Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM MARCH 2026 19 "Beyond that, I think the first thing that has to go is the recognition that you have to do away with spring practice," a source said, "because that's what drives everything." Then what becomes of the growth and learning that's accomplished in spring practice? It moves to say, 21 days of June offseason team activities (OTAs), where coaches can have the same kind of contact with the players they have in spring. The one-time-an-offseason transfer portal then shifts from January to March or April, after recruiting is finished, so that roster-building is complete be- fore the offseason learning ramps up. T h i s a l s o m a ke s ea rly e n ro l l m e n t less of a must-do. One source sug- ge s te d o n c e t h e OTAs are finished, players would have a three-week break from football be- fore training camp ramps up in Au- gust, perhaps even extended by a week. There was the suggestion that a pre- season game could be wedged in for all college teams. Or another alterna- tive — a jamboree format, as some high schools do, where you play a half of a controlled game against one team and a half against another. "Nick Saban is speaking all the right language, and I think people listen to him," a source said. "And it is screwed up. I mean, [former Ole Miss coach] Lane Kiffin should have never, in a per- fect world, had to make the choice he did, but he made the right choice." Kiffin took the LSU job and pre- pared the Tigers to thrive during the Jan. 2-16 transfer portal window in- stead of coaching his Ole Miss team in the CFP. And the Rebels reached the CFP semifinals without him. LSU, by most accounts, won the transfer portal sweepstakes. "Got ridiculed and missed out and all that kind of stuff," a source said. "But he made the right choice for him, be- cause he took the better job. And it's the calendar that makes him look like the villain." Speaking of the College Football Play- off, it will stay in a 12-team format for 2026. But if it expands to 16 teams in 2027, eliminating conference champi- onship games may be the next prag- matic college calendar move. Either way, there doesn't appear to be anything in the revised calendar that would conflict with the Notre Dame academic mission. In fact, it could en- hance it. Freshmen who really wanted to enroll early in January could still do so, just as they did before the predominant signing period moved to December. And they could get a head start on academics with a lighter football commitment running simultaneously to it. And the calendar shift, as presented, also decompresses the winter condition- ing/spring football crunch that Notre Dame ran into following its 2024 CFP run that ended on Jan. 20, 2025 — af- ter spring semester had already started. And if the Irish fashion themselves as annual playoff contenders, it makes this approach even more pragmatic. HAS COACHING IN COLLEGE BECOME MORE DIFFICULT THAN COACHING IN THE NFL? There's unanimity among Blue & Gold Illustrated's sources that it has. Which in part gives life to speculation that the NFL will be Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman's next move, whether there's any substance to it or not in Freeman's own heart and mind. But the plausibility of that for Free- man and other college coaches is an easy argument to make. At the very least, college head coaches are being pushed hard to straight CEO roles over part-time fixers and coaches who can call their own offensive plays or defen- sive sets. Because of the new demands brought on by the NIL/revenue-share dynamic paired with unlimited trans- fers, the requirements of the job con- tinue to evolve away from old-school coaching roles. "You cannot afford to be a play caller, because you cannot live in the war of offense or defense," one source said. "These guys today that are head coaches have got to be schmoozing NIL donors. "They've got to be re-recruiting their team on a daily basis constantly, so they don't all abort the mission and go to the portal. You've got to be available to your players all the time. You've still got to do some rotary clubs and do some golf outings. And that neutralizes to some extent some head coaches who are elite X's-and-O's guys." So, you better have great coordina- tors, and continuity in coordinators matters. And when Freeman's con- tract was reworked after the 2025 sea- son, making it easier to retain key staff members, from a financial standpoint, was reportedly part of that agreement. "Now, to com- pare that, there's none of that go- ing on in the NFL," a so u rce sa i d o f t h e s h i f t i n g a n d i n c rea s i n g h ea d - coaching responsibilities. "You're sit- ting in your office all day. And what are you doing besides just kind of managing it? Because there's no booster clubs. You don't have alums. You don't have any outside influences. " Yea h , yo u wa n t to coa c h yo u r coaches. And I'm not suggesting be- ing an NFL head coach doesn't have challenges, because of pressure and all that. But it's just not as difficult a job to run an NFL team as it is to run a college team, particularly a marquee team — you know, a top-30 club — in the col- lege game." Yet, isn't it Marcus Freeman who preaches "choose hard"? One source is confident Freeman is in it for the long game, in part because of that, in part because it's what he loves, in part because Notre Dame may be as close to winning a national title as it has been in decades. "I think Marcus Freeman is good for Notre Dame," a source said. "And they almost won it all in 2024. Now, can he keep the good coaches, get the good players? Are they 'all in' with the NIL world? It appears they are, but I don't know the inner workings. "If it just got down to money and rais- ing it, you've got to think Notre Dame can play that game with anybody. And then Marcus, as a leader, becomes a dif- ferentiator. That's a pretty good place to be." ✦ "If it just got down to money and raising it, you've got to think Notre Dame can play that game with anybody. And then Marcus, as a leader, becomes a differentiator. That's a pretty good place to be." AN ANONYMOUS SOURCE ON MARCUS FREEMAN