By any estimation, Notre Dame is one of the standard bearers for the purely American enterprise that is college football. Perhaps it is only fitting that of any program, the first Black or Asian American coach to lead a team in a Division I national championship game will belong to this storied program led by Marcus Freeman. Freeman’s father is Black and his mother is of South Korean descent.
Notre Dame and Ohio State play in the CFP National Championship on Jan. 20 in Atlanta — which means Freeman will make history on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and in King’s hometown.
There is a duality about Freeman being the head coach at any program, much less the bluest of blue bloods. While Black men make up about half of FBS players in any given year, there are only 15 Black head coaches out of 134 schools. He’s only the third Asian American to ever lead an FBS program besides Norm Chow, who coached at Hawaii from 2012–2015, and Tim Chang, who is currently Hawaii’s head coach and was hired a month after Freeman was promoted at Notre Dame to head coach after serving one year as defensive coordinator.
“There’s a lot of people in this coaching profession that have come before me that have given me this opportunity,” Freeman said before the Orange Bowl semifinal. “But the other person that I think deserves a lot of credit is our former AD Jack Swarbrick, because he’s the one — and our president John Jenkins at the time — that made the decision to hire a guy that was 35 years old and had never been a head coach. He made that decision. So Jack Swarbrick and Father John Jenkins deserve a lot of the credit for having courage and for making a decision to hire me at that time.”
Marcus Freeman proves Notre Dame right as Irish ride nation’s longest winning streak into CFP title game
Dennis Dodd
That Orange Bowl, which Notre Dame won 27-24 over Penn State, pitted Freeman against Nittany Lions coach James Franklin, who is Black. In media interviews that week, Franklin shared his desire that the showdown with Freeman would have a similar impact on young coaches as when he saw Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith go head-to-head in Super Bowl XLI — the first NFL championship featuring Black head coaches.
“I remember thinking that, as a coach, how significant that was in the profession and how significant that was for young coaches coming up in the profession to see those guys in that role,” Franklin said. “I also remember, at that time, that there was a lot of conversations about, ‘Will this impact the profession? Will this impact have earned opportunities for guys?'”
Freeman’s résumé prior to becoming a head coach seems normal for any hotshot young coach who rises quickly, but it is typically a fast track afforded to white coaches. After an all-conference career at Ohio State, Freeman coached at Ohio State, Kent State, Purdue and Cincinnati for a decade before taking the reins of the defense in South Bend in 2021. Jackson State, Delaware State and Norfolk State are HBCUs who in recent years have taken gambles on unproven Black coaches (Deion Sanders, Desean Jackson and Michael Vick) all of them were former NFL players who played at a high level. What’s rarer is what Notre Dame did in hiring Freeman: taking a chance on a young minority coordinator as the head coach of a blueblood with no previous head coaching experience.
Freeman acknowledges significance in his own style. He is typically humble when the subject of race is brought up, but he doesn’t shy away from it — although he is quick to defer the praise.
“If this creates more opportunities for other coaches, other minority coaches, great,” Freeman said in advance of the Orange Bowl.” It is great for the future generations of coaches, of college football coaches, of leaders. I am all for it, and I’m grateful to be a part of that. But at the end of the day, the attention on one person takes away what really gives your program a chance to get here, and that’s team, and that’s committing to something bigger than yourself. That’s important to me.”
In interviews this week, Freeman was uneasy about his history-making day drawing attention away from King.
“To me the attention should be on MLK Day and what he did for our country and the progress he made for equal rights and progress for all people, the courage he had as an individual to stand for what he believes in,” Freeman said. “That was with his words and his actions.
Part of the conversation involving Freeman is about how much a trailblazer wishes to acknowledge that they are in fact breaking a barrier. Here’s how Pranav Iyer, the founder of AMAZN HQ, an Asian American focused media outlet, explains it.
“I think one step is, yes, the media being able to publicize him and him being at a big school. But then the second step that is also very important is, you know, him embracing that culture, and him being proud of that. At the end of the day, no one wants to force something on someone if they don’t want to represent a community. It’s not their responsibility, but, but he’s someone that understands that he’s one of the first to be able to do something like this. So I think he understands that responsibility in a lot of ways that a lot of athletes like nowadays are as well.”
Especially where Freeman’s Asian American heritage is concerned, Freeman, whose mother Chong is Korean, is an outlier. According to Raj Kuchadkar, executive director of the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches, only about 5% of his 2,200 members are Asian American, while over 85% are Black. At the Coalition’s upcoming convention in February, Freeman will be honored as Coach of The Year.
“Actions speak louder than words,” Kuchadkar said. “With the season he’s put together and going to the national championship that, in and of itself, is a source of immense pride for the Coalition and our coaches. And I think just having that example really makes a major impact, especially for our next wave of coaches that are coming up. I’ve never anticipated a game more in my life. I’m going to be glued to that TV set.”
Freeman has had multiple Asian Americans on his roster including Kyle Hamilton and Jordan Bothelo who have Korean heritage and Tyler Buchner and Charles Du, who have Chinese heritage. In the postseason, Notre Dame players get their names printed on the backs of their jerseys, and Du has his name written out in Chinese characters.
“I think a lot of people if they weren’t college football fans didn’t necessarily know that he was Korean, off the bat,” said Iyer, who is of Indian descent. “Being mixed race, it’s not always obvious. But I think once people found that out, okay, this is not just a coach, this is like a head coach, and this is Notre Dame, I think that resonated a lot.”
Like so many talented minority coaches across the country, all Freeman needed was a chance. Now he’s got his team 60 minutes away from the ultimate accomplishment, making history gets to be a nice added bonus.
