Notre Dame got burned by a broken CFP system

Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua has in recent days criticized the decision to exclude the school from the College Football Playoff, calling it a "farce" and an "absolute joke." He also described the selection committee's rankings as a "waste of time" that provides "false" hope.

So, he's not a fan.

Although Notre Dame certainly bears some responsibility for missing the postseason tournament because of its schedule and two losses, say this for Bevacqua: the man has a point.

If you woke up Sunday morning and assessed the entire college football season while ignoring the committee's midseason rankings, you might have come up with something close to the final bracket. Miami would edge out Notre Dame because it won a head-to-head matchup. Meanwhile, Alabama would still make the cut, despite a blowout loss to Georgia on Saturday, since the Tide had already beaten the Bulldogs earlier in the year.

Alas, the selection committee's rankings had existed for weeks, showing the Fighting Irish ahead of the Hurricanes the entire time, before flipping the teams at the very end - after a weekend in which neither played. Suddenly, Miami's opening-weekend win over Notre Dame at home by three points was the decisive factor, even though the same committee had been willing to discount the result over the previous five weeks.

The committee's explanation for the switch - that the head-to-head result became significant as the two teams moved closer in the rankings - makes no logical sense.

After Week 14, Notre Dame was ranked 10th, Miami 12th, and BYU 11th. In Week 15, BYU lost, while the Irish and Hurricanes didn't play. Yet, Miami jumped to 10th, and Notre Dame dropped to 11th. Stare at it for a while and see if you figure out how one thing led to the other.

The selection committee is, properly, a target of ridicule this week. It managed to completely ignore Alabama's trouncing at the hands of Georgia on Saturday because the Crimson Tide shouldn't be punished for playing in a conference championship game, while punishing Notre Dame for not playing in one. Even more baffling, the committee rewarded Miami for not playing in a conference championship it didn't qualify for.

Effectively, the committee showed that, in the end, midseason rankings aren't a true reflection of standings in the traditional sense. They're meaningless, a mirage.

And what happened Sunday is all the proof you need that these midseason rankings shouldn't exist.

They still will, of course. ESPN's contract with the College Football Playoff requires five weeknight rankings shows, a situation that exists for obvious reasons: to create content and controversy and drive discussion of the rankings and the CFP through the latter part of the season. None of that will change, even if several ESPN on-air personalities wisely questioned the value of the midseason reveals after the embarrassment of the final bracket.

But there has to be a better way to do this. Instead of ranking 25 teams, the committee could reveal the top four - still interesting, in that those positions provide important first-round playoff byes - but avoid putting the rest of the list in order. That would keep the committee from boxing itself into awkward corners with schools closer to the 12-team bubble, which is precisely what happened when it ranked Notre Dame ahead of Miami in Week 10 this year. The new process would still provide a platform for debate about which teams are tracking toward the remaining playoff spots.

ESPN could easily produce a similar show featuring a top-four reveal and discussion about teams in the 5-25 range, just as it does now, minus the part where the committee locks itself into a full ranking that it'll later regret. You could even argue that this would make for a better TV spectacle and drive more interest in the season's final games since there would be less certainty regarding which programs are outside the 12-team bubble.

Vanderbilt and Texas, ranked 14 and 16, respectively, essentially knew they had little chance at the postseason tournament as they played their final games. But if both had been among the large batch of teams the selection committee considered in the playoff mix, they would've had much more incentive to make a strong closing impression.

More schools might talk themselves into believing they had a postseason shot in this scenario, leading to more inevitable disappointment at the final reveal. That's still better than the rug-pull Notre Dame experienced, when the committee told the Irish that they were deserving of a playoff spot over Miami, right up until they weren't.

The CFP will always have a subjective element, and sometimes people make mistakes. But that's no reason for the selection committee to make its job harder than it already is.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.