The College Football Playoff selection committee is on the hot seat Sunday after making a monumentally controversial decision. During ESPN’s CFP Selection Show, host Rece Davis pressed committee chair Hunter Yurachek over why it made the picks it did.

When the final CFP bracket was revealed, Miami had been selected, and Notre Dame was snubbed. The two teams had identical 10-2 records and similar metrics, but in Week 1, the Hurricanes beat the Fighting Irish 27-24. In previous weeks, Notre Dame had been ranked higher than Miami, but in the final edition, the two teams flipped. Davis wanted an explanation from Yurachek.

The committee chair explained that after BYU’s loss to Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game, the Cougars were dropped below Miami by the committee. Once Miami and Notre Dame were next to each other, the group then opted to evaluate the head-to-head matchup, and ultimately, that led to the Hurricanes jumping the Irish. Davis seized on that point.

“But Hunter, the way you guys go about ranking teams, you don’t just have them rank their best 25, and everybody adds them up and do the math,” Davis said. “I mean, the head-to-head, these teams have, almost by mathematical definition, had to be in the same group to be evaluated prior to this. I don’t have a problem with the outcome, I’m asking about the process. So you’re telling me that head-to-head never really came up until they were ranked side by side. That seems to be different from the process of ordering and ranking the teams that you guys go through.”

Davis nailed the point everyone was bringing up. The thought process made zero sense. Yurachek had his reply ready, but it probably didn’t satisfy a lot of people.

He said a lot of words that didn’t really get to the point, but essentially, Yurachek said it took a while for Miami and Notre Dame to be close in the rankings after the Hurricanes lost two of three earlier in the season. Once they inched closer, the committee finally evaluated the head-to-head metric.

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Davis fired back.

“O.K., but I still need a little further explanation on why this matters,” Davis said. “Because it is accurate to say that at some point in this process, prior to this weekend, that at least in the group of teams... that Miami and Notre Dame have been in the same group for evaluation. Is that correct?”

“That is correct, Rece,” Yurachek said.

“OK, so, why is it that they had to be ranked side-by-side with no one between them for the head-to-head to carry the day?” Davis said.

“As I mentioned in last week’s rankings, we thought Notre Dame was better than BYU and deserved to be ranked higher than BYU. We thought BYU deserved to be ranked higher than Miami, and that’s the way that laid out,” Yurachek said. “After the championship game in the Big 12, and the way BYU performed again against Texas Tech, we felt like Miami deserved to be ranked ahead of BYU. And then you had the direct head-to-head comparison of those teams, Miami and Notre Dame sitting respectively at 10 and 11 in our poll.”

The full exchange is below.

That answer isn’t going to satisfy anyone upset with the result, especially not angry Notre Dame fans.

Davis pressed him as hard as he could but Yurachek was never going to give an adequte answer.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rece Davis Grills CFP Chair Over Controversial Notre Dame Snub.

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