The 2025 College Football Playoff field was unveiled at noon EDT on Sunday.

Of the many difficult decisions made by the College Football Playoff committee, none was more notable than its decision to award bids to Miami (No. 10), Tulane (No. 11) and James Madison (No. 12) over Notre Dame, which sat at No. 11 in the final College Football Playoff rankings.

In response to the committee’s decision to exclude it from the College Football Playoff, Notre Dame declined any potential bowl bids as a form of protest.

“As a team, we’ve decided to withdraw our name from consideration from a bowl game following the 2025 season. 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.”

Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball on X)

The decision sparked an online discourse about the potential precedent for future dismissal of bowl bids in college football. One proponent of Notre Dame’s decision was former Baylor and Heisman-winning quarterback and current FOX Sports college football analyst Robert Griffin III.

“I don’t blame Notre Dame one bit for deciding not to play in a Bowl Game when they should have been playing for a chance to win the National Championship in the College Football Playoff.”

Robert Griffin III (@RGIII on X)

Declining a bowl bid was not the only step in Notre Dame’s efforts to secure a better future for the program. Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports and On3 reported that Notre Dame is guaranteed a College Football Playoff bid if it is ranked No. 12 or higher in the final poll beginning in 2026, per Notre Dame athletics director Pete Bevacqua.

“A newsy wrinkle from Bevacqua: As part of an MOU signed last spring, Notre Dame is assured of a CFP berth if it is ranked in the top 12 starting next year.”

Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger on X)

Notre Dame is one of three Power Four programs to decline a bowl bid in 2025. The other two are Iowa State (8-4) and Kansas State (6-6), both of which opted out of bowl bids in the wake of head coaching changes.

One College Football Playoff program just received some major positive news ahead of their postseason run. One of the many flaws in the current CFB calendar is that players really have to make decisions on their futures before the playoffs are over, since they could be playing well into January — and past the deadline for transferring. Then, there’s the NFL Draft and that process to think about.

Luckily for Texas A&M, they have full assurance that their star quarterback, Marcel Reed, is fully locked in on the Aggie program amid any portal offers or professional attention. As part of an interview with former Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III, Reed confirmed his intention to remain with A&M program next fall, returning for his junior season. On a recent episode of Griffin’s podcast, Outta Pocket, Reed as was asked point-blank whether he is coming back to Texas A&M for the 2026 season. His response:

“I’m coming back,” he said with a head nod. “I’ll be back.” Griffin went on to comment that, from his view, A&M seemed like the ideal home for Marcel Reed.

“I do too,” Reed responded, agreeing that A&M is the perfect fit. “I mean, I got offers after my freshman year, ” he added. “I thought that this was the best place to be. I didn’t think there was any reason to leave Texas A&M. I have the job and it’s mine to lose. But like, there’s no reason for me to leave.”

Marcel Reed stats, NIL valuation

The good folks at On3 put together a formula for calculating a player’s NIL and roster value based on real reporting on player compensation plus social media exposure and overall talent level. According to their esteemed metric, Marcel Reed checks in with a $2.1 million NIL evaluation. That puts him No. 13 among current college football players and No. 17 among all college athletes.

As a starting quarterback for one of the top 10 teams in the nation this season, you wouldn’t think there’s much reason for Marcel Reed to transfer away from Texas A&M. However, after the stellar year he put together, NFL scouts certainly have him on the radar.

Across 12 regular season games, Reed threw for just under 3,000 yards and will almost certainly eclipse that milestone in the postseason. He also tossed 25 touchdowns vs. just 10 interceptions and added another six touchdowns as a runner to give him more than 30 on the year. Reed’s rushing tally is currently 466 yards. Easily one of the best dual threat quarterbacks in the country, Reed projects to return to a contending Aggie squad in 2026 as a Heisman Trophy frontrunner and potential NFL first round pick,.

