Dear Ari: Is it time for Notre Dame fans to fall out of love with Marcus Freeman?

Every Thursday, Andy and Ari On3 will have a mailbag episode as we head into the weekend’s slate. But I’ll also be doing a “Dear Ari” written mailbag on Fridays as a companion to the show. 

Let’s go with the latest edition:

Is it time to fall out of love with Marcus Freeman? — @timaay678 on Twitter 

It’s very understandable why you would have fallen in love with Freeman to begin with. You probably felt Brian Kelly took Notre Dame to its ceiling, but the program needed a younger, more energetic outlook on recruiting and roster building. Say what you want, but Kelly never struck me as someone maniacally obsessed with recruiting, which may be why Notre Dame never stacked up well against elite-level competition on the biggest stages. 

Freeman took over there and immediately said and did the right things. So you start thinking: what if Freeman could take the elements of the program Kelly did well, add some five-star prospects into the mix and create a roster that was more competitive at the highest level level? 

Freeman has done a good job with recruiting at a higher level, but the Irish have suffered a wave of decommitments from the elite of the elite prospects. Guys like Keon Keeley and Peyton Bowen were committed and ended up elsewhere. It happens when you’re recruiting at the top level. But hey, he’s trying and it’s a process. 

Even with some of those recruiting disappointments, the Irish have a roster this season that was good enough to win a College Football Playoff game and (maybe) more. I thought Notre Dame was going to go undefeated this year, which landed me on Freezing Cold Takes. I predicted that because Freeman added important pieces in the portal and returned a veteran, talented defense. I didn’t just make that up. I believed it. Why? Because Freeman did the hardest part — he made the roster good enough to win a Playoff game. 

Which is why this situation is so frustrating. Notre Dame put together an exciting roster and it still lost to NIU, something that should not be happening in his third year leading the program. Freeman is still a young coach with a lot to learn, but he shouldn’t still be learning how to avoid embarrassing upsets. He should have cleaned up poor preparation or whatever leads to this. He should have had this team past the embarrassing upsets after losing to Marshall and a very bad Stanford team in the recent past. You wan’t to know what Kelly did well? He won the game he was supposed to win. In this era, that’s supremely important.

The good news? It’s much easier to fix that issue than it is to fix a bad roster. Notre Dame’s roster isn’t bad. It isn’t Georgia, but it is good enough to finish a schedule like this one unbeaten, get hot at the end of the year and surprise some people in December. And in this new 12-team College Football Playoff era, the season isn’t over. Notre Dame can still get hot and crack the field. 

I wouldn’t say it’s time to fall out of love with your coach. This game is frustrating and things happen, but I don’t look at what Freeman has done at Notre Dame thus far and see failure. If we could go back in time seven days (which is a big ask), you’d probably think you have one of the best young coaches in college football. Sentiment changes quickly. Reality doesn’t. 

That said, this has to stop. Notre Dame can’t lose to NIU or Stanford or Marshall or any other opponent like that. Freeman knows as well as anyone how quickly love turns into hate. 

But as of now, it’s still rational to have confidence in the direction of Notre Dame. Growth hurts sometimes. I’d still love to see an uptick in talent (at the wide receiver position, specifically), but Freeman put together a really good team this year. Again, the main job of a college football coach is doing that. He did it.

It’s a long season. Things will still get weird. Don’t give up yet. 

But if it happens again next year? That’s a whole different discussion.

If USC is drastically improved defensively, but still loses the games we expect them to lose, will the media stop warming up Lincoln Riley‘s seat and just appreciate the growth? — @consciousb on Twitter 

Fair or not, we have to remember the circumstances in which Riley took the USC job. He left one of the best jobs in college football to go dominate the West Coast. He took Caleb Williams with him. He made himself a villain, one that was supposed to go out to California and take over the Pac-12. Oh, and he reportedly makes north of $10 million a year to do it.

That doesn’t mean we abandon rational expectations when it comes to rebuilding a program, but it does increase the output we’re looking for. And when you have maybe the best player of the last decade leading your team for two years and you fail to win the Pac-12, that’s a problem. And it’s not just failing to win the conference, it’s fielding one of the worst defenses in the sport in back-to-back years while sticking with the wrong defensive coordinator for 12 months longer than he should have.

Oh, and he hasn’t been the fierce recruiter he was supposed to be. He was supposed to own California and pick up elite-level prospects nationally. The truth is, he has gotten his but kicked in his own state.

The start of this season is very encouraging. With the hire of defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn, the Trojans defense is greatly improved. And with Miller Moss playing well at quarterback — combined with a really nice mixture of offensive skill talent — this Trojans team is much better than most of us thought. They may even make the Playoff, which is exactly where we pictured they’d be in year three.

USC doesn’t have to play Ohio State or Oregon — the two preseason favorites to win the Big Ten — in the regular season. It has to play Michigan and Penn State, but there isn’t a game on the schedule the Trojans have no chance of winning. If they wind up 10-2, I think that would be acceptable. If he builds on a really good season by improving his recruiting and setting up USC for sustained success, all is forgiven.

The truth is, nobody has warmed up his seat up. I’ve never suggested he should be fired. But the first two years of his USC tenure have been a big disappointment, and it’s OK to acknlowedge that.

If you had a magic wand and could change one thing about college football, just one, what would it be and why? — urbanstrata on Reddit

I would immediately make all conferences geographically relevant/balanced again. My favorite thing about college football growing up was the regionality of it. West Coast football vs. Southern football vs. Northern football. Five power conferences battling for national and geographical supremacy with big-time programs in all five of those conferences would be a fun trip during this 12-team CFP era.

We got news Wednesday the Pac-12 is making a comeback by raiding the Mountain West. Oregon State and Washington State were able to convince Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State to join them Pac-12 banner in 2026. That’s cool because all of those teams are, well, on the West Coast.

But I’ll always miss the way the conferences were aligned as recently as three years ago.