CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Mario Cristobal spent four seasons working under Nick Saban at Alabama and learned countless lessons, some of which stand out more than others.
And when thinking about the College Football Playoff, one of Saban’s quotes from Cristobal’s time as an assistant with him stood out.
“‘If you want to make everybody happy, don’t coach and get involved in football. Go sell ice cream, because the ice cream man makes everybody happy,'” Cristobal said, recalling the Saban line. “In football, not everybody’s going to be happy.”
A year ago, at 10-2 and snubbed by the CFP committee, Miami wasn’t happy.
This year, at 10-2 and headed to Texas A&M for a playoff game, the Hurricanes are thrilled. It ultimately came down to an either-or pick for the last at-large spot, Miami or Notre Dame — and the committee had no choice but to finally recognize the Hurricanes’ 27-24 season-opening win over the Fighting Irish.
With that, Miami went to the playoff and Notre Dame’s season ended. The Irish passed on bowl invites, telling fans they would turn its focus toward winning a national title in 2026. And yes, the Hurricanes and Irish are scheduled to play at Notre Dame next November.
“Notre Dame’s a great football team,” Cristobal said. “Processes like this … all processes need to be assessed again and remedied wherever they can, but I think everybody’s working at it. Last year we were excluded and we weren’t very happy. It’s a tough business, man. It’s a really, really tough business. I respect everybody and everyone involved in it.”
The CFP selection committee was asked to re-watch the Notre Dame-Miami game in recent days, and committee chair Hunter Yurachek said things stood out.
“There was observation from the coaches in the room where Notre Dame did a lot of chasing of some of the athletic receivers, especially on the Miami side, and it just felt like there was a little bit more athleticism on the side of Miami versus Notre Dame,” Yurachek said. “Then, the fact that Miami’s defense really stifled Notre Dame’s running game like nobody else did the entire season.”
Tweaks to the process are surely coming. Miami wound up losing a five-way tiebreaker for a berth in the ACC title game and the rules that the league operates under have been under some fire since. If that tiebreaker went Miami’s way, it’s entirely possible that the Hurricanes would have played their way in or out and Notre Dame would have had a playoff spot either way.
Befuddling to many: How Notre Dame could be ahead of Miami in every CFP ranking but fall behind the Hurricanes at the end — after a weekend where neither club played. In short, the CFP committee said its prisms became different when looking solely at those two clubs for one spot and not as part of a larger group. That makes some sense, yet it’s still easy to see why those on the wrong end of the decision could find it somewhere between confusing and flat-out wrong.
As part of a memorandum of understanding signed last year that guarantees that the field will have at least 12 teams in 2026 and beyond, Notre Dame would be guaranteed a spot if it finished in the top 12 starting next year.
In addition, under a deal agreed to in March, there will be guaranteed CFP spots for the conference champions from the ACC, Big Ten, SEC and Big 12 and the highest-ranked Group of 5 champion, sources told ESPN. If that had been in place for this season, ACC champion Duke would have made the field and Sun Belt champ James Madison, a second Group of 5 representative, would have been left out.
“It’s a hard job,” Cristobal said. “It’s a tough industry, right? I mean, where else are so many variables so influential in the outcome of a game that could send teams in a death spiral or propel others to new heights? And you have human error, and you have officiating, and you have injuries and all that stuff. There’s so much that goes into the game of football that when you also add a committee to make decisions, it’s hard on everybody.”
Had the CFP not come calling, Miami probably would have been settling for a berth in the Gator Bowl. For many players who’ll look at the 2026 NFL draft, the bowl probably would have been one to skip — and that would have conceivably meant the end of the college careers for players like Carson Beck, Rueben Bain Jr., Akheem Mesidor, CJ Daniels and more. That’s not a new concept for college football; bowl games are often watered-down when teams miss the CFP.
“I know one thing: The passion behind college football is at an all-time high,” Cristobal said. “And the part I’m most happy about in terms of the process is that we didn’t compromise winning on the field. Because with all the chaos in college football right now, all the uncertainty, college football has been hurled into a different galaxy. Coaches are taking jobs, but they have to fly back to be able to coach their teams for the current job. With all this going on, I’m glad that we didn’t punish the student athletes who actually laid it on the line — on the field.”
The Associated Press and ESPN’s Heather Dinich and Andrea Adelson contributed to this report.