Dave Hyde: Miami has only one place to look for playoff miss — and it’s not the voters

Here’s the worst part:

The Miami Hurricanes can only blame themselves.

Oh, it can point at the College Football Playoff committee for voting it out of the playoffs. Miami can say its two losses are less than Alabama’s three  and talk about Southeastern Conference conspiracy and NCAA hierarchy.

Maybe that’s true to a degree. But the full truth is Miami let this come down to judges ranking style points and swimsuit competitions because it didn’t do enough at the end of the season to take it out of the committee’s gnarled hands when they should have.

It had a limp schedule, the 55th ranked one in the land, and then lost two of its final three games to mediocre Georgia Tech and Syracuse. That opened the door not just to some local second-guessing, but to some national debating of whether they were playoff worthy.

What’s their defining win, Duke?

Maybe Louisville?

Nice wins, sure. But neither is in a top 25. No Miami opponent was. That was Miami’s void on its portfolio, especially compared to Alabama beating No. 5 Georgia and No. 14 South Carolina. Those Alabama wins were enough for the committee to overlook its losing to the likes of Vanderbilt and Oklahoma.

So, Miami was ranked 12th in the 12-team playoff. But 15th-ranked Arizona State as a conference winner would get an automatic berth, knocking Miami to unlucky, unfortunate and until-next-season 13th unless there’s another miracle ending after this weekend’s conference championship games.

You can argue Alabama isn’t deserving. It has warts, too. Throw in Mississippi and South Carolina too, and all the teams making closing arguments for the final playoff spot gave the look and feel of just what college football was trying to avoid with this expanded playoff.

They did avoid it for the most part, too. It says something is working out that the debate isn’t an undefeated Florida State not getting into the four-team playoff last season. It’s all these flawed teams fighting for the 12th spot this year.

“It came down to a difference in their body of work as we evaluated Alabama and Miami,” CFP committee chairman Warde Manuel said Tuesday night. “Not just wins. Not just losses. But the totality of the season and how those teams performed.”

You can make a case for Miami if you want. Ten wins. Two losses on the road. Quarterback Cam Ward is as big a talent as the college game has. Miami still has some value as a brand name, too, even if it hasn’t been on the big stage in years.

It’s not Miami’s fault too, the weak schedule meant every week became a warning not to overlook a lesser team. It’s also not its fault Florida and Florida State were doormats this season.

But all that logic only stretches so far when you know Miami stood 9-0 with every goodie laid out before it if it could beat a couple mediocre teams. That brings up another part of this Miami season. It had more thrills than a carnival ride, even when it didn’t need to like with the Hail-Mary replay win against Virginia Tech and the rally from 35-10 against Cal.

So, it wasn’t like the loss to Georgia Tech was shocking. Even that could have been shrugged off as a hiccup, the expected off day, if not for the season finale last Saturday.

When you have a chance to close it out like Miami did in Syracuse, you can’t let a 21-0 lead slip away. You can’t give up 42 points in the final three quarters. And what makes it hurt even more is you walk away second-guessing a fourth-and-goal from the Syracuse 9-yard line with three minutes left and down, 42-35.

Coach Mario Cristobal kicked a field goal there. That’s what analytics said. It wasn’t an easy decision. But that wasn’t a field goal Miami needed, it took the game out of Ward’s hands and, if Miami hadn’t got the touchdown, Syracuse still would have been pinned deep in its own territory.

Maybe that wouldn’t have mattered. Maybe Miami’s defense would have broke in the mystifying way it did again that game.

As it is, Miami lost the game and lost its spot in the playoffs. Two late losses led to Tuesday’s final one. A good season wasn’t good enough.

Miami can blame it on the committee being wrong or big, bad Alabama getting another break. Maybe so. But ideas about the Ghost of Nick Saban only go so far.

The harder truth for Miami is it had a playoff spot and a great season locked up and left Syracuse without either of them.