It wouldn’t be a College Football Playoff selection Sunday without controversy and this year’s crisis was going to involve Notre Dame one way or another.

The original assumption was that the CFP selection committee was going to put 10-2 Notre Dame into the 12-team field over Miami, despite the Hurricanes owning an identical record and a direct head-to-head victory over the Fighting Irish. That was actually rectified with the “U” slipping in as the final at-large team at No. 10. Instead, it was Notre Dame that actually ended up being snubbed out of the dance in favor of 10-3 Alabama, who made it in at No. 9 despite being obliterated by Georgia in the SEC Championship Game less than 24 hours earlier.

Even after Alabama dropped its second game of the regular season in mid-November, the committee still thought that the Crimson Tide had a strong enough resume and strength of schedule to stay in the field and even jumped them over the Fighting Irish following their close victory over Auburn in the Iron Bowl. A 28-7 loss to UGA where they accumulated -3 total rushing yards wasn’t enough for the committee to change its stance and as a result, the Golden Domers will be sitting out the postseason entirely.

I think the committee made a mistake here.

Notre Dame opened the season with back-to-back one-score losses to the aforementioned Miami and Texas A&M, who coincidentally will be playing each other in the first round of this year’s bracket. It was understood that the Irish would need to run the table in an impressive manner the rest of the way for playoff consideration and … that’s exactly what they did.

Marcus Freeman’s group ripped right through their schedule with an average scoring margin of 29.7 points, their closest result being a 34-24 victory over a USC team that hovered on the fringes of the playoff conversation and was ranked No. 16 on Sunday. They bullied respectable ACC foes like NC State and Pitt as well as Group of Five playoff contenders like Navy and Boise State, the latter of whom went on to win the Mountain West Conference title. And then there was the almost biblical 70-7 sacking of Syracuse where they could’ve put up even more points if they didn’t call off the dogs. They needed to prove themselves playoff worthy by dropping the hammer on weaker opponents and they did exactly that for two-and-a-half months.

To compare, Alabama started its season with a 14-point loss to Florida State that continued to age terribly as the Seminoles stumbled throughout the year. To the Tide’s credit, they did rattle off eight straight wins in a streak that included a three-point road victory over Georgia. However, close wins over subpar South Carolina and LSU teams exposed some of their flaws, namely their inability to run the ball, and it all came to a head in the aforementioned mid-November loss to Oklahoma. They were rewarded for scraping by an Auburn team that finished with just one win in SEC play and the committee basically said no harm, no foul for getting pantsed in their league title game … while punishing BYU for doing the same.

Even metrics favor Notre Dame with the Fighting Irish outranking the Tide in both ESPN’s FPI and Bill Connelly’s SP+. This was a really good, but not elite Alabama team that should probably be playing in the Citrus Bowl instead of getting another shot at Oklahoma, whose two-loss resume of its own is bolstered by an early-season win over Michigan. And once again, they lost to Florida State! It’s worst loss of any of the at-larges in the field!

Now, Notre Dame hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory in the aftermath of this snub and its decision to outright reject a bowl game has drawn criticism and scorn on its own merits. But they do have a valid reason to be angry this morning. It’s ok though, as a favored-nation in this sport, the Fighting Irish won’t have to worry about this happening again next year: