CFP committee trying to pour gasoline on the Notre Dame-Miami firestorm

Now that the latest College Football Playoff rankings are out, there weren't many surprising rankings. That's to be expected since there were also not many upsets, outside of Georgia Tech against Pitt. Instead of drama being teams dropping out surprisingly, the CFP committee is adding intrigue with the way they continue to seed Notre Dame and Miami.

While the Fighting Irish have been slotted solidly into the No. 9 seed for a couple of weeks now, the Hurricanes keep edging their way up the list. Miami moving ever closer creates some chaos, as the committee has said that the head-to-head records of the two teams will only matter if they're closer together.

Notre Dame being No. 9 and Miami being No. 11, it seems like the two programs are pretty close. At this point, the CFP committee sure looks like it's pouring buckets of gasoline on the fire as the advocates for each program harden their minds and make their case.

Notre Dame football's battle with Miami is only getting crazier

"Why do they play the games?" has been the refrain for those who believe Miami should be higher for weeks. However, what that argument is missing is that the regular season is not a single-elimination tournament. It never has been.

The chaos that the committee has created is because while Miami has a case that they are the "better" team, no one in the college football world really believes they're the "better" team than Notre Dame now. The committee and most analysts have said as much.

There's also an argument to be made that if the Hurricanes had played, say, an FCS or Sun Belt team in Week 1 rather than the Irish, they likely wouldn't be ranked as high.

As the committee chair, Hunter Yurachek said after the CFP bracket reveal, he believes that Notre Dame has been the more "consistent" program and that head-to-head is only one data point.

All of this is further complicated by Alabama and Oklahoma being ranked ahead of Miami while also being 9-2. There's also the reality of the ACC and Miami not being able to win their conference, which means that the 10th spot is really the cutoff for at-large teams, considering a Group of 5 program will get the No. 12 seed.

The fire is not likely to die down over the next few weeks. Notre Dame and Miami will draw closer unless Pitt or Stanford can pull off a massive upset this weekend. And when they do draw closer, people on both sides will have their arguments at the ready. Someone is getting left out, and whoever does will have an argument that they shouldn't.