First of all, all you Notre Dame fans from Ireland, Paris, New York City, New Orleans, South Bend, Indiana, and all points in between, you need to take a cold shower.
So, do some of you folks covering the 14-1 Notre Dame football team, which plays for its first national championship since 1988 on Monday (6:30 p.m., ESPN) against Ohio State (13-2).
You have all enjoyed a great season. It may not end well, but that doesn’t matter. Super Bowls often end badly. But every team that made it to a Super Bowl – regardless of strength of schedule and other items that losers cling to a little too much in college football – deserved to be there. Except for the Los Angeles Rams in the 2018 season because of the worst non-call in NFL playoff history. And Notre Dame deserves to be exactly where it is. So did Indiana, SMU, Arizona State and Boise State.
Ohio State is the best team in the country, favored by 8.5 points to win and was predicted to win the national championship nearly one year ago at this time because of its Brian Kelly-like assault on the NCAA Transfer Portal.
Speaking of LSU football coach Brian Kelly. He is under virtual assault by the Notre Dame World, which is much more than a Nation like ordinary schools have, and its many new bandwagon ride-alongs.
“Hey, Marcus Freeman is doing what Brian Kelly couldn’t,” an extremely professional journalist friend of mine said to me the other day.
Freeman is Notre Dame’s coach. He replaced Kelly after the 2021 season when Kelly left to take the LSU job. My friend is correct. Freeman got Notre Dame into the 12-team college football playoff this season. Kelly couldn’t do that at Notre Dame. Because there was no 12-team playoff when he was Notre Dame’s coach from 2010-21. And he hasn’t been able to do it at LSU.
Three times, though, Kelly got Notre Dame into the two-team or four-team playoff – at 12-0 in 2012 in the two-team-format national championship game, at 12-0 in 2018 in the four-team playoff and at 10-1 in 2020 in the four-team playoff.
Freeman’s Notre Dame team this season would not have made the four-team field. In the playoffs, Freeman and the Irish beat Indiana (27-17), Georgia without starting quarterback Carson Beck (23-10) and Penn State (27-24), which struggles in big games. It’s not a reach to think Kelly’s ND playoff teams would have defeated all three of those teams and lost big to Ohio State. Kelly’s 2012 national championship runner-up lost to Alabama, 42-14. It lost 30-3 in a semifinal in 2018 to eventual champion Clemson and fell 31-14 in the 2020 semi, 31-14, to eventual champion Alabama.
So, two of the three times Kelly reached the playoffs at Notre Dame, he had to play Alabama. And the third time, he had to play the team that beat Alabama twice in national title games. That’s bad luck. Freeman had none of that this season.
Yet, Freeman is being viewed as the next Messiah at Notre Dame, the next Lou Holtz, the next Ara Parseghian and the next Frank Leahy. And if they don’t kick that game off soon, it’ll go to Knute Rockne. Or, he could be the next Tyrone Willingham, who had a very good first season at 10-3 in 2002, then disaster, or the next Charlie Weis, who had a very good first two seasons at 9-3 and 10-3 in 2005 and ’06, then disaster.
Freeman had a very good first two seasons – 9-4 and 10-3 – and is off to a spectacular third season at 14-1 and is a win away from having a Touchdown Freeman likeness in Notre Dame Stadium and his own Grotto namesake. Freeman is winning for previous Notre Dame coaches’ sins at just 39. Jesus died for our sins somewhere between the ages of 33 and 36.
The truth is, at the moment and even if he wins it all Monday, Freeman is something in between the great and average or bad Notre Dame coaches. He is Les Miles, as in well behind a Holtz, Parseghian or Leahy, but much better than a Willingham or Weis.
Freeman is to Notre Dame and Brian Kelly now what Miles was to LSU and Nick Saban in the 2007 season when Miles won the national title in his third season with the Tigers. The similarities are Biblical, something out of Revelation.
Freeman is immensely popular among the Notre Dame congregation because he followed Kelly, who basically became Satan for daring to become the first Notre Dame football coach since 1907 to leave for another job on his own. Kelly thought LSU was a better job than Notre Dame, and it was, particularly under the four-team playoff format. It may not be now.
Kelly left after taking Notre Dame to heroic heights. Since Holtz left after the 1996 season, the Irish didn’t come close to sniffing even a chance for a national championship until Kelly got Notre Dame in the title game in just his third season in 2012. He also put together seven double-digit win seasons, including five straight in his last five seasons. The three coaches between him and Holtz had exactly two double-digit-win seasons over a span of 13 years.
So, naturally, Notre Dame fans were pissed and felt jilted and ghosted. So, they fell flat in love with his replacement – Freeman – as if he was the first new boyfriend of their daughter left at the altar by the previous boyfriend.
It was the same when Saban left LSU a year after taking the Tigers to their first national championship since 19858 in the 2003 season. He was the first LSU football coach to leave for a better job and not get fired since Paul Dietzel after the 1961 season – three years removed from the national title.
Never mind that Kelly left because he wanted a new opportunity. He had been at Notre Dame for 12 years. He wanted something new, and LSU – at the time before the 12-team playoff – was clearly a better opportunity and may still be. It was time to go. After 12 years at the same place, a new and possibly better job is rejuvenating. Americans do it all the time.
Never mind that Saban was also leaving for what he perceived as a better opportunity – the Miami Dolphins and the NFL, where he always wanted to coach. That didn’t work and he returned to college football just two years later at one of the best college jobs historically – Alabama.
If you don’t like those moves, you don’t like America.
Freeman has been a much nicer guy than Kelly, the Notre Dame fans and media are saying. The players love him and really want to play for him. The fans and some media members who are also fans want him to do so well to get back at Kelly for dumping Notre Dame.
