Coach Freeman 

It’s been a good year for head coaches who are serious about their Catholic faith. Last June, Joe Mazzulla coached the Boston Celtics to their franchise’s 18^th NBA title and is still known to stroll around the parquet floor praying the rosary before home games. This winter, in only his third season at Notre Dame, Marcus Freeman led the Fighting Irish to victories in the Sugar and Orange Bowls before losing to Ohio State last week in the championship game. Freeman became Catholic in 2022, and from the beginning of his time at Notre Dame he has sought not only help his players enjoy success as athletes, but also to help them to become good men.  To that end he has fostered a culture among his players that encourages religious devotion. In an interview featured in National Catholic Register he explains: “I want our guys to wonder about what it means to embrace Jesus Christ.” The team’s quarterback, Riley Leonard, a committed evangelical Christian, is proud of the fact that 40 players participate in the team’s weekly Bible study. On game day, the team chaplain gives a brief lesson on a particular saint and distributes devotional medals. And one of Freeman’s first changes to the program was to reinstate the team’s game-day Mass at the campus basilica. Freeman dismisses the idea that the Mass might serve as a distraction to his players. Rather, he knew from personal experience that, as a player, “you’re so vulnerable those three, four hours before a game. When you have a team meeting and your coach gives you a pre-game speech hours before the game, you’re on the edge of your seat, just hanging on to every word that he says. So, to me, what better time is there to go have Mass? What better time to be able to really be on the edge of your seat to get every word that comes out of the priest’s mouth and to be as close to God as you can?” 

Freeman and his wife Joanna married in 2010 and have six children. Because the demands of running a premiere college football program require coaches to be away a great deal from their families, Freeman encourages his family and his assistants’ families to visit the practice facilities regularly. This enables the coaching staff to spend a little more time with their wives and children. It also provides the players with good examples of the importance of marriage, fatherhood, and family life. While winning a national championship is an enormously important goal, for Freeman, helping the young men on his team become good husbands and fathers who are devoted disciples of Christ, is even more important. For these things are sources of deeper and more lasting joy and consequence, enduring long after their football days are done, enduring even unto eternity. 

posted 1/25/25