Michigan State is in the market for a new head coach following the scandalous exit of former head coach Mel Tucker. Fans of the mid-tier Big Ten program appear to have their eyes on Notre Dame head coach Marcus and delusionally think the Spartans can lure him from South Bend to East Lansing.
The Michigan State Rivals website wrote an entire article today about one of their contributor’s podcasts where they made a case for Michigan State to pursue Freeman to replace Tucker after they fired him for cause for off-the-field issues.
The article discusses Michigan State swooping in and doubling Freeman’s salary to lure him from Notre Dame. It suggests that Notre Dame wouldn’t match that in the aftermath of Saturday’s embarrassing ending to the Ohio State game.
As bad as the ending to the Ohio State game was, no one outside of the fringe of Notre Dame Twitter is calling for Freeman’s firing. Saturday’s blunder is both unacceptable and unfathomable, but it’s not a “get the coaching search team ready” act. Now, if it’s accompanied by more blunders of similar ilk over time, then maybe. Not now, though. If anything, one could say that Freeman had Notre Dame in a better position to bear a full-strength top-10 team than Brian Kelly typically had the Irish, and he had like 86 years of head coaching experience or however many he constantly reminded us he had.
It’s actually funny to see a fanbase like Michigan State think they could lure the head coach from a blueblood program like Notre Dame to East Lansing to take over the dumpster fire that Tucker left behind. All of Tucker’s alleged off-the-field issues aside, the football program at Michigan State is an abject disaster right now.
The Spartans were 5-7 last year with a pair of 20+ point losses to Ohio State and Michigan – and a 19-point loss to Penn State. They lost in double overtime last year to powerhouse Indiana. They are 2-2 this season after getting blown out 41-7 to Washington and 31-9 to Maryland in back-to-back weeks.
Good luck finding any big-name head coach willing to take that over, Spartan fans.
As for Freeman, the growing pains have been real at Notre Dame, but we knew that was possible with a first-time head coach. Thus far, Freeman seems to be learning from them and has the program improving in areas that Brian Kelly, for all his strengths, did not. Most notably, recruiting. This year’s class is not as highly ranked at the moment as last year’s. Still, Freeman is landing marquee players at positions Brian Kelly simply fell flat – most notably quarterback, where Freeman has top-70 overall signal callers committed for the next two classes. Kelly notoriously struggled to recruit and develop the position at Notre Dame.
Freeman still has a lot of work to do at Notre Dame – and he added more work to his plate on Saturday with the way that game ended, but for the moment, he at least appears to have things headed in the right direction. The next three weeks will be very telling to the exact direction of the program under Freeman, with undefeated Duke this weekend, undefeated Louisville next, and then #8 USC under the lights of Notre Dame Stadium in three weeks.
Still, LOL at Michigan State fans thinking that they’d be able to swoop in and lure Marcus Freeman from Notre Dame. The man converted to Catholicism after being named Notre Dame’s head coach. Does anyone in their right mind really think that he’d even consider leaving Notre Dame to play little brother to Michigan at a mid-tier Big Ten program that’s about to fall even further in obscurity with next year’s additions of USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington?
Go Green!
Go Irish!
I would hope Freeman is much more intelligent than the people at Michigan State. Why would he step down and leave Notre Dame is beyond me.
If Michigan State is indeed “stupid”, they’ll offer him a 10-year, $95 million contract with a number of incentives. Like the last stupid place did.
Michigan, Michigan State, Michigan hot dog, “Michigan” hockey shot…
they all suck.,
I love when Frank gets sarcastic. I live for sarcasm LOL.
And I agree. Saturday’s loss was unacceptable. But I don’t think any reasonable fan is pulling out the fire Freeman signs yet. It’s concerning, yes. And we’ll see how he and his players respond in the coming games.
Michigan State had fallen so far out of my radar that I wasn’t even paying lose attention to what was happening in Sparty country. And yes, dream on Spartans. They’re going to have a hard time finding a really good coach. If they’re lucky they may get a middle of the road coach looking to improve a program in the hopes of moving on to a better program. It’d really be a step down for Freeman I think to even consider it. Seeing how patient ND was with our former coach, Freeman probably feels relatively secure at ND to develop his coaching skills.
In a way I almost feel bad and disappointed with the Spartans. They’re a rival, yes, but I did take a certain amount of satisfaction when they were briefly becoming the Michigan team to beat, much to the ire of the Maize and Blue fans. I always get a good laugh when “little brother” beat up on the Meat chickens. :P