No. 1 Miami's unbeaten season ends in 31-24 loss at Notre Dame

Notre Dame ended Miami's unbeaten season on Saturday night, beating the No. 1 Hurricanes 31-24 at Notre Dame Stadium in a result that reshuffles the top of the College Football Playoff picture with four weeks left in the regular season. Quarterback CJ Carr threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns, and the Fighting Irish built a 21-point lead that survived a furious fourth-quarter rally from the Hurricanes.

The win, in front of an announced crowd of 77,622 and a reported 43 NFL scouts, snapped Miami's eight-game winning streak and ended the last unbeaten power-conference season in the country outside of Utah and UCLA. It also avenged Notre Dame's 27-24 loss to Miami in last season's opener, a defeat that ultimately helped keep the Irish out of the 12-team playoff field.

Notre Dame surges, then survives

Notre Dame (8-1) never trailed. Spencer Porath's 44-yard field goal opened the scoring, and Carr found Jordan Faison for a 27-yard touchdown before halftime to push the lead to 17-3. Carr added two more touchdown passes to Micah Gilbert, the second of which made it 24-3 early in the third quarter, according to the official box score.

Miami answered with three straight touchdown drives. Quarterback Darian Mensah threw scoring passes to Elija Lofton and twice to Cooper Barkate, cutting the deficit to 24-17 and then, after Notre Dame's Nolan James Jr. ran in a go-ahead score to make it 31-17, pulling within a touchdown again at 31-24 with just over nine minutes to play. Mensah finished 24 of 43 for 276 yards, and Barkate caught 10 passes for 92 yards. Lofton added seven catches for a game-high 113 yards.

Notre Dame's defense made the stand that mattered. Safety Luke Talich intercepted a tipped Mensah pass in the third quarter, then broke up what appeared to be a go-ahead touchdown catch by Lofton on fourth down with 3:36 remaining. Officials ruled Lofton never secured possession before the ball came loose, a call that stood after review and let the Irish run out the clock.

A missing star and a disputed finish

Miami played without wide receiver Malachi Toney, a Heisman Trophy hopeful who was hurt in practice during the week and did not travel with the team, per Miami's own recap of the loss published by the athletic department. The Hurricanes had averaged 27 first-half points through their first eight games; they managed only three before the break in South Bend.

The disputed fourth-down call became the lasting image of the night. Miami coach Mario Cristobal said afterward that he was "beyond upset" with the ruling, arguing Lofton had controlled the ball in bounds. "Obviously, a tough loss to take," Cristobal said. "Proud of our players for the resilience. Don't leave it in the hands of the officials. Play better. Coach better. Find a way to win."

"As good a win as I've ever been a part of. As special of a moment, as special of an outcome, that I've been a part of since I've been the head coach here."

That was Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman's assessment afterward, a notable statement from a coach in his fourth season leading a program with 11 national championships. Freeman cautioned his team not to linger on the moment. "Enjoy it, because tomorrow when you wake up it's time to get ready for the next one," he said. Safety Luke Talich, who had the game-saving pass breakup, put it more plainly: "Our backs were against the wall."

What the loss means for the playoff race

Miami entered the weekend at 8-0 and No. 1 in both wire-service polls and the inaugural College Football Playoff rankings, released November 3, which had Georgia second, Utah third and Indiana fourth, with Notre Dame 11th. The loss drops Miami to 44-7 all-time when ranked No. 1 in the AP poll, including an 0-2 mark in that position against Notre Dame specifically — the Irish also beat a top-ranked Miami team 31-30 in the famous 1988 "Catholics vs. Convicts" game.

For Notre Dame, it was just the program's 11th win over a No. 1 team, and its first in exactly six years; the previous one came against Clemson on Nov. 7, 2020. With the result, only Utah and UCLA remain unbeaten among the 136 FBS teams, both sitting at 9-0 after Saturday's games. That is the smallest group of unbeaten teams through nine games since 2003, when just TCU and Oklahoma were still perfect at that point in the season.

Both programs arrived at Saturday's game with starkly different recent histories at the top of the sport. Miami had not held the No. 1 ranking in the AP poll since 2002 before this season, and Mario Cristobal's program built its case on a double-overtime win over rival Florida State in mid-October that first pushed the Hurricanes to the top spot. Notre Dame, under fourth-year coach Marcus Freeman, missed the expanded playoff entirely last season after a 10-2 finish that the selection committee did not consider strong enough, a snub that followed directly from the opening-week loss at Miami. Saturday's rematch, moved to South Bend this year as part of a scheduled home-and-home series, was treated by both programs all week as a measuring-stick game regardless of the final record implications, and the 12-team playoff format now in its second year means both teams can still recover with a strong close to November.

The outcome does not eliminate either team from playoff contention under the 12-team format, which rewards conference champions and the highest-ranked remaining teams, but it complicates both resumes heading into the committee's next reveal. Mensah, pressed afterward on what the loss meant for Miami's season, struck a measured tone: "Everything we want is still in front of us." Wide receiver Cooper Barkate was more direct about the sting of the defeat: "This is supposed to hurt."

What comes next

The selection committee releases its second set of rankings on Tuesday night, and both teams will have had a full week to make their case before then. Miami returns home to host Duke next Saturday, while Notre Dame hosts Boston College. Both games are considered more manageable than Saturday's showdown, but with the playoff field not finalized until Dec. 6 and three games remaining for each team, neither program can afford a letdown.

For Miami, the result is a reminder that an unbeaten record was always going to be tested by a veteran Notre Dame defense in a hostile, cold-weather environment — kickoff temperature was 40 degrees Fahrenheit, falling into the mid-30s by the fourth quarter. For Notre Dame, which missed the playoff a year ago largely because of its head-to-head loss to these same Hurricanes, Saturday's result offers a measure of both revenge and validation, even if Freeman insisted the business of the season continues immediately.