You don’t have to feel bad for Notre Dame.

Could they have done some serious damage in the College Football Playoff if they were given the nine or ten seed? Probably. Did they deserve one of those spots when the other two candidates were one team that beat them head-to-head and another that had four better wins than anyone on Notre Dame did? 

Come on.

If you lined up Notre Dame on the field against either Miami or Alabama at this point, they would probably be the betting favorite. That should matter in how we evaluate teams, but a hypothetical is not equal to an actual result. They should not be treated with the same value.

Now, let me acknowledge a reality that is hanging over this column. I’m from Alabama. I went to the University of Alabama. That means I am undeniably biased. I won’t pretend I’m not. But, just like in 2023 when I was shouting that Florida State didn’t get screwed, Alabama’s resume is just better. I don’t see how that is controversial.

That isn’t really the point of this column, though. College football is a universe so vast and disconnected that it is hard to change anyone’s mind about anything, particularly when we’re arguing about who is better than who.

Instead, let’s talk about the reaction to a very normal thing happening to Notre Dame. Plenty of deserving teams have been left out of the College Football Playoff or the BCS National Championship Game in the past. They piss and moan and then move on. For some teams, it means their bowl opponent is in for a hell of a game. For others, it means their bowl opponent will enjoy an absolute walk in the park.

Notre Dame is the only one that decided just to quit. I don’t want to hear about injustice or about sticking it to ESPN. Notre Dame quit. The people who made the decision and the people defending it should be ashamed of themselves.

This is not a moral stand. It’s cowardice. You simply will not convince me that part of the motivation here is that Notre Dame wants to avoid being 2023 Florida State. That is a very real possibility considering BYU, Utah, Vanderbilt, and Texas could all have easily been slotted into a game with the Fighting Irish. Losing to a team like that would kick Notre Dame off the moral high horse.

That’s not the story Notre Dame and AD Pete Bevacqua are telling, though. They want the public to believe this is a necessary move to expose ESPN’s control over college football’s postseason. 

Former Fighting Irish quarterback Brady Quinn is happy to echo that nonsense. The idea that sitting out is the only way to give ESPN the middle finger is absurd. Notre Dame, through its ACC ties, is connected to both the Holiday Bowl and the Sun Bowl—the former airs on Fox. The latter airs on CBS. Notre Dame could have declared that those were the only bowls they were willing to play in, and the ACC would have bent over backward to accommodate them, as the conference always does.

Quinn’s Fox colleague, Mike Hill, took to X to implore us to please think of the children! Perhaps it was the players or the coaches who decided not to play. There isn’t a world where I can believe this decision was made by people who earn a living by competing. This reeks of suit thinking.

Dan Patrick gave Bevacqua an unchallenged, open forum for the AD to complain that the ACC openly stumped for Miami to get the final at-large spot. I will remind you that Notre Dame is not an ACC member in football. They have a business relationship that ensures the Fighting Irish can fill its football schedule with powerhouses like Boston College and NC State every year. The school has made it very clear, though, that the love in this relationship only flows one way.

The conference has repeatedly debased itself for Notre Dame football. That includes adding Cal and Stanford, two schools that bring only headaches to the conference. It got done simply because the Fighting Irish wanted it. The ACC is finally looking out for itself, and Bevacqua is pitching a fit because he never thought it would. 

As for people like CBS’s Danny Kanell arguing that Tulane and James Madison do not belong in the College Football Playoff because they have no shot to win it and that those spots should go to Notre Dame and another Power 4 team, that’s a deflection. There are defined criteria for conference champions. Those arguing for their exclusion are just lashing out at anything they can latch onto to give Notre Dame’s argument some legitimacy.

I’m not saying that Notre Dame didn’t have a strong case for the College Football Playoff. They did. It just wasn’t strong enough. That is worth debating, and I’ll even allow some handwringing and consternation.

But at this point, the school and its leaders cannot be defended, and their defenders cannot be taken seriously.