The Notre Dame football program is currently counting down the days until the 2025 season gets underway, in which they will look to build off their national championship game appearance from a year ago. Head coach Marcus Freeman proved a lot of his skeptics wrong last year in leading the Fighting Irish to the game's biggest stage, where they rallied a furious comeback and made things very interesting against Ohio State down the stretch.
Notre Dame got to that point by defeating the Penn State Nittany Lions in the Orange Bowl the previous round of the playoffs, before which Penn State head coach took some jabs at Freeman during their joint press conference, mocking his relatively young age as well as pining for Notre Dame to join a conference (something the entire sports world has been requesting for decades now).
Needless to say, Freeman did not take too kindly to those remarks.
“I mean, he was furious,” one source said, per Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated. “And he used it with the team. He said, ‘These guys don’t respect you. Let me give you an example of how I know they don’t respect me.’ ”
“The team was already feeling a certain type of way,” said former Notre Dame linebacker Jack Kiser. “And when Coach Freeman got back, you could tell there was an added chip on his shoulder. Essentially, [Franklin] was trying to big brother our coach. That was just spitting in our face. Respect your opponent.”
A huge bounce back from Marcus Freeman
Heading into last season, there were legitimate concerns about Freeman's ability to coach at the college football level considering the way the Irish had underperformed previously in his tenure.
However, Freeman left little doubt about his ability to lead by leading Notre Dame all the way to the championship game, and coaching them to nearly pull off a major upset when they got there.
Notre Dame will now look to build off that momentum, once again enjoying a conference-free schedule in the upcoming season, which will begin on August 30 against the Miami Hurricanes.
