Notre Dame Is Giving Marcus Freeman the Resources to Build a Champion

When Brian Kelly left Notre Dame for a pile of cash and a fake accent at LSU, he used the word resources in coming up with reasons why he left Notre Dame that weren’t money or it being easier to recruit without academic restrictions. Everything Notre Dame has done since for Marcus Freeman has shown the University’s commitment to providing its head coach with all the resources needed to win the program’s first national championship since 1988.

As Freeman enters his third year in charge of the most historic program in the country and just his third season as a head coach on any level, everything around him is in place – or in the process of being in place – to field a consistent playoff contender that legitimately challenges for a national championship in the near future.

Stealing Mike Denbrock from LSU

One of the most recent displays of money not being an object for the program – as maybe it had been – was stealing offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock away from LSU. Yes, Denbrock loves Notre Dame and has a great relationship with Freeman, but that move is not possible without a substantial financial commitment from the University. After Denbrock produced a Heisman winner for the Tigers last year, LSU did not want to lose him – especially if it was for another coordinator role – but Notre Dame gave Freeman all the financial resources necessary to lure away one of the best coordinators in the country from another top program.

Contrast this year’s coordinator search with last year’s, and it’s night and day. A year ago, Notre Dame fumbled the ball massively with its public courtship of Andy Ludwig from Utah before it ultimately settled on the internal promotion of Gerad Parker, which proved to be a failure after one season. The Irish lucked out with Parker landing the head coaching gig at Troy. Last year’s fiasco wasn’t necessarily a lack of financial commitment as it was a strategic failure, but it took the Irish just a year to rectify the mistake and come out much stronger.

Extending Defensive Coordinator Al Golden

Stealing Brian Kelly’s offensive coordinator away from him wasn’t the only coordinator-related commitment from Notre Dame this off-season. The Irish also locked up defensive coordinator Al Golden to an extension as well. Since returning to college football as Freeman’s first defensive coordinator, Golden reestablished himself as one of college football’s best coordinators. With Golden’s success over his first two seasons, Notre Dame was wise to extend him before another program threw a bunch of cash at him or a smaller program tried to lure him away to be their head coach.

At 55 years old, Golden still could land a head coaching gig somewhere, even though there has been a youth movement with head coaching positions at both the NFL and collegiate levels in the last few years. By locking Golden up to a lucrative deal for a coordinator, though, it seems likely that Golden will be at Notre Dame for a while unless a top program offers another head coaching gig.

With Golden and Denbrock on staff, Notre Dame has two of the best in the business at their positions and a large sum of money invested in them. Spending money on coordinators isn’t new for Notre Dame, though. Brian Kelly was also given plenty of financial resources to pay his coordinators. It’s just that sometimes he used that money on unmitigated disasters like Brian Vangorder.

New training facilities

It was no secret that Brian Kelly bemoaned at how long it had been taking Notre Dame to upgrade the gug and football facilities, even though it had been in the works for some time. Notre Dame made it official earlier this spring when they broke ground on the “Jack and Kathy Shields Family Hall,” the new football facility for the Irish scheduled to open in the fall of 2026. According to the South Bend Tribune, the reported price tag on the new facility is $100m. That’s A LOT of resources.

One could argue that it took Notre Dame too long to get the project going since the Gug, opened in 2005, had fallen behind some of the football factories in the South several years ago. Still, it’s not as though the University hasn’t upgraded other facilities in the interim. For instance, Notre Dame’s new indoor practice facility, which opened in 2018, is one of the best in the country.

Improved efforts around NIL

In recent years, Notre Dame has stepped up its NIL game, and while it will never go to the lengths of some programs – like its opponent this weekend – NIL is generally not the reason Notre Dame is losing recruiting battles these days as maybe it was initially.

Notre Dame would not have landed top quarterback transfers—even if Urban Meyer isn’t a fan of transfer quarterbacks—the last two seasons if it had not upped its NIL game. Sam Hartman and Riley Leonard could have had their pick of quarterback-needy programs, but both landed at Notre Dame without much interest in any other schools. In today’s college football, that doesn’t happen if there isn’t a commitment to embracing NIL.

On the recruiting trail, Notre Dame has lost some recruiting battles recently – namely at wide receiver with Derek Meadows and others and appears on the verge of losing long-time quarterback commitment Deuce Knight – but those losses aren’t simply because of NIL.

Expanding analyst and support staff

Under Marcus Freeman, there has been a huge commitment to expanding Notre Dame’s support staff and recruiting program. The hire and subsequent promotion of Chad Bowden to general manager was the first such move under Freeman. Since then, Notre Dame has continued to expand and bolster its recruiting administration and overall support staff more than it ever had under Kelly.

Notre Dame recently hired its first-ever director of analytics by prying Anthony Treash away from Pro Football Focus. The program also hired Zaire Turner as director of player personnel, rehired Caleb Davis, who Parker initially took to Troy, and promoted Carter Auman to assistant general manager when Luke Fickell tried to lure him away to Wisconsin.

Freeman has embraced turning the program into a more NFL-style front office in terms of scouting, analytics, and support staff. Notre Dame has given him all the resources he needs to do so. That isn’t just the University giving Freeman money, either; that’s Freeman taking it upon himself to build on a skeleton support staff that his predecessor did a poor job of modernizing.

Between hiring/retaining two of the best coordinators in the country, committing to new state-of-the-art training facilities, expanding the overall support staff, and embracing NIL more than it had initially, Notre Dame has set up Marcus Freeman for success. Everything he needs to capture the program’s first national championship is in place, even if there are still areas within the program – outside of just talent on the roster – that could improve.