Paul Finebaum: Knute Rockne 'rolling over in his grave’ over repeated Notre Dame upsets

In one of the biggest upsets in recent memory, Northern Illinois went into South Bend and beat Notre Dame. It’s a game that has led to criticism of the program from Paul Finebaum.

As Finebaum explained on Always College Football, he thinks that Knute Rockne is rolling over in his grave with the latest loss. In particular, he shared his frustrations with the inconsistencies of the Irish program under third-year head coach Marcus Freeman.

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“I’ll spare you the ‘We all love Marcus Freeman’ because I think everybody that meets him does respect him a lot,” Paul Finebaum said. “But we’re talking Notre Dame here. Something tells me Knute Rockne is rolling over in his grave somewhere after that game the other day, and it’s that game on top of the other games. The Marshall game. The Stanford game. Countless other games.”

Marcus Freeman took over the Notre Dame program before the Fiesta Bowl after the 2021 regular season, replacing Brian Kelly. Since then, he’s led the Irish to a 20-9 record, including top-25 finishes in his two full seasons as the head coach. However, Notre Dame has been liable to get upset in his tenure, losing to four unranked opponents, three of which were home losses.

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“And I understand that college football has had a reckoning and programs just because they don’t have a big name can be really good, but it’s still Notre Dame. I know Notre Dame fans love to beat up on Brian Kelly and take such glee and ooze out with the schadenfreude every time Brian Kelly loses,” Finebaum said.

“But Brian Kelly has lost to some pretty good teams over his LSU tenure. He hasn’t lost to some of the ones Marcus Freeman has, and also Brian Kelly played for a title and got to the Playoff two other times. Until Marcus Freeman gets to the Playoff, these nagging doubts are going to continue and follow him around.

Brian Kelly left Notre Dame as the winningest coach in Notre Dame history, with even more wins than the legendary Knute Rockne. However, he never won a national championship and suffered his own bad losses over his 12 seasons at Notre Dame, including a four-win campaign in 2016 and seven losses to unranked opponents in his first two seasons.

When Kelly left, the hope among Notre Dame fans was that Freeman would take the Irish over the hump. However, to the point Finebaum was making, while he’s done some things well, he still hasn’t found a way to win as consistently as he’d like to in South Bend.