Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM JANUARY 2026 23 the season strong and then fell off, and here's a way to turn the corner and re- ignite momentum and springboard you into the next year. Maybe one year you have an unbelievably young team, and you wanna kind of start that maturation process for the next year. "But this year, this was a team that had national championship aspirations. This was a team that was unbelievably close-knit. And in the crazy world of major college football emotions, you find out you're not in the CFP, and you're shocked. And then you get a call, 'Hey, do you wanna go play in this bowl game?' "And so [head coach] Marcus [Free- man] places a ton of emphasis on the roles of the captains of the team. You saw that if you're watching the Peacock doc- umentary. These aren't just the letter 'C' pasted onto a jersey, kind of a pat on the back. They have a real role in our team and in the decisions the team makes. "Does that mean that if we're in this situation again in the future that the same decision would be made? No. It's year by year, case by case. It was the right decision for this team at this moment." And the next step is finding a way to celebrate the season, then get to work on the long-term paramount next steps. Those are: Reassessing the relation- ship with the ACC. Reconfiguring the selection process and playoff format- ting — and Bevacqua is a strong advo- cate for expanding to 16 teams. And retaining head coach Marcus Freeman, who's the "hot list" darling for seem- ingly every head coaching job this sea- son and offseason. "Everybody has eyes on Marcus," Free- man said. "College has eyes on Marcus. NFL has eyes on Marcus. I bet Holly- wood has eyes on Marcus. I wouldn't be surprised if he's in the next Leo DiCaprio movie with Martin Scorsese. "Marcus is Marcus. All the credit to him, he deserves it. He is the absolute best coach in the country for Notre Dame, full stop. One of the greatest college coaches in the country. People forget how young he is. So, I get it. I get it. That's a compliment to him and his success and the way he represents him- self and the way he prepares and who he is and how he talks. "It's one of my main obligations and responsibilities to this university: to make sure Marcus wakes up every day knowing that he is supported and val- ued by Notre Dame. And I can say with 100 percent certainty he feels that way. Notre Dame is totally aligned around the importance of college football for Notre Dame. We're totally aligned on how he is the perfect coach for Notre Dame. "I make sure that he knows that he will be where he deserves to be and that is at the top, top, top tier of college foot- ball coaches when it comes to compen- sation every year. "I view his contract, although a multi-year contract, as a living, breath- ing document that we will revise every year as need be, to make sure he's where he deserves to be. He knows he has that commitment from me and, more im- portantly, from the university." The ACC question is stickier. Even though Notre Dame is contractually committed until 2036 — full member- ship in almost every sport, a five-game annual commitment in football — is it time to test those legal limits or at least shop around? It should be noted that after the union first rolled into action in 2014, a source told Blue & Gold Illustrated that SEC officials after the fact expressed senti- ments that that league would have been interested in exploring some kind of agreement and that they were disap- pointed they didn't get that opportunity. As far as how the ACC undoes "the permanent damage"? "We haven't really given all that a ton of thought," Bevacqua said. "Are we looking for an apology? To be quite frank, I don't think an apology does anything or unwinds what has happened. "But we'll, at the right time, sit down with the ACC leadership. And I think [we'll] have hopefully a very frank, honest, hopefully productive conver- sation. But I would tell you that time's not now." Meanwhile, when asked what rede- fining the CFP selection process and format should look like and how he could help, Bevacqua, understand- ably, spouted more frustration than solutions. "You either have a series of really de- fined metrics that everybody can rely on and see and know what they're going into," he said. "Or you have one ranking show at the end. And say, 'OK, here's what it is and here's why we thought.' That would have been less of a shock to the system, to our team, than what happened was. "Because if you wake up every day for five, six weeks and say, 'You're in, you're in, you're in.' And what you do in response to that is you win in dominant fashion. Seventy points, 50 points, 49. I mean, just week in and week out. "And you have Jeremiyah, Jadarian [Price], they look like they're out of The Matrix, and it's just everything going well. And then you wake up on Sunday, and you're in a room with these 18- to 22-year-olds who are like, 'All right, are we ninth? Are we 10th? Let's get to practice. Let's get going. Let's win a na- tional championship.' "Oh, wait a second. Sorry." So feel the pain and then channel the pain into something better. That's Bev- acqua's plan. "I'd be lying if I were to tell you I wasn't dwelling on it. I'm dwelling on it," Bevacqua said. "But we've got to all get over it. Can't forget it, because you want to help the process get better. I think we have an obligation — I have an obligation, the university has an obliga- tion — to make the process better. "So, it's not like, OK, rearview mir- ror, forget about that, let's go. No. It's no, wait a second. We don't want Notre Dame to feel that way again. "We don't want any team to feel that way again. Let's try to do everything we can to correct the system, make it better, so no group of 100-plus 18- to 22-year-olds are sitting in a room with national championship dreams, and they're shattered a moment later with- out a good explanation. "I don't want that to happen to any- body in the country." ✦ "We don't want Notre Dame to feel that way again. We don't want any team to feel that way again." BEVACQUA