Miles was a much nicer guy than Saban, the LSU fans and media were saying back in 2005 and for years. The players loved him and really wanted to play for him. The fans and some media members who are also fans wanted him to do so well to get back at Saban for dumping LSU.
In his third season, Freeman could win a national championship and prove he is better than Kelly.
In his third season at LSU, Miles won a national championship and proved to many LSU fans and media members that he was better than Saban. Or at least they convinced themselves of that fantasy at the time.
The truth was Miles did a great job in the 2007 national championship season, but he was left more talented players by a departing coach than any coach in college football history. More than 30 players recruited and coached by Saban at LSU were still in major roles, including most of the starting lineup, in year three after Saban left LSU. He left Miles the No. 1 or No. 2 signing class in 2003 and 2004. No less than 29 players signed by Saban at LSU were drafted between 2004 and 2009. By draft day 2009 when four of Saban’s LSU players were picked, Saban had been gone for nearly five years.
Kelly has not left that quite much for Freeman, particularly in this ridiculous NCAA Transfer Portal age that started just before Kelly’s last year at Notre Dame. But he has left Freeman a lot. And just like Miles in 2007 regarding Saban, Freeman has given little, if any credit to Kelly.
Freeman inherited the best winning tradition at Notre Dame from Kelly since Dan Devine replaced Parseghian in 1975. (Holtz had dipped to 6-5-1, 9-3 and 8-3 in his last three seasons from 1994-96.) Kelly’s last five teams went 10-3, 12-1 (College Football Playoff), 11-2, 10-2 (CFP) and 11-2. His last two signing classes in 2021 and ’22 were ranked No. 9 and No. 7, respectively.
There are still several key Kelly players who will have major roles when Notre Dame plays Ohio State on Monday. As in six starters – senior right guard Rocco Spindler, senior center Pat Coogan, senior tight end Mitchell Evans, senior safety Xavier Watts, senior linebacker Jack Kiser and senior nose tackle Howard Cross III.
Spindler, Coogan and Evans all signed in the 2021 class and have all been starting since 2023. Watts signed in 2020 and has been starting since late in the 2022 season. A consensus first team All-American this season, Watts only won the Bronko Najurski Award for the nation’s best defender in 2023 with seven interceptions. He has 13 of those in his career.
“Wow, thanks, Brian!,” Freeman has apparently not said.
Kiser signed in 2019 with Kelly. He started in 2021 and ’22, backed up in ’23 and has been a starter this season. Cross also signed in 2019 and is in his third season as a starter. Another All-American, Cross was a semifinalist for the Chuck Bednarik Award last season.
Two other members of Kelly’s 2021 signing class have not been starters, but have played a lot as backup wide receivers – seniors Jayden Thomas and Deion Colzie. Thomas may start Monday night.
Oh, and Kelly also left another key player – Marcus Freeman. Kelly hired him as defensive coordinator from Cincinnati after the 2020 season when LSU was trying very hard to get him.
And yes, like Saban, who always pledged his support for LSU and forever talked glowingly about his time in Baton Rouge, so has Kelly of Notre Dame, despite the hate coming the other way.
And so, a Notre Dame win Monday will be a win for Kelly in a way, much like Miles’ national title win in the 2007 season was a win for Saban in a way.
“I’m happy for all those guys,” Kelly said in an interview with CBS Sports on Tuesday. “A lot of guys who are there on both sides of the ball, I recruited. Obviously, I want to see those guys win it all, and I think they’re in great position. Totally excited for those guys.”
Well, he’s not going to say he wants them to lose, even if he does. But he was there a long time, and he probably does still feel something for Notre Dame and his players.
Who knows? Maybe Freeman will end up being better at Notre Dame than Kelly was. It certainly looked like Miles was headed to be better than Saban early on at LSU. He beat Saban head-to-head three of the first five times LSU and Alabama met in the 2007-11 regular seasons. Miles was 34-6 in his first three seasons at LSU.
Freeman is 3-2 against top five teams at the moment. Kelly was 1-7.
“I came down here because I wanted to be with the best,” Kelly said on the day he was introduced as LSU’s coach on Dec. 1, 2021. “The resources are outstanding. I want to be under the bright lights. I want to be on the Broadway stage. That’s what my passion is.”
Notice, Kelly did not say he left Notre Dame “to be in an environment where I have the resources to win a national championship,” which is an inaccurate quote circulating recently. He may have felt that at the time and may still, but he never actually said that in his opening LSU press conference.
In fact a questioner from that presser says, “You sort of implied this, but do you believe you have a better chance to win national championships here?”
“I wouldn’t imply that,” Kelly answered. “This opportunity is clearly different than any other opportunity I’ve had. But I would not imply that this one weighed better than maybe the others.”
On Tuesday, Kelly said others have twisted his Notre Dame exit comments.
“They’re selling it the way they want to sell it,” he said.
And he may be right.
“You can win championships at Notre Dame, but I chose another path because I wanted a different challenge,” Kelly said Tuesday.
Have you ever been to South Bend? It’s no Paris.
BRIAN KELLY PREDICTS LSU WILL REACH NATIONAL TITLE GAME NEXT SEASON
Let’s settle this on the field. Next season in the national championship game.
Kelly has already said he’ll be there. And Saban did go a disappointing 8-5 (5-3 in the SEC) in his third season at LSU before winning the national championship in the 2003 season, which was his fourth at LSU. Kelly’s fourth season at LSU is next season, and he just went a disappointing 9-4 (5-3 in the SEC) last season.
How about you get there, too, Marcus? That will be fair and square. After all, you will be fresh out of all those Kelly players with whom you have been winning.
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