the 12-team CFP bracket. Notre Dame subsequently announced it was withdrawing from consideration from any college bowl games this season.
“What we’re so confused by and frustrated with is the process,” Bevacqua said. “Every step along the way, since the first CFP rankings came out, we were led to believe we were in as long as we took care of business. And we certainly took care of business with this 10-game winning streak.
“Can you think about that first ranking? You know, we and Miami were both 6-2. They had obviously already beat us the first game of the year. They were 18th. We were 10th. You know, the only thing that we did since that point was win every game by over an average of over 30 points. And you know, all of a sudden we’re 11th and on the outside looking in.”
CFP selection committee chairperson Hunter Yurachek said during the playoff’s selection show that Miami’s season-opening win over Notre Dame hadn’t factored into the rankings until this weekend — when it became clear that the two teams would be side-by-side in the rankings and one team would likely end up out of the postseason picture.
At that point, Yurachek said, he had the committee members rewatch the Miami-Notre Dame game.
“You look at those two teams on paper and they are almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, the results against common opponents,” Yurachek said. “But the one metric we had to fall back on … was the head-to-head.”
Last month, the ACC football account on X posted a graphic that highlighted Miami’s win over Notre Dame and listed how the teams compared in certain statistical categories, with the Hurricanes coming out on top in two of the three cases.
Also, according to ESPN, the ACC Network replayed Miami’s win over the Irish more than a dozen times last Thursday and Friday.
“We didn’t appreciate the fact that we were singled out repeatedly and compared to Miami,” Bevacqua said. “Not by Miami — Miami has every right to do that, but it raised a lot of eyebrows here that the conference was taking shots at us.”
Asked by Patrick if Notre Dame would reevaluate its overall relationship with the ACC after this, Bevacqua simply stated, “I would just say it’s been strained.”
Patrick then asked if the damage was irreparable.
“Well, you never say irreparable, but it’s opened our eyes,” Bevacqua said. “And you know, it caught our attention.”
The ACC did not immediately respond Monday to The Times’ request for comment.
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