Why Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman said the transfer portal ‘can be a good thing’
Notre Dame has become synonymous with the NCAA transfer portal, but not for reasons many other college football programs have.
Undergraduate players are leaving programs left and right in this era. Yes, that’s also happening at Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish are no exception there. And once someone leaves, they need to find a place to go. That’s where Notre Dame is different. Rarely is an undergraduate transfer’s destination South Bend.
Why? Well, because Notre Dame is … Notre Dame.
“It’s not easy to get into school here,” head coach Marcus Freeman said on The Zorich Podcast. “We don’t ever want to undervalue the education. That’s one of the parts that makes Notre Dame, Notre Dame. Our educational degree is so high and so special that we don’t want to disvalue that.”
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The Irish have had success in bringing in graduate transfers. Wisconsin grad transfer Jack Coan just started all 13 games at quarterback last season, for instance. This offseason alone, Notre Dame brought in a graduate transfer kicker, punter and defensive tackle. All three could be starters at their respective positions.
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The Fighting Irish also welcomed undergraduate transfer Brandon Joseph to South Bend. He’s almost assuredly going to start at safety. He came over from Northwestern, though, another highly regarded academic institution. The Irish aren’t snatching up guys from most Power Five schools for the obvious reason: many of them aren’t academically eligible to enroll.
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So of what benefit is the transfer portal to Notre Dame if the Irish are losing a plethora of players to it (more than a dozen since the start of the 2021 season) and not bringing in nearly as many because the circumstances simply do not allow? The answer lies in Freeman’s most important virtue in coaching: helping the student-athlete.
Not every goodbye has to be a cold one.
“That’s where the portal can be a good thing,” Freeman said. “You got your degree from Notre Dame. You know you’re not going to be a starter here and you want to go play more. I respect that. Let us help you get to a place where you’re going to play.”
College football is cutthroat. There’s a perception that as soon as you pose no value to coaches, they’ll kick ya to the curb before you even have time to pack your bags. And it might be like that at some schools. It probably is like that at some schools. But not at Notre Dame. Offensive coordinator Tommy Rees said it last week on the Inside the Garage podcast, and Freeman said it this week on The Zorich Podcast.
Don’t get two of the most important figures associated with Fighting Irish football wrong; they want to win, and they want to enhance their own roster. But when it comes to helping student-athletes succeed, they’re using the transfer portal as an instrument to make it happen.
The Notre Dame way.
