Marcus Freeman, difference-maker, is running it back at Notre Dame
The Irish hold off the NFL for at least one more year. That's not nothing.
Brian Kelly got fired from LSU for many of the same characteristics that had made him successful at Notre Dame.
He wasn’t much of a recruiter. He didn’t develop many deep relationships with his roster. He golfed … a lot.
He still went 54-9 during his final five seasons with the Irish.
Kevin Warren took over as Big Ten commissioner right before the pandemic hit. He prematurely canceled the 2020 football season, he failed to connect with most of his conference’s football coaches and he eventually departed for the Bears. He is nearly three full years into his tenure as Chicago’s president and CEO, and the franchise appears no closer to building a new stadium now than it was when he was hired.
Everyone in the Big Ten still got rich under Warren, who expanded the league to the West Coast and negotiated a landmark multi-billion dollar media rights agreement.
Sherrone Moore … well, we don’t need to re-visit everything that Moore has recently been accused of doing.
Just know that with that guy in charge, Michigan still managed to go 9-3 this season.
Notre Dame … the Big Ten … Michigan … these jobs are really, really hard to screw up. Throw a random coach a properly-branded headset or a random executive the right corner office, and he or she will likely oversee a lucrative operation regardless of how much or how little he or she does.
These brands, these jobs are that powerful, that wide-reaching. They are literally too big to fail.
But you know what’s even harder to do than screw them up?
Truly elevate them.
Marcus Freeman elevates Notre Dame. And based on his tweet on Monday, he will still be doing that at Notre Dame in 2026.