More on College Football HQ

Dickie V knows football

Dick Vitale is well-known and loved as a passionate broadcaster and follower of college basketball. His boundless enthusiam and endless catch phrases have dominated college basketball for several decades. But Vitale pretty clearly knows the gridiron as well, and directed some harsh comments on Sunday to the College Football Playoff selection committee. The topic of discussion was Notre Dame, long a Vitale favorite, as he acknowledged 11 family members who have graduated from the school.

Notre Dame’s rough situation

Notre Dame was ranked as the first team out of the College Football Playoff. The two biggest points of contention for the Irish and their fans are that three-loss Alabama remained ahead of them despite a 28-point loss in the SEC championship game, and that Miami– consistently ranked behind Notre Dame in the CFP weekly rankings– somehow jumped them in the final week despite neither team playing a game.

Vitale speaks out

Vitale shared a video to social media with comments he directed straight toward the CFP selection committee.

I’m really having a tough time. Every Tuesday for five consecutive weeks, you post on ESPN, the teams you think, the top 12 that would be eligible at that time to qualify for the Playoffs. Every week, EVERY, not two of the weeks, but all five weeks, you had Notre Dame over Miami. You had Notre Dame in there every week. How logically do they drop out on the last week, when they’ve done nothing in terms of losing a game during that period? Miami lost two games to unranked teams. I have a real tough time with that…. How do you explain the five weeks of having Notre Dame there and then bouncing them? They did zilch in terms of anything in causing that to happen. They didn’t lose a game. They blew out everybody they played, and the bottom line is they got a raw deal. They got a raw deal. Those kids belong in the Playoffs.

Dick Vitale

Irish reaction

Despite the emotional pitch of his video– and Vitale acknowledges that he’s a fan of the Irish– it’s hard to argue with Vitale’s fundamental talking points. Notre Dame pretty clearly felt the sting of CFP exclusion, as the Irish then turned down non-CFP bowl berths, indicating that for the Irish, the season ended up as CFP or bust. But even if the Irish are outside the Playoff, they do have one of the most notable voices in college sports indicating that their CFP exclusion is a difficult-to-justify stance that wrongs an excellent team.

Years ago, schools basically cued in line to plead for a spot in a post-season bowl game. Of course, that was an era before every breakfast cereal, motor oil, or obscure mortgage company was sponsoring its own personal bowl game. But Sunday emphasized a growing trend with a number of teams saying ‘thanks, but no thanks’ to bowl berths on Sunday. The final count included at least 10 teams that turned down bowl berths.

The denials sprang from a variety of potential reasons– from pouting over exclusion from the College Football Playoff to teams not wishing the dive into postseason play in the midst of coaching changes to teams that had given up hope at a bowl and moved on with the offseason. But Sunday’s massive exodus of teams NOT playing in bowls certainly made some college football history.

The Wrath of the Irish

Notre Dame’s bowl denial will probably draw the most attention. The Irish finished one spot out of the College Football Playoff, and accordingly decided that they would pass on the gamut of lower bowls. Notre Dame was purportedly offered a spot in the Pop-Tarts Bowl to play the team ranked behind them in the CFP rankings, BYU, but turned it down flat.

All of college football (and even some college basketball celebrities) weighed in on the propriety of the Irish bowl declination, but it’s a massive move that could reverberate throughout future bowl seasons.

Two Big 12 Coaching Shifts

Kansas State and Iowa State each turned down bowl invitations. In both cases, there are coaching transitions underway. Iowa State lost Matt Campbell to Penn State and is replacing him with Jimmy Rogers. Kansas State saw Chris Kliemann retire and Collin Klein replace him.

Despite the business excuse, the Big 12 made it clear that the decision was not a popular one at the league level. Both schools were fined $500,000 for turning down bowl bids.

Bowl Denial Dominoes (or Sunday Choas for the Birmingham Bowl)

While the NCAA had exactly the number of teams with six or more wins that it needed to fill the bowl vacancies, these three teams declining bowl berths caused the bowls to have to dip into the pool of 5-7 teams. A multitude of 5-7 teams declined bowl bids before Appalachian State finally completed the bowl picture by agreeing to play Georgia Southern in the Birmingham Bowl.

