The Ritz-Carlton lobby in Atlanta prior to Notre Dame’s 23-14 defeat to Ohio State in this year’s national championship game was adorned with a banner listing the eleven years the Irish won the title: 1924, 1929. 1930, 1943, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1966, 1973, 1977, 1988.
Current Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman was a two-year-old toddler the last time Notre Dame captured the ultimate prize. Freeman got the consolation prize at the Mercedes Benz Stadium in downtown Atlanta, but the best is yet to come for this promising 39-year-old mentor.
Freeman is one of the fittest and most impressive leaders of young men on the college horizon. He was brought to Notre Dame from Cincinnati by Brian Kelly, who was the defensive backs coach at Grand Valley State when Lou Holtz won it all at Notre Dame in ’88. It’s been a long dry spell for the school of Knute Rockne and Ara Parseghian.
Freeman was the defensive coordinator for Kelly’s last and best team at South Bend. The Irish were 11-1 under Kelley in 2021 when the man from Massachusetts decided to bolt from the shadow of the Golden Dome for the heat of Death Valley to have the bright lights shine of him.
Three years into a record ten-year contract, Kelly is a respectable 29-11, but at LSU, this is not good enough. His fourth season will be telling. In the modern age, only eight LSU football coaches have lasted four seasons. Every LSU coach was fired except Nick Saban and Paul Dietzel, who was dismissed as athletic director 20 years after he had the audacity to migrate to West Point from Baton Rouge.
Three of Kelly’s predecessors won national titles in their fourth year. Ed Orgeron, Saban and Dietzel found the magic in year four as all of them departed New Orleans with college football’s greatest honor. Les Miles beat them to the throne by one season when he won the crown in January of 2008 by whipping an Ohio State unit 38-24 in the Superdome. One of the Buckeyes’ top defenders was Marcus Freeman.
Freeman played only one season in the NFL as a linebacker. He did show some mojo by bench pressing 225 pounds 30 times at the scouting combine. It is essential for modern day coaches to look like a strong leader. in the most physical of sports, coaches lack credibility if they can’t set an example of character and discipline.
Freeman and Ohio State’s Ryan Day do not invite ridicule if they tell a player he is not coachable. Look for these fellows at South Bend and Columbus to be dominant figures in their profession for a few decades.
Morning Joe Picks Fight with BK
Dale Brown once famously challenged Indiana’s Bob Knight “to wrestle him naked in a closet.” Sportswriter Dave Kindred suggested Daddy Dale and the other BK capitalize on their feud and settle their differences in a headline bout at Wrestlemania.
Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe on MSNBC disparaged Kelly last week when the former congressman mused the Irish footballers had “lumbered” through the past 20 years without success.
Kelly is the winningest coach in Notre Dame football history, and he was coach at the citadel of football for 12 of the last 20 years. To make matters, worse Scarborough said the Irish once lost 14 games in a season in recent time. Kelly’s worst record was 4-8 in 2016.
Sounds like Jolting Joe Scarborough, graduate of the University of Alabama, is in dire need of an attitude adjustment from Bruising BK. Imagine the NIL dough that could be derived from a steel cage match between the 62-year-old pundit and the 63-year-old coach.
The perfect location for this spectacle would be the Baton Rouge Country Club where Kelly is reportedly a regular visitor at the 19th hole. This would be the biggest event at BRCC since Arnold Palmer won a PGA tournament there in 1960 and pocketed a whopping top prize of $2,000.
It would be fun to watch the chiseled BK rip the toupee from the scalp of the less svelte Morning Joe. BK gets the regal LSU purple tights. Scarborough can showcase his robust form in the fire engine red colors of his alma mater. I’m picking the LSU representative in this battle of heavyweight titans.
Jayden is the LSU GOAT
Jayden Daniels has emerged as the greatest quarterback in LSU history. Better than Joe Burrow, Bert Jones or Y.A. Tittle.
In his brilliant debut with the Washington Commanders, Daniels completed the regular season with 3568 yards passing and 891 yards rushing. He produced 31 touchdowns against nine interceptions and completed 69-percent of his passing attempts.
Burrow enjoyed a great season as well, completing 70.6-percent of his passes for 4918 yards, 43 touchdowns and nine interceptions for the Cincinnati Bengals. Burrow rushed for another 201 yards.
The upside for Daniels at age 24 is significantly higher than for Burrow, who is 28 and has faced the surgeon’s scalpel repeatedly. Look for each quarterback to excel for years in the NFL, but Daniels has an array of skills unique only to him. If he stays healthy, the latest Heisman winner for the Tigers will be the best.
Praise to Scott Woodward for Jay Johnson
The choice from this space for the top coach hired in six years by LSU Athletic Director Scott Woodward is Jay Johnson, who captured a national title in his second season at Alex Box Stadium.
Year three was a disappointment for Johnson, but he should rebound and compete for the CWS title this season and have LSU in contention for supremacy on the diamond every year he is in the dugout.
At 47, Johnson is nearly a generation younger than Kim Mulkey, so look for him to preside over the baseball program at TigerTown long after Mulkey and Brian Kelly are receiving Medicare benefits.
Johnson directed two teams at the University of Arizona to the CWS and one of them to a second-place finish at Omaha. He recruited Paul Skenes to LSU, and the fire-balling righthander stands to be the best Major League player in LSU history. Grand accomplishments are within reach for this unassuming graduate of Point Loma Nazarene in San Diego where the average cost of a year of instruction is pegged at $60,868.
Johnson is the real deal, and Woodward warrants plaudits for a prudent hire.
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