The rivalry between Florida and Miami has been renewed over the past couple of years, and it wasn't pretty. Florida Gator fans were reminded that Miami Hurricanes fans might be in the running for the most toxic fanbase in the country, and given Miami's tendency to be front-runners who disappear at the first sign of adversity, no Gator fan would have shed a tear if the Hurricanes had been left out of the playoffs.
But for the sake of college football and protecting whatever small slice of integrity is left of the sport, putting Miami over Notre Dame for the final at-large spot in the playoffs was 100% the correct call from the committee.
Miami gets in and Notre Dame throws a pity party
The semantics of how the playoff committee reached its final decision were messy, but it reached the correct verdict. There cannot be a system in which Miami and Notre Dame are anywhere near each other in the rankings and in which the head-to-head winner is not the higher-ranked team.
And while Florida fans are never going to feel pity for Miami, at least the Hurricanes are unapologetic in their toxicity and stay on brand.
Notre Dame, meanwhile, tries to position itself as the center of the college football universe and genuinely believes it is entitled to a permanent seat at the table because it was good before television.
Miami fans go out of their way to find you and engage online. Notre Dame fans believe you should find them first. It is impossible to feel pity for a team that refuses to join a conference fully and has its own sweetheart deal of a TV contract that gets to custom make their schedule.
Florida also played and lost to Miami and Texas A&M, but given the rest of Notre Dame's schedule it's not impossible to envision a pathway there Florida goes 8-4 in 2025.
And so, like the spoiled children that they are, Notre Dame has refused an invite to the Pop-Tarts Bowl. Miami and Notre Dame met on the field.
Miami won the game.
There are plenty of critiques of the playoff committee's inconsistency, and their own lack of consistency put them in this mess in the first place.
But if the playoffs are going to matter for the inevitable day Florida makes it, meritocracy has to matter over which logo has more weight.