Mario Cristobal lobbies CFP committee for head-to-head to matter in Notre Dame debate
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Mario Cristobal had questions to answer after Saturday’s 34-17 victory at Virginia Tech about the College Football Playoff and how it relates to what his Hurricanes did at the end of the game.
Cristobal’s team is ranked 13th in the latest CFP rankings, 4 spots behind No. 9 Notre Dame, which was on its way to a blowout victory over Syracuse in Week 13. With Miami leading by a less-than-impressive 27-17 in the waning moments of Saturday’s game, Cristobal elected to tack on another touchdown rather than just taking a knee and settling for a 10-point win.
Instead, the Canes scored that last TD with 20 seconds left, and suddenly the final score of 34-17 looked a little more shiny than the 10-point spread. Cristobal was asked by reporters during the postgame press conference about scoring that last touchdown and exactly what it meant. His response explained enough and veered into the conversation about a certain team — Notre Dame — that Miami beat at home in a Week 1 thriller.
“I think it goes for anyone who’s ever played the game or coached the game because people throw around the word eye test. Well, how about the field test? Right? Where head-to-head matters. Things like that,” Cristobal said. “So that’s what football’s always been about: on the field, getting it, finding a way to get it done.”
Interestingly, during last Tuesday night’s CFP rankings reveal on ESPN, the first question from host Rece Davis to CFP chair Hunter Yurachek was about the whole Notre Dame-Miami comparison.
“We really compare the losses of those two teams,” Yurachek said. “We really haven’t compared those two teams. They haven’t been in similar comparative pools to date. But Miami is creeping up into that range where they will be compared to ND if something happens above them.”
There is 1 week left in the regular season for Miami and Notre Dame to score those style points, with the Hurricanes visiting Pittsburgh next Saturday while the Fighting Irish head west to face Stanford.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
