WATCH: The Mike Goolsby Show, breaking down the Notre Dame spring game & more
Former Fighting Irish captain and linebacker Mike Goolsby was in South Bend over the weekend for the inaugural Notre Dame Football Legacy Weekend. Goolsby discusses that and what he saw in the spring game with Blue & Gold’s Mike Singer.
Click play below to watch the replay of the show, or listen to it via podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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Marcus Freeman’s inclusion of Notre Dame football alumni is a welcome, needed reset
The reasons are many as to why football reunion events like the one held during the Blue-Gold Weekend have been essentially non-existent at Notre Dame for about the last five or 10 years.
COVID-19 obviously limited travel and gatherings since early 2020 and until a couple of years ago, there really was no composite database or efficient way to find and invite the hundreds of former players back to Notre Dame, or to organize an event attractive enough to bring ‘em back.
And let’s face it, every head coach conducts his own business his own way, and for some skippers, especially the veterans, that doesn’t necessarily include sharing the spotlight with former players or having outsiders infiltrate their program and perhaps dilute the message.
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But in what one coach might consider an intrusion, Marcus Freeman views it as an opportunity and so the first-year Fighting Irish head coach went to work with Notre Dame Director of Football Player Development Hunter Bivin to gather up and reach out to these football alumni, bring them back to campus and better celebrate the program’s heritage, not bury it.
And among the 300 or so players who accepted Freeman and Bivin’s invite to Legacy Weekend during Blue-Gold Game festivities, their support for the lively four-day weekend and any future events was overwhelming.
It’s hard to pinpoint the reasons why many former players explained last weekend that they’ve felt locked out of the program and unwelcome to visit for the last several years, but …
“With Marcus Freeman, that’s over. ‘Let’s get everybody back,’ is his attitude,” two-time Irish offensive line All-American Aaron Taylor (Class of 1993) said in an interview with Peacock, NBC’s internet streaming service. “Let’s celebrate this history of what makes this place great. That’s been missing.”
