Notre Dame HC Marcus Freeman Talks CFP Snub, CJ Carr & More I Full Interview I The Rich Eisen Show

Rich opened by explaining his predicament. Marcus Freeman played at Ohio State and coaches Notre Dame, and his quarterback is Lloyd Carr's grandson. A Michigan man is supposed to have a problem with all of that.

"But he's too damn likable."

Freeman's response was the tell about how he coaches.

"We can overcome that."

They started with Jim Tressel, who coached Freeman on two BCS championship teams that lost to Urban Meyer's Florida in Tim Tebow's freshman year and then to LSU.

What Freeman took from Tressel he only recognized later, and it is not schematic.

"You sometimes take for granted the leadership that he displayed," he said. As a player it felt normal. At 40, reflecting on it, he sees a man who put the needs of the people he was leading ahead of his own.

The example he offered is recent. Freeman took two of his sons to a football game to watch Ted Ginn, now a head coach, and Tressel sat them in a suite. Two minutes later Tressel was handing out waters to his former player and his former player's kids, then coming around with cookies.

"I just remember going, he's still serving his players. It should be the other way around."

Rich raised the obvious contrast, which is that Tressel lost his job over something involving tattoos in a sport that now looks nothing like it did.

Freeman did not dodge it. What bothers him is not the rule but the portrayal.

"I know Jim Tressel's a great person," he said, and to have him painted otherwise over something that today would be nothing is wild.

On CJ Carr, who Rich first met as a six-year-old at Michigan events, Freeman reached for an unusual formulation.

"It's almost like you create a player."

A competitor, a winner, a leader who prepares the way Carr does, gifted with ability, and then the part Rich raised, which is who he is off the field. Freeman called him a great human being and a pleasure to coach.

The Heisman conversation is already underway, and Freeman's answer is about where a young man spends his attention.

"That's his greatest responsibility. It's not to throw touchdowns, win the Heisman, be a first round pick. It's to be the best leader he can be and make his teammates better."

His method for managing that is subtraction rather than motivation. Winning a Heisman or a national championship is overwhelming pressure. Having a good Monday is not. Be the best teammate you can be, encourage guys, hold them accountable, prepare.

"We can handle that."

Then Rich got to the thing he had clearly been waiting for, because Carr had let something slip in an earlier conversation. Asked whether being left out of the playoff last season created a chip on the team's shoulder, Carr said not really, and then revealed the program's motto.

Leave no doubt.

Rich pointed out that a motto like that does not come out of the ether.

Freeman's answer was more interesting than the obvious version. He insists the phrase is about the day in front of you, not the season behind you.

"How do you leave no doubt today, that this is the best Monday, that you prepared tremendously?" Do that repeatedly and the season takes care of itself.

But pressed on whether he understands exactly how it will be read, Freeman gave the honest half.

"Oh yeah, 100 percent."

And then he flipped it into something better than a grudge.

"We left doubt last year."

That framing is deliberate, because it refuses the alternative. You can blame the committee for keeping you out, but then the situation gives you nothing. Saying you left doubt makes it your job to fix, which turns a bad outcome into an evaluation of everything you did from January through August.

Freeman said the review was about preparation rather than results. How much they practice, how much film, whether they arrive fresher. The goal is being at a higher elevation for week one regardless of opponent, whether that was Miami last year or Wisconsin this year.

Asked what single rule he would install to bring order to the sport, Freeman found it hard to answer with one thing, then landed on transfers, and framed it entirely around the players.

He does not think unlimited annual transfers serve young people. Not as punishment, but because something needs to be at stake, whether that is sitting out a year.

"You have to learn to overcome discomfort. You have to learn to overcome adversity."

He was careful to add that he would not have understood this between 18 and 22, and that he understands it now, and that the goal is helping young people become self-sufficient rather than leaving every time the situation stops being comfortable or somebody offers more money.

On former NFL players returning to college, Freeman pointed to the admissions calendar rather than the principle. Notre Dame started school last week, after everyone went through the admissions process. Bringing someone in this late and expecting them to succeed in a classroom and on a field is not realistic, and the athletic director has aligned the school with the Big Ten and SEC position.

Rich raised the other side of it, which is the player who spent spring and summer earning snaps only to have someone arrive two weeks before the season.

"That's not easy and it's not right," Freeman said.

The interview lightened considerably when Rich asked which of Jerome Bettis or Larry Fitzgerald is the worse helicopter parent, given both have sons in the program.

Neither, according to Freeman. They come to games, they support their sons, and the ones who hover tend to be the parents who did not play. He was quick to include himself in the potential offenders, noting his own son wrestles at Cornell, he is never there, and some of their phone conversations might qualify.

On Jeremiyah Love, Freeman's favorite story is from a recruiting home visit, where the staff beat him to his own house and got a tour from his parents.

In his room, the shoes were perfectly aligned.

"Don't touch one of those shoes, because if you do, he'll notice," his father told them. He knows exactly how they are placed.

Freeman did not test it, partly because he did not know Love well enough yet and was genuinely unsure what would happen. He now recognizes it as the same instinct that keeps the locker perfect, and part of who Love is.

Watching him against professional competition brought out the coach's worry rather than pride. Rich mentioned the Adrian Peterson comparisons, which Freeman received as high praise, noting that he played against Peterson in a high school All-American game and got made to look stupid.

His concern is the spin move and the airtime.

"I always held my breath every time he had the ball," Freeman said. He used to call Love Gumby, because his body absorbs hits without breaking. But he assumes a general manager and an owner are now saying what Rich heard Michael Robinson and Maurice Jones-Drew say on the NFL Network set every time it happened.

Keep your feet on the ground, kid.

On Jadarian Price, Freeman recalled telling him after the season that he could come back and be the number one back, get all the carries, and show the NFL what he does with the job.

Price went instead, and became a first-round pick anyway.

Freeman is confident because of the work, calling Price a team-first player who works tirelessly, now on a great team with a great coach. His running backs coach is Thomas Hammock, formerly the head coach at Northern Illinois, who reached out after minicamp with a short verdict.

He is everything you told me he was going to be.