Marcus Freeman looking for recruits who fit Notre Dame culture

Before he arrived on campus at Notre Dame, Marcus Freeman was an assistant coach at four different schools: Ohio State, Kent State, Purdue and Cincinnati. That means he’s worked with multiple different rosters and personalities, which taught him an important lesson about coaching.

It’s not always about molding players to a coaching philosophy. Instead, it’s about adapting to the roster.

“I think you always adjust to your kids, to the players,” Freeman said on The Pivot podcast. “I was at Cincinnati for four years. Not all those kids were just ‘yes sir, no sir’ kids. But you have to adjust your coaching style to your kids and what do they need to make sure you get the outcome you want? So if you sit here and say, ‘Well, I’m gonna treat everybody the exact same,’ then you’re not going to get out of it what you need, right? There’s different individuals.”

At Notre Dame, Freeman noted it’s a completely different situation than the other four programs at which he’s coached. It’s not necessarily easy to get in to the school, and the Fighting Irish might not come up on every recruit’s radar.

Freeman doesn’t run from the toughness of Notre Dame, though. He owns it — and he showed that by pointing out a sign in The Gug.

“Notre Dame attracts a certain type of kid,” Freeman said. “There are certain requirements that it takes to get in here. A certain expectation. It takes, sometimes, a different person to chose this place. We’ve got a sign when you walk into our mud room downstairs, it says, ‘Choose hard.’ Choose hard. I believe Notre Dame is hard. There are some things that you have to do here that’s difficult. Not just in football. But you choose hard every single day, and it’s gonna become who you are. And the reward of that is going to be something you can’t even imagine.

“You always have to adapt and adjust to the people you are coaching to ultimately get the final product that you want. So yeah, maybe I have to adapt and adjust here differently than I had to do it at Purdue or Kent State or Cincinnati. But it’s all about being adaptable to make sure you get the desired result.”

With that idea of attracting different players, though, means Freeman has to find a balance in recruiting. If the No. 1 player in the country doesn’t fit the culture, Freeman said it wouldn’t be a good idea for either side to move forward because it would be counterproductive.

But that’s where his staff comes in. The goal is to find a No. 1-ranked player they think fits in with the university. If that player doesn’t think Notre Dame is for them, the staff has to show them the fit.

“They don’t bend here,” Freeman said. “You’ve got to go to class, you’ve got to study and they’re gonna hold you to these high academic expectations. We have to understand that. Our job’s to go find maybe the next Cam Newton or that next kid that’s going to be a Heisman Trophy winner that might not think he’s a Notre Dame kid and say, ‘Oh, yeah, you are. You are Notre Dame kid.’

“That’s my job. That’s our job as a staff is go find [those players].”