ND FOOTBALL: Notre Dame officially introduces Marcus Freeman as head coach

Dec. 6—SOUTH BEND — After an insane week for the Notre Dame football program that saw the all-time winningest coach in Fighting Irish history depart for the Bayou, Monday was a welcomed return to stability within the Irish Athletics Center.

Hundreds of people, ranging from football players to family members to media members, sat side-by-side to help introduce 35-year-old Marcus Freeman as the 30th head coach in Notre Dame football history.

With his family behind him, Freeman walked into Notre Dame's practice facility to an orchestra of sound from the band and a chorus of claps from all of those in attendance.

It was clear by the sheer size of the event that this hire has sent a different type of jolt back through the program.

"In a highly competitive environment with lots of excellent choices available to us, Marcus won the job," Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said. "He won the job through each of his coaching experiences, and he won the job over this past year when I was able to observe him as a colleague, coach, mentor and educator.

"What brought us to this day, in such short order, was that we had available to us the best possible candidate in America to lead this program, protect this culture and serve this university."

After both Father John Jenkins and Swarbrick finished up their speeches, the latter gave the newly-appointed head coach of the Irish the chance to address those who came to see him speak.

"To Father John (Jenkins) and Jack Swarbrick, I am forever grateful for this opportunity to lead this football program," Freeman said. "I'm ready. I'm ready for this challenge, and I'm ready to lead this program to the greatest heights.

"The chance to lead the football program at the University of Notre Dame is an opportunity of a lifetime, and I would never take that for granted. Being the leader of this program, it isn't about one person, and it never will be. Being the leader of this program is about understanding that to be successful on this journey, it's going to take others, and we're going to have to do this as a team. That's why doing it at the University of Notre Dame is so special."

The past few days for Freeman have been chaotic. From the hiring process to the recruiting trips to the host of interviews he's had to partake in, he mentioned during his speech that he hasn't gotten a great amount of sleep recently. But in the way he carried himself on Monday, those in attendance could tell being put in this position has given him more than enough energy to sacrifice a few hours of sleep.

"Yeah, we haven't got a whole bunch of sleep," Freeman said. "When coach (Brian) Kelly calls and says 'hey, I'm going to LSU'. Then he says 'will you go as my defensive coordinator?' I said 'yeah, I need a job, but can I talk to my wife?' That's all I said, can I talk to my wife? He said 'yeah'. From that moment, it's been a whirlwind.

"Just the conversations you have, the people you have to talk to, the conversations you have with players, it's all crazy. I don't want to get into the details of what the next 48 hours or 72 hours were like, but it was pretty hectic. Not a lot of sleep, but the end result is you're the head coach of Notre Dame. So I will take it any time."

Freeman touched on a variety of topics during both his introductory speech and the Q&A session. The more important ones involved recruiting, culture and building the program in his own way.

According to Swarbrick, an emphasis put on culture by the team's captains specifically helped lead to Freeman's hiring. The athletic director sat down with Kyren Williams, Avery Davis, Kyle Hamilton, Kurt Hinish, Drew White, Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa and Jarrett Patterson for close to an hour last week, and the message from the student athletes was clear.

"What they insisted I understand was that they had built the best culture in college football," Swarbrick said. "That they have friends playing at other places around the country, they have a way to make that assessment, and they were confident that this culture in this program was the best in the country.

"They also wanted me to know that they owned that culture. They built it. It was theirs. And their message, stating clearly and convincingly, was Jack, don't screw this up. I got the message."

Swarbrick surely did get the message. He didn't make the sure decision — and it probably wasn't the flashiest hire either — but this decision was the right one at the right time.

Freeman might not have the head coaching experience many would like. However, Freeman's path was clearly leading him toward a major head coaching job at some point in the near future, and if he turns out to be what many believe he can be, missing out on the next big thing in college football would've been a bad break for such a historic football program.

"The goal is to win," Freeman said. "The goal is to win it all. The goal is to win the national championship. That's the ultimate goal. But how you get there, it's going to be a process. It's going to take enhancing whatever we've done to get to this point. It's going to take looking at every single thing we do as an organization and find a better way to do it. That goes back to challenging everything. We have to find a better way to do everything we do. We have to coach better, teach better, recruit better and perform better. Everything we do, we've got to find a better way to do it."

Evan Lepak can be reached at evan.lepak@goshennews.com or 574-533-2151, ext. 240326. Follow him on Twitter @EvanMPLepak.