Why Marcus Freeman welcomes Notre Dame as heavy underdog at Ohio State
Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman wasn’t just whipping up a wisecrack in the heat of the moment with the Las Vegas sun beating down on his green suit and cameras capturing all angles of his NFL Draft sit down with the ESPN College GameDay crew and … Ohio State coach Ryan Day.
Yes, the same Ryan Day who Freeman’s Fighting Irish will face in the 2022 season opener on Sept. 3.
ESPN alerted Freeman to the way-too-early point spread for Notre Dame vs. Ohio State at the Horseshoe: 13.5. Freeman — calm and cool as ever — said oddsmakers “should widen it a little bit more.”
“Make it 14,” he said.
Wednesday, almost exactly two weeks later, Freeman explained why he said that during a university-sponsored virtual live chat. And he doubled down.
“This group will be ready,” Freeman said. “It’s natural for any competitor — and that’s who I am, a competitor, and the guys in our program are competitors — any time you’re challenged, competitors love to step up to being challenged. So if you’re the underdog, that’s why I said I don’t care if it’s 13.5 points. Make that thing 21 points. I want everybody in our program to know everybody is counting you out. Good. Good. If you’re a competitor, you’ll step up to a challenge.”
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There is no simulating what it’ll be like running onto the field in front of over 100,000 of the most passionate college football fans on the planet. But Freeman said he isn’t worried about that part. Hence, the “this group will be ready” comment. Freeman is more worried about what it will take in the next three-plus months for that assertion to manifest as reality.
“In the summer when things are really hot and things are really hard, maybe you don’t want to get up and push yourself — that’s going to be the reminder that, hey, people aren’t giving you a chance,” Freeman said. “Understand the opportunity we have ahead of us.
“Those are the ways I’m going to utilize that in preparation. Because when the game comes, you get to go play. There is a level this roster is going to be able to play at. There is going to be an optimum level this group can really get to. Our job from now until Sept. 3 is to get this group as close to that optimum level by game day as we can.”
Ohio State has been operating at an optimum level for the better part of the last two decades. Notre Dame has touted its stretch of five straight seasons with at least 10 wins, and rightfully so. It’s one of the best streaks in all of college football during that span.
But the Buckeyes have been better.
They’ve won at least 11 games in each of the last nine seasons excluding 2020 when they only played eight games total because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And even in that year, Ohio State still advanced to the national championship game — something Notre Dame has not done since 2012.
Ohio State has earned the right to be favored over Notre Dame. By 13.5 points? Maybe not. That’s a pretty considerable margin. To Freeman? Not considerable enough. He made that abundantly clear.
