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Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman was ‘101 percent’ sure Brian Kelly would not leave for LSU

IMG_9992by:Tyler Horka•05/16/22•

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Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman (right) was certain Brian Kelly would not leave Notre Dame for LSU, but he was wrong. (Chad Weaver/BGI)

Marcus Freeman was outside of a high school in Michigan in November when he got a call from his agent.

“I have a quick question,” Freeman recalled the conversation starting. “Are you 100 percent sure Brian Kelly would not be interested in this LSU job?'”

“I said, ‘I’m 101 percent sure he’s not interested,'” Freeman said at the Rockne Gala 2022 in Chicago last week. “I knew he wasn’t.”

Freeman went into the school to do what he does best: recruit. It didn’t take long for the then-Notre Dame defensive coordinator to rack up six missed phone calls from his boss: Kelly, then-Notre Dame head coach, of course.

“I said, ‘Oh, shoot.'”

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Freeman called back as soon as he could. He said Kelly apologetically told him he was going to LSU after all. Then he offered Freeman the defensive coordinator position in Baton Rouge. So much for 101 percent. Freeman’s own future wasn’t on 101-percent solid footing at that point.

Freeman called the next 48 hours or so a “trickle effect.” Everyone knows the story by now. Players and fans rallied around Freeman to be named Kelly’s successor. Notre Dame director of athletics Jack Swarbrick listened. But, above all, Swarbrick listened to himself.

Swarbrick didn’t need anyone else to tell him who he should hire. Freeman said enough in a four-hour interview to earn the promotion on his own. There wasn’t any hesitation on Freeman’s part to accept the offer, either. That was actually a 101-percent certainty.

“(My wife) said if you get this job, we’re taking it,” Freeman said.

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What Freeman learned that week was nothing is guaranteed. Nobody truly thought Kelly would leave on a whim just a couple days after beating Stanford to finish the regular season 11-1 and just a few days before the Irish could have qualified for the College Football Playoff had the chips fallen in their favor.

And who really thought it would take Freeman, 35 at the time when he went from being the defensive coordinator at Cincinnati to holding the same position at Notre Dame in January of 2021, less than one year to become the head coach of arguably the most historic college football program of all time?

Notre Dame is the pinnacle for many college football coaches. Most college football coaches. Almost every college football coach. How could anyone ever leave on their own accord? That’s where “101 percent” came in for Freeman. It just doesn’t happen.

But it did, and Freeman was wrong. Man-oh-man, did he ever benefit from being so.

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