CFP Ranks Notre Dame Below Every AP Voter

Notre Dame opened 11th in the College Football Playoff rankings Tuesday, lower than any of the 70 AP voters placed the Irish on Sunday. Every AP ballot had Notre Dame between second and 10th. The AP's No. 4 team is the clearest disagreement between the two groups in their first comparison of the season.

Among the 24 teams ranked in both lists, Notre Dame is the only one whose committee placement falls outside its entire AP ballot range. Alabama's CFP No. 5 matches its highest AP vote; Texas' No. 7 does, too. Notre Dame's seven-place gap is the largest, ahead of Boise State's five. The dated comparison pairs Tuesday's rankings with the November 1 AP poll, preserving the same reference for later review.

That does not make fourth place an overwhelming AP verdict. Notre Dame finished with 1,476 points, just three ahead of UCLA's 1,473. AP voters award 25 points for first, 24 for second and so on through one for 25th. Across 70 ballots, that narrow margin separated fourth from fifth. The stronger finding is that every voter kept the Irish in the top 10, a line the committee placed them below.

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BYU Ranks Ahead of Notre Dame

The committee ranked BYU ninth, two places ahead of Notre Dame, after AP voters collectively put the Irish three places ahead of the Cougars. Both teams are 7-1, and they already have a result against each other: BYU's 28-24 home win on October 17. Notre Dame had led in the fourth quarter before BYU scored the winning touchdown with 1:47 remaining.

The AP electorate was much closer on that matchup than the three-place separation suggests. In the 70 frozen ballots, 39 voters ranked Notre Dame ahead of BYU and 31 put BYU ahead. Both teams appeared on every ballot, so that comparison contains no missing placements. Nearly half the panel already preferred the order the committee published, even though none placed Notre Dame as low as 11th.

Head-to-head results are one of the CFP's stated criteria for distinguishing otherwise comparable teams. Schedule strength, results against common opponents and factors such as unavailable players or coaches also enter the evaluation. BYU's win is directly relevant to the comparison, but the published order alone cannot establish how heavily the committee weighed it.

There is a reason to examine more than that one game. BYU followed the Notre Dame victory with a 39-31 loss at UCF in double overtime on October 24. The Irish's four-point road loss and the Cougars' subsequent defeat belong in the same season review. The 39-31 AP split demonstrates that voters reached different orders from those records; it does not establish that either group ignored the head-to-head result.

Miami Gives Notre Dame a Direct Test

The committee and AP voters agree on Miami, Georgia and Utah at Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Notre Dame's next game is against the team both put first: Miami visits South Bend on November 7. That offers the Irish a direct opportunity to add a win over the leading team, rather than relying on changes elsewhere in the rankings.

Eleventh is an interim position, with five CFP releases still to come. Under the current rules, Notre Dame is guaranteed inclusion if it finishes in the committee's top 12 on December 6. That specific provision matters here: the general playoff field also includes automatic qualifiers, so Tuesday's top 12 should not be presented as a settled bracket. No team earns a berth from this opening release.

The AP ballots leave room for BYU ahead of Notre Dame, but no voter extended that judgment as far as the committee's overall placement. That is what makes this disagreement substantial: the Irish begin with less room for an uneven November than their AP ranking suggests. Their remaining games will test that assessment; even a win over Miami would guarantee no particular jump.