SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Notre Dame has the No. 1 recruiting class for 2025, its coaching staff appears set, and expectations for this fall are already elevated. For a program that didn’t play a game in January, Notre Dame’s year is off to a strong start.
So what better time to look ahead to the future for Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame’s schedule and even a former Irish assistant? You have questions about all that in this week’s mailbag, plus more.
Note: Submitted questions have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
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It is Jan. 31, 2030. Rank the following in order of likelihood:
A. Notre Dame has won a national championship in football
B. Marcus Freeman is the coach at Notre Dame
C. Notre Dame has joined a conference (if you want to rank Big Ten, ACC, SEC here, that would be great)
D. A Notre Dame player won the Heisman Trophy
E. Student-athletes are treated as employees and paid salaries, sign contracts, etc. — Jimmy W.
That’s a spicy look into the future, Jimmy.
For the record, if I could bet on “None of the above” in a five-way parlay, I’d put my money there. But that’s probably why you asked the question, right? So here goes nothing, from most likely to least.
1. Marcus Freeman is the coach at Notre Dame.
Bird in the hand, right? Freeman would be finishing his eighth season. He would have just turned 44 years old. Presumably, he’d continue to keep up the pace under athletic director Pete Bevacqua, who would have just finished his sixth season as Notre Dame’s athletic director. Assuming Notre Dame makes the College Football Playoff this season and wins a game, Freeman likely will be due for an extension that might even take him through that date on Jan. 30, 2030.
For the record, of the 133 FBS football programs, just 21 have coaches who’ve logged at least eight seasons in their current jobs. And one of them is Jim Harbaugh. That group includes Dabo Swinney, James Franklin and Kirby Smart. Stability is a good thing. Notre Dame values it. And the idea of Freeman being a long-term head coach at Notre Dame seems to fit. He just needs a couple of CFP seasons to make this happen.
2. Notre Dame joins (or will join) the Big Ten.
Not saying Notre Dame will already be in a conference by the end of this decade, but the idea of the Irish having an agreement in place to join the Big Ten feels possible. The ACC is on precarious footing with Florida State. The SEC makes little cultural sense for Notre Dame on multiple levels. The Big Ten makes geographic and economic sense, even if the culture of the conference doesn’t match the ACC.
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Whether Notre Dame joins a conference or remains independent is a financial question and rides on the next NBC contract. Multiple university sources have insisted Notre Dame’s recent extension with NBC was a home run for the school, which means its independence remains viable through 2029. As long as Notre Dame can keep NBC as a committed media partner, being a half-member of the ACC is the ideal outcome. Sorry, Big Ten.
3. Student-athletes are treated as employees.
Notre Dame doesn’t want this. Much of college football doesn’t. Intervention by the federal government, which new NCAA president Charlie Baker sought this week, remains fraught with missteps and unintelligible discourse. The Justice Department wantsfewer rules for college athletes based on this week’s hearings that challenged current (and permissive) transfer rules. Though making college athletes employees could solve multiple programs with college athletics today, it would create a new raft of them. But based on how the NCAA operates with the help of the federal government, this might still get worse before it gets better.
Also, there’s this guy.
Tim Walberg (R-Mich) is questioning NCAA president Charlie Baker on why so many NCAA colleges are accepting international athletes who are potentially taking roster spots from American athletes.
We are off the rails.
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) January 18, 2024
4. Notre Dame wins its 12th national championship.
Making the Playoff is about to get much easier for Freeman. Winning a national championship is about to get harder. But that’s true for everybody in this new postseason, where Notre Dame will have to win four Playoff games to win a national title. Gone is the possible matchup with Kansas State for the BCS National Championship Game in 2012. Probably gone is TCU playing for a title last season. Based on Stewart Mandel’s too early Top 25, Notre Dame is slotted No. 9, but that translates to the No. 11 seed because of automatic qualifiers. The Irish would open the postseason at Ohio State, then face Clemson in the quarterfinals. Then it’s the winner of Oregon vs. Texas/Ole Miss in the semifinals. Then it’s probably Georgia (or Alabama) for the national championship.
Notre Dame has not won a major bowl game in 30 years. Now the Irish will have to win three straight,after winning that first-round game.
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5. Notre Dame wins its eighth Heisman Trophy.
Yes, the Notre Dame brand remains strong. But as college football becomes more and more dominated by the SEC (and ESPN) as well as the Big Ten (and Fox), that branding will be challenged by two mega conferences sucking all the sport’s oxygen. The award is the kind of stat-driven honor Notre Dame might not chase under Freeman. Then there’s the fact three of the past five winners were undergraduate transfers, another hurdle for Notre Dame.
Winning a national title is hard. But Notre Dame has won four titles in the past 60 years while winning just two Heisman Trophies.
Where do you think Tommy Rees goes now? Do you think he would make the same move if he knew he only would have one year with Nick Saban? — Sean C.
Rees signed a three-year, $6 million contract with Alabama a year ago and got one season with Saban, which might represent more professional value than any paycheck could. Multiple industry sources have indicated Rees and Saban grew close during the past year, and the idea Saban wanted Rees as his replacement was under some consideration. There’s a reason Rees was supposed to interview for the job the day after Kalen DeBoer got it.
I don’t think Rees expected this season to be Saban’s last, but Saban didn’t either when he hired Rees. From all indications, Rees loved the singular year at Alabama, seeing how a different kind of college football program operated while working under the greatest head coach of all time. My hunch is he would regret not going to Alabama for one year, even if he knew in advance Saban would retire and he’d be looking for work.
