How playoff committee views the Miami Hurricanes and what it needs to see from them
The Miami Hurricanes are on the outside looking in for the College Football Playoff a month out of the 12-team field being finalized, with UM checking in at No. 18 in the initial ranking on Tuesday.
But CFP selection committee chair and Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades made one thing clear after the first of six rankings from the 12-team committee was unveiled.
“There’s still a lot of ball to play,” Rhoades said.
Having time, if nothing else, keeps Miami’s slim chances of cracking the playoff field.
But the way the committee justified its ranking of the Hurricanes (6-2, 2-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) shows they have an uphill climb facing them.
Rhoades, speaking Tuesday on a conference call after the rankings were revealed, said the committee looks at each team’s “full, total body of work” when determining rankings. This includes looking at their “performance on the field, their strength of schedule, their head-to-head matchups and results against common opponents.”
When asked if when a team loses impacts their positioning, he said “I don’t know that that is a huge factor.”
So let’s look at Miami’s whole body of work.
The Hurricanes started the season a perfect 5-0, including a season-opening victory against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish — a team the committee ranked No. 10 in its initial rankings.
Miami has since followed that up with two loses during the past three weeks — first falling 24-21 to Louisville on Oct. 17 and then losing 26-20 in overtime to SMU on Saturday.
Despite saying otherwise earlier in his conference call, Rhoades said Miami’s recent losses did play a factor in putting them at No. 18 because of how they lost, specifically citing the offense’s six combined turnovers and inability to close out games in the two defeats.
“Early on, I think, like everybody else in the country, [we] held them in high, high regard,” Rhoades said. “Certainly the win against Notre Dame [was good], but with recent losses — that Friday night game to a Louisville team that came into Miami and then obviously the game at SMU — I think offensively right now, Miami is struggling a bit, and so the committee felt strongly in terms of where we ranked Miami.”
Rhoades also then clarified that head-to-head becomes a bigger factor “when the teams are comparable at the margins,” which is why they didn’t use it as significantly when considering Miami against Notre Dame as it did for other teams (like No. 4 Alabama vs. No. 5 Georgia, No. 11 Texas vs. No. 12 Oklahoma and No. 14 Virginia vs. No. 15 Louisville, for example).
And while Rhoades credited Miami for the win over Notre Dame, he said the committee “felt strongly” that the Fighting Irish “is a team that when you look at Week 1 to now, a team that has improved, has gotten better.” Notre Dame lost its first two games to Miami and Texas A&M, the latter of which is No. 3 in the initial rankings, by a combined four points before winning its past six games, although the only notable opponent in that span was USC, which the committee has ranked No. 19.
“When we look at the tape,” Rhoades said, “we think Notre Dame is a really solid football team.”
There are five two-loss teams ranked ahead of Miami: No. 10 Notre Dame, No. 11 Texas, No. 12 Oklahoma, No. 13 Utah and No. 16 Vanderbilt.
What the Miami Hurricanes have to do
UM will need to win its final four regular-season games — Saturday at home against Syracuse, Nov. 15 at home against NC State, Nov. 22 at Virginia Tech and Nov. 29 at No. 24 Pittsburgh — and get help in order to make the field.
As for what specifically the committee is looking for from the Hurricanes in those games?
“I think we all believe Miami’s got a talented team when you look at their roster, their roster composition,” Rhoades said “Certainly think they’re really good defensively. I think if they can maybe correct some of the woes that they’ve had just in terms of turnovers and certainly on the offensive side of the ball that they can certainly have an opportunity to win games. For Miami — I’m just going to say it — for Miami, it’s about consistency and their lack of consistency. We just need to see more consistency out of Miami headed down the stretch.”
The ACC
The ACC has five teams in the initial top 25, with Virginia at 14, Louisville 15, Georgia Tech 16, Miami 18 and Pittsburgh 24.
If the season ended today, Virginia would be the conference’s lone representative in the 12-team field, as the playoff consists of the five highest-ranked conference champions, even if that team falls outside the top 12, and then the next seven highest-ranked teams.
This story was originally published November 5, 2025 at 9:04 AM with the headline "How playoff committee views the Miami Hurricanes and what it needs to see from them."
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