AD: Irish prefer independence over vying for bye
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Heather Dinich, Senior College Football Insider
ATLANTA — Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua said the independent Irish are comfortable continuing to give up access to a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff — something currently granted to only the four highest-ranked conference champions — as long as the fate of conference championship games remains the same.
“We’re comfortable that if conference championship games continue as they’re currently configured, part of the deal we made is that we wouldn’t get a bye, and that’s understandable,” Bevacqua said Saturday, speaking to a small group of reporters at the national championship game media availability at the Georgia World Congress Center. “And quite frankly, I wouldn’t trade that [first-round] Indiana game at Notre Dame Stadium for anything in the world, but you also have to be smart and strategic, and your odds of making a national championship game are increased if you get to play one less game.
“So I think a lot is going to depend on the fate of the conference championship games,” he said. “Should they go away? And that’s obviously not my decision. Should they be altered in some sort of material way where it’s not the top two teams playing for a championship, but something else? Then I think we absolutely have to re-look at Notre Dame’s ability to get a bye if we end up being one of the top four teams.”
Bevacqua’s comments come as he and the FBS commissioners prepare to meet Sunday to begin their review of the inaugural 12-team field, which will produce a national champion on Monday with the winner of Ohio State vs. Notre Dame.
Bevacqua is part of the CFP’s management committee, which is also comprised of the 10 FBS commissioners tasked with determining the format and rules of the playoff to eventually send to the 11 presidents and chancellors on the CFP board for their approval. The commissioners and Bevacqua will have a 90-minute business meeting to start to discuss possible changes for the 2025 season, which would require unanimity, leaving many CFP sources skeptical that next season will look much different.
Bevacqua said he thinks “there’s a chance” the group could agree on a change to the seeding, but one option that has been floated by sources with knowledge of the discussions is having the committee’s top four teams earn the top four seeds — which opens the door for Notre Dame to earn a first-round bye without playing in a conference championship game.
“I think everybody wants what’s best for the overall system,” he said. “It was interesting, when you think about those four teams that got a bye, they didn’t advance. Now I don’t think that has anything to do with the fact that they got a bye, I think that was mostly competition and happenstance. But I think there’ll be a good, honest conversation that will start tomorrow. Are there any changes that we ought to make from this year to next year and make something that’s worked really well work even better? Will there be changes? I’m just one person. I’m not sure.”
CFP executive director Rich Clark, who also spoke to a small group of reporters at the media day event, said some changes for 2025 would require “more lead time than a few months to implement,” so no major structural changes like the size of the bracket are expected for 2025.
Clark said the commissioners will talk about every aspect from “cradle to the grave,” including seeding and re-seeding possibilities.”
Clark said whatever changes are made for 2026 and beyond — the start of a new, six-year contract with ESPN — need to be determined by the end of the calendar year. That could include increasing the bracket size, possibly to 14 or 16 teams.
“We’re trying to beat that timeline,” Clark said. “We don’t want to obviously wait until the limits of it. So we want to move smartly on these things, but we don’t want to make bad decisions, either.”
SUNRISE, Fla. — Auston Matthews hadn’t scored against Florida in more than a year. He ended the drought — and might have also saved Toronto’s season.
Matthews got his first goal of the series to break a scoreless tie in the third period, Joseph Woll stopped 22 shots and the Toronto Maple Leafs kept their season alive by beating the Florida Panthers 2-0 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinal series Friday night.
“Just a gutsy, gutsy win,” Matthews said.
Game 7 is Sunday night in Toronto. The winner will face Carolina in the East final.
“We played a simple game tonight,” Leafs coach Craig Berube said.
Simple, but effective. Toronto blocked 31 shots, plus killed off all four Florida power plays.
Max Pacioretty added an insurance goal for the Maple Leafs, who improved to 4-2 when facing elimination since the start of the 2023 playoffs.
Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 15 shots for the Panthers, the defending Stanley Cup champions who oddly are only 8-7 in potential closeout games over the past three postseasons.
“You win or you learn,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. “Tonight, we learned.”
Florida coach Paul Maurice is 5-0 in Game 7s, including the final game of last season’s Stanley Cup Final. The Panthers are 3-1 all time in the ultimate game of a series — 2-0 on the road — while the Maple Leafs have lost each of their past six Game 7s. Of those, four were against Boston and now-Panthers forward Brad Marchand.
“We’re not going to show any video of those Game 7s,” Maurice said. “We’ll look at our game tonight and see where we can get better.”
It was the 68th game of this season’s playoffs — and only the second that was 0-0 after 40 minutes. The other was Wednesday night, when Edmonton eliminated Vegas with a 1-0 victory in overtime in Game 5 of that Western Conference semifinal series.
Toronto had five goals in Game 1, four more in Game 2 and had three by the early goings of the second period of Game 3. Add it up, and that was 12 in basically the first seven periods of the series.
From there, Toronto got basically nothing — until Matthews broke through.
The Toronto captain was 0-for-31 on shots against Florida this season, including the regular season. Bobrovsky had stopped 85 of the last 86 shot attempts he had seen in the series. And the Maple Leafs hadn’t had the lead in basically the equivalent of 3½ games — 216 minutes, 30 seconds, to be precise.
But when a pass got away from Florida’s Aaron Ekblad, Matthews had a slight opening — and that was all he needed. A low shot skittered along the ice and beat Bobrovsky for a 1-0 lead with 13:40 left.
“It’s a big win, from top to bottom,” Matthews said. “We earned that.”
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