Notre Dame football announces decision to withdraw from any bowl games

Notre Dame’s football program has announced its decision to withdraw from all bowl game consideration following its dramatic snub from the 12-team College Football Playoff (CFP) field. The announcement came just three hours after the Fighting Irish learned they had missed out on a coveted spot.

“As a team, we’ve decided to withdraw our name from consideration for a bowl game following the 2025 season,” read a statement attributed to the 2025 Notre Dame football team, posted to social media. “We appreciate all the support from our families and fans, and we’re hoping to bring the 12th national title to South Bend in 2026.”

The decision marks a sharp turn of events for a team that began the day as a near-certain contender for the CFP. At 9 a.m. Eastern Time, FanDuel’s online sportsbook had Notre Dame’s odds to win the national championship at +800, trailing only Ohio State, Indiana, and Georgia. By noon, these odds had improved to +700, placing them level with the Bulldogs. A similar pattern was observed on Caesars Sportsbook, where their odds shifted from +850 to +750.

However, at 12::green-background[32] p.m., the Irish’s championship aspirations effectively vanished. ESPN revealed that Miami had leapfrogged Notre Dame in the CFP committee’s rankings, securing the final at-large berth. This left Notre Dame as “Unlucky No. 13,” the first team outside the playoff field, despite winning their final 10 games of the season by an average of 29.7 points and being ranked No. 3 in Jeff Sagarin’s predictive computer rankings. They had also been ahead of Miami in every previous CFP ranking.

The committee’s decision, it emerged, was heavily influenced by the Big 12 title-game result. When Texas Tech defeated BYU 34-7 on Saturday, it caused BYU to drop below Miami in the rankings, creating a direct comparison between Notre Dame and Miami.

Hunter Yurachek, the CFP committee chair and Arkansas athletic director, explained the intense debate during ESPN’s selection show. “The debate I hear you guys having in my ear in the studio, I’m sure has been debated over the last 12 hours,” he said. “And that was the debate we had in our committee room until the early morning hours and then, again, as the sun was coming up.”

Yurachek elaborated on the committee’s reasoning from their conference room in Grapevine, Texas. “The first move in that was we felt like the way BYU performed in their championship game, a second loss to Texas Tech in a similar fashion, was worthy of Miami moving ahead of them in the rankings. And once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungering for with Notre Dame and Miami.”

He concluded, “And you look at those two teams on paper, and they are almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, the results against their common opponents. But the one metric we had to fall back on, again, was the head-to-head. I charged the committee members to go back and watch that game again… because it was so far back. And we got some interesting debate from our coaches on what that game looked like as we watched it. With that in mind, we gave Miami the nod over Notre Dame into that 10 spot.”

BYU (11-2) officially finished as the second team out, with Texas (9-3), Vanderbilt (10-2), Utah (10-2), and Southern California (9-3) completing the top 16.