Marcus Freeman enters his fifth full season as Notre Dame’s head coach with a 43-12 record, a 5-2 postseason mark, three straight seasons of at least 10 wins, and a national championship game appearance behind him. Notre Dame named him the 30th head coach in program history on December 3, 2021, days after Brian Kelly left for LSU and one season into Freeman’s run as the Irish defensive coordinator. He was 35 and had never been a head coach at any level.
His debut came in the Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma State, a loss, and his first full season opened the same way. Notre Dame started 2022 at 0-2 with losses at Ohio State and at home to Marshall before winning nine of its final 11, including a 35-14 dismantling of a top-five Clemson team and a 45-38 Gator Bowl win over South Carolina to close at 9-4. Year two produced a 10-3 finish, wins over ranked USC and Duke, and a 40-8 Sun Bowl rout of Oregon State. Joe Alt and Xavier Watts became the program’s first pair of unanimous All-Americans since 1990, with Watts taking the Bronko Nagurski Award after leading FBS in interceptions.
The 2024 season delivered the most wins in Notre Dame history. A home loss to Northern Illinois in week two dropped the Irish to 1-1 and briefly reopened every question about Freeman’s ceiling. Notre Dame then won 13 straight, beating Indiana in the first round of the expanded College Football Playoff, Georgia in the Sugar Bowl and Penn State in the Orange Bowl before losing 34-23 to Ohio State in the national championship game. Freeman became the first Black head coach to lead a team into a College Football Playoff title game. The Irish finished 14-2 and No. 2 in the final AP poll, their highest closing ranking since 1993, and Freeman collected the Bear Bryant, Bobby Dodd and George Munger coach of the year awards.
Notre Dame followed that with a 10-2 season in 2025 that ended in one of the sport’s more contentious playoff decisions. Both losses came in the first two weeks, at Miami and at home to Texas A&M, by a combined four points. The Irish won their final 10 games, ranked inside the top 10 of every CFP committee poll, and were left out of the 12-team field anyway. Notre Dame declined its Pop-Tarts Bowl invitation rather than play a consolation game. Jeremiyah Love won the Doak Walker Award, the first in program history, and finished as a Heisman finalist; Love and cornerback Leonard Moore were both unanimous All-Americans, making Notre Dame one of three programs nationally with multiple selections. The offense finished second in the country in scoring at 41.8 points per game.
Freeman signed a contract extension through 2030 in December 2024 that put him above $9 million annually. A year later, after turning down interest from the New York Giants and at least one other NFL franchise, he agreed to a restructured deal and announced his return with a four-word post: “2026… run it back.” Athletic director Pete Bevacqua has been public about keeping Freeman’s compensation in the top tier of college coaches and revisiting the deal annually. The Irish open 2026 as a top-five team in the preseason coaches poll, carrying a 10-game winning streak and, for the first time in Freeman’s tenure, a returning starting quarterback in CJ Carr.
Freeman played linebacker at Ohio State from 2004 to 2008, earning four letters, second-team All-Big Ten honors as a senior, and trips to two BCS national championship games. Chicago selected him in the fifth round of the 2009 NFL Draft, and he spent time with the Bears, Bills and Texans before a medical condition ended his playing career.
He started coaching as a graduate assistant at Ohio State in 2010, spent 2011 and 2012 coaching linebackers at Kent State, then moved to Purdue for four seasons, adding co-defensive coordinator duties in 2016. Luke Fickell, who coached him with the Buckeyes, hired him as Cincinnati’s defensive coordinator in 2017. The Bearcats won 11 games in each of the next two seasons and captured the American Athletic Conference title in 2020 on the way to the Peach Bowl, with Freeman a Broyles Award finalist. His lone season as Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator in 2021 produced 41 sacks, tying the 1996 program record, 15 interceptions, and a consensus All-America season from safety Kyle Hamilton.
Freeman was born at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and raised in Huber Heights, outside Dayton, where he was a Parade All-American at Wayne High School. His father, Michael, served 26 years in the Air Force; his mother, Chong, is from Daegu, South Korea. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Ohio State in 2007 and a master’s in sports management in 2011. He and his wife, Joanna, have six children: Vinny, Siena, Gino, Nico, Capri and Rocco.