As for what’s next, that’s hard to say. Rees can afford to be picky. He is connected with Nick Sirianni in Philadelphia. Ohio State felt like an option, but Bill O’Brien just filled that role. Rees is a big professional development coach, meaning he wants to work for a coach or organization that can make him better at his job. But after working for Saban, who’s that?
Will the departures (and returns) of Drew Pyne and Tyler Buchner be used by coaches in keeping players here at Notre Dame? — Colin K.
This already has happened. You can add Logan Diggs to that roster of players who probably appreciated Notre Dame more after leaving than while they were still here.
That doesn’t mean any of the three made a mistake in leaving, two for reasons of playing time and the other to be closer to home. But all three discovered just how unique Notre Dame is in college football, in terms of how football players are treated (and not treated), how the locker room culture operates, just how transient the sport can be.
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Is all that going to stop every Rico Flores from ending up at UCLA? Of course not. But the experiences of Buchner and Pyne do make a heck of a recruiting pitch. Notre Dame is already trying to use it. It should keep trying.
Assume you are given a blank schedule with the ultimate power to schedule anyone in the country. What is your 12-game slate? Factor in interesting matchups, ability to make the CFP and fun road games/trips to cover.
It would look a lot like last year’s schedule.
There has to be an Ohio State or Georgia on every schedule, not just every few years. Start with the biggest game and work backward, whether that’s Alabama, Oklahoma, Oregon, Penn State or Michigan. Give the fans a game they look forward to six years in advance. The Alabama series is coming in 2029, but that’s too long a gap between elite opponents. No offense, Texas A&M.
I’m keeping the USC, Navy and Stanford games. Two are historical. One is convenient as a “rivalry” despite the fact Stanford has fallen on hard times. It’s important to be on the West Coast every year. The USC and Stanford series allow that.
One “buy game” in the mold of Miami of Ohio, Vanderbilt, Troy, ideally someplace coached by a former Notre Dame assistant if possible.
That leaves seven slots.
For six of them, create some version of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge for Notre Dame, where instead of five ACC games it’s a mix of six spread between those two conferences. That’s on top of the USC and Stanford games annually. How much more enjoyable would a Notre Dame schedule be if Georgia Tech was subbed out for Michigan State or Louisville was rotated for Iowa? Notre Dame can still play the ACC teams, but it can get to work on more historical rivals in the Big Ten, too.
Turn the last game into a neutral site, a one-off. This might be a way to get more SEC blood into the schedule (think the Aflac Kickoff Game in Atlanta) or a random game like Colorado or Utah in Denver or TCU/Oklahoma State in Dallas. Those Shamrock Series games with Wisconsin fit this category. Maybe this is how Boston College in Rome gets done. Occasionally, this slot can go to Army or Air Force.
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With the CFP about to dominate college football’s consciousness (even more), scheduling must put Notre Dame in a position to make the 12-team field. That means some difficult tests. Seven home games would be a must, plus four road games and one neutral site. There has to be a game that juices the home slate. The ACC/Big Ten rotation would create interesting trips for the fans. The California rotation remains. The flexibility to get SEC games as singular home-and-home is critical.
Here’s what I have. There’s a manageable path to the CFP here, but it’s also a schedule that would engage the fans in a way the 2024 schedule does not.
Week 1: Auburn (Aflac Kickoff in Atlanta)
Week 2: Purdue
Week 3: Miami of Ohio
Week 4: Texas
Week 5: at Boston College
Week 6: Stanford
Week 7: at Iowa
Week 8: Virginia
Week 9: at SMU
Week 10: Pittsburgh
Week 11: Navy
Week 12: at USC
Notre Dame is admittedly still a step or two away from a national championship, but do you think winning it all is more feasible than it was three years ago after their last CFP appearance? Alabama is replacing its coach, Michigan likely is too. Clemson and Ohio State have taken a step back and are now merely in the “really good” category. — Tim C.
Yes and no. For much of the past decade, the sport has felt very closed off at the top: Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Clemson. Now we’re recovering from a Michigan-Washington national title game, Saban just retired, Harbaugh appears ready to go, and Notre Dame has proved its proximity to Ohio State and Clemson.
Instead of four bullies, the sport just has one: Georgia.
The problem is Notre Dame still has to beat three other really good teams before getting to that final boss. So though the sport feels more spread out today than it did seven years ago, the quantity of signature wins to lift the national championship trophy makes it harder to do it.
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Do we have any sense yet of how the inclusion of Stanford, Cal and SMU into the ACC will affect the annual rotation of ACC games? Signed, an Irish fan who can’t wait for that first trip to Dallas. — J.M.
It’s my understanding the Stanford series won’t always count as an ACC game against Notre Dame’s five-game average. In years when Stanford naturally pops up in the ACC rotation, it’s an ACC game. If Notre Dame intends to play Stanford every year, that essentially will be a “nonconference” game those seasons. As for Cal and SMU, I believe they’ll be part of the regular ACC rotation for Notre Dame, although that hasn’t been announced. Notre Dame is already in Northern California with the Stanford series, but playing at SMU would be a welcome addition to Texas.
As a Notre Dame fan, I am not used to this feeling of winning the January offseason cycle. What unexpected news should we be bracing for before spring practice starts again? — Jared S.
Sir. Please send me your email address so readers can contact you directly whenever the inevitable “bad news” hits this spring.
(Photo of Marcus Freeman: David Madison / Getty Images)
