The Miami Hurricanes had one of their best performances of the season in their win over N.C. State on Saturday, and it helped them further inch up the College Football Playoff rankings.
Miami moved up from No. 15 last week to No. 13 on Tuesday, moving UM closer to its first-ever berth in the College Football Playoff after a week of lobbying from the ACC.
Similar to the previous rankings, the Hurricanes are the top-ranked ACC team, which means the projected bracket puts Miami in the playoff. But that projection assumes the Hurricanes will be the ACC champion, and Miami is unlikely to reach the conference championship due to its ACC record.
In the current projected bracket, Miami would be the No. 11 seed and travel to play No. 6 Ole Miss in the first round.
The Hurricanes’ most likely path to the playoffs is as an at-large bid, which could put Miami’s resume against fellow likely non-conference champions. That group could include No. 9 Notre Dame, No. 8 Oklahoma, No. 14 Vanderbilt, No. 12 Utah and others.
“I think when you look, Rece (Davis), at Notre Dame and Miami, we really compare the losses of those two teams,” new selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek said on the ESPN broadcast. “Miami has lost to two unranked teams. Notre Dame has lost to two teams that are ranked in our top 13. So we really haven’t compared those two teams. They haven’t been in similar comparative pools, to date, but Miami is creeping up into that range where they will be compared to Notre Dame if something happens above them.”
Miami and Notre Dame are often being compared with each other in public conversation because they have the same record and the Hurricanes won their season-opening matchup. But Yurachek said the committee is not directly comparing the two teams.
“Well, I think there’s some other factors … where you have Utah, BYU and Alabama in between Notre Dame and Miami,” Yurachek said. “And as we set up the pools to do our selection process, Miami and Notre Dame have not been grouped in the same pools to have that direct head-to-head comparison where you would really use that metric to separate one team from the next.”
Of course, to even be in consideration, Miami will have to win its road game against Virginia Tech this Saturday and a road game against Pittsburgh to close out the regular season. Yurachek said the Hurricanes would have to do that and have teams ahead of them lose.
“Well, first and foremost, Miami needs to continue to win the football games that they have in front of them, and then things will happen,” Yurachek said. “There’s still a lot of football to be played with two more weeks in the regular season and the championship week. And so you look at the teams that are between Notre Dame and Miami right now, you’ve got Alabama that’s got a game against Auburn coming up and in potentially in the SEC championship game. BYU has a couple of games remaining and then potentially a Big 12 championship game. And they’ve got Utah with a couple of games. And so I would say Miami needs to continue to win and then hope for some things ahead of them fall their way.”
Miami is also a spot behind Utah, which lost to No. 11 BYU in a close game and to No. 5 Texas Tech in a blowout. The Utes have a win over No. 25 Arizona State
“So when you talk about two teams that are both 8-2 and you really don’t have a common opponent or a head-to-head matchup, you really look at the losses that Utah has compared to the losses that Miami has,” Yurachek said. “And Utah is … second in the country in their margin of victory in each of their games. They have played really good football moving forward. And so, obviously, there’s a 12 versus 13, they’re one spot apart. But I think the differentiator is the losses that Utah has versus the losses that Miami has.”
If the Hurricanes win their games and other teams ahead of them lose, UM and Notre Dame could be competing for one of the last spots in the bracket. Then the Hurricanes could have multiple data points the committee could use to compare the teams, including the head-to-head win and performances against the teams’ four common opponents.
“I think you look at what happened this week when we compared Alabama and Oklahoma in a similar spot where 8, 9, and 10, we were comparing those teams,” Yurachek said on the broadcast. “Oklahoma obviously got the nod with their two-point win at (Alabama). So if Miami and Notre Dame are in a comparable tier, a comparable range, the head-to-head will be a significant data point that we will use.”
Here is this week’s College Football Playoff ranking:
1. Ohio State
2. Indiana
3. Texas A&M
4. Georgia
5. Texas Tech
6. Ole Miss
7. Oregon
8. Oklahoma
9. Notre Dame
10. Alabama
11. BYU
12. Utah
13. Miami
14. Vanderbilt
15. USC
16. Georgia Tech
17. Texas
18. Michigan
19. Virginia
20. Tennessee
21. Illinois
22. Missouri
23. Houston
24. Tulane
25. Arizona State