At least seven teams were reported to have turned down last-minute bowl invites off of 5-7 seasons. The list includes Florida State, Auburn, UCF, Baylor, Rutgers, Temple, and Kansas. The 11th hour bowl chaos led to more than a few jokes online. While the 82nd bowl berth was finally filled, at least 10 teams passed on postseason play on a memorable Sunday.

Fred Horner bleeds black and orange.

The owner of Advanced Industrial Roofing is a Massillon football booster and member of the Sideliner program, an initiative where community members act as mentors for varsity players, providing personal guidance and support.

He’s willing to help out Washington High School athletes any way he can. But don’t expect his company to start handing out lucrative name, image and likeness deals to high school students now that the agreements are legal in Ohio.

If you want to hammer the College Football Playoff Committee for taking the scenic route on the way to the final bracket reveal, go ahead. That wasn’t the path many of us would have taken, especially if the goal were to set a clear expectation of what the final CFP bracket would look like.

Through more than a month of nationally televised CFP rankings shows, the Committee insisted on keeping Notre Dame slotted ahead of Miami. It didn’t matter that Miami possessed a head-to-head win and an identical record. The Committee told us repeatedly that it felt Notre Dame was better. As a result, we believed that’s what the people in that conference room in Grapevine, Texas, would do at the end.

They didn’t. On Sunday, when the final bracket featured Miami and not Notre Dame, it caused confusion and frustration. No, it was a shock. People couldn’t fathom how two idle teams could be flipped on Selection Sunday when neither team played during championship weekend.

We’ll get into why that happened later, but here’s the important thing: It’s not about the journey, it’s about the destination. And the destination was unequivocally correct. The games still matter and the notions of what we — or the people on the Committee — think would happen in the future didn’t come into play, even if we spent the last month thinking they would.

Miami couldn’t have been left out of the bracket while maintaining the integrity of the games. Had the CFP Committee included Notre Dame and not Miami, what they think would have taken priority over what happened on the field. Notre Dame and Miami’s resumes were similar enough that the result of the game had to matter the most. It couldn’t be ignored. It wasn’t.

If it wound up being ignored, that would have thrown the selection process into a chaotic world where the Committee members could veer from the guardrails — the games – and do whatever they want. So for at least another year, we get to live in a world where the CFP Committee leaned on the results of the games more than personal notions.

If you want to get into why the CFP Committee made this harder on themselves, that’s fine. They could have ranked Miami higher from the get-go, which would have stripped away all of the shock and confusion Notre Dame fans are feeling right now. The Committee made this harder for no reason.

So what’s the explanation for how the jump happened?

“Not until they really got to close proximity — side by side — with the move with BYU were we able to evaluate just those two teams. We always had someone between them,” CFP Committee chair Hunter Yurachek said on ESPN’s broadcast.

It’s all nonsense. How the CFP Committee could ignore the result of that game until its final deliberations doesn’t really make sense. If you’re questioning the process, please do it. There are plenty of holes to poke. But poking the process after the results are right is much better than poking the process after unjust results.

That brings us to Alabama, which got in despite losing to Florida State at the beginning of the year and getting blown off the field by Georgia in the SEC title game Saturday. Why didn’t Notre Dame and Miami go? How did Alabama get in still? Well, it all came back to who you beat.

Yes, Alabama had one more loss than Notre Dame. But its strength of schedule — which ranked No. 11 in comparison to Notre Dame at No. 42 and Miami at No. 44 — carried the day. Contrary to the propaganda the SEC dispersed last year about being penalized for playing tougher schedules, Alabama was actually forgiven for the extra loss because it beat Georgia during the regular season. That’s the benefit of playing in a tougher conference. You get a mulligan.

People have reason to be upset because of the unorthodox path the CFP Committee took.

But leaving Miami out in favor of Notre Dame would have been a miscarriage of justice. Feelings would have taken precedence over results, which ultimately means seasons could be simulated and teams could be slotted based on data.

This CFP Committee, more than others in the past, felt erratic. It felt like this Committee could have done something unconventional. But at the end of the road, it did what was right.

Even if you’re angry, be happy about that.