SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Call it the Marcus Freeman Method.

I went to Notre Dame to find out how Freeman feels about having an opportunity to become the first Black head coach – and the first Asian American coach, more on that later – to win a college football national title. But whenever I asked him about a championship future, Freeman focused on the present.

“Winning it all is a reflection of winning the interval. It’s a reflection of staying in the moment,” Freeman said after Notre Dame overwhelmed Stanford 49-7 on Oct. 12. The Irish, ranked No. 12 and in College Football Playoff contention with a 5-1 record, play Georgia Tech in Atlanta on Saturday.

“You don’t control the journey. You’ve got to trust the journey,” Freeman said. “That’s what I tell these guys. There’s one guarantee, that the future is uncertain. Why spend time daydreaming about it? Why sit here and think about what’s going to happen in the future when it’s uncertain? Why don’t you spend time focusing on the things that you have to do that gives you a chance to get that desired result?

“We’ll worry about what the result is at the end of the season. We just got to continue to stay in the moment.”

This moment, and this Method, is promising for Freeman. Now in his third season at Notre Dame, at 38 years old, Freeman is one of perhaps a dozen coaches – of any ethnicity – with the right combination of school, NIL budget, and schedule to win a national title. It may not happen for Freeman this season, with injuries mounting and the blemish of a shocking Week 2 loss to Northern Illinois. But with the playoff expanded to 12 teams, and Freeman’s proven ability to recruit and develop top talent, Notre Dame will consistently be in the hunt.

No Black coach has won the college football national championship – it’s one of the last unfulfilled “firsts” in sports. Only 16 of 134 coaches at this top level of competition are Black, compared with well over half of the players. There are three Polynesian coaches in the FBS: Ken Niumatalolo, who is Samoan, at San Jose State; Kalani Sitake, who is Tongan, at BYU; and Timmy Chang at the University of Hawaii. Despite that history, there is an unprecedented number of Black coaches leading programs with a plausible path, in the next few years, to a championship: Freeman, James Franklin at Penn State, Sherrone Moore at Michigan, and Deion Sanders at Colorado (or wherever his next stop may be).

Freeman is actually the second Black coach in Notre Dame history. The first was Tyrone Willingham, who coached the Irish from 2002 to 2004, then was fired in what many Black observers considered a hasty decision. While at Notre Dame, Willingham tried to recruit one of the best high school linebackers in the country – a hard hitter named Marcus Freeman. 

“Coach Willingham made an impact on me,” Freeman said during an interview inside Notre Dame Stadium. On his desk is a photo of his wife and six children; a tattooed wedding band encircles his left ring finger. On his feet are Golden Goose sneakers. “I remember getting off the phone with him multiple occasions thinking he reminded me of my father in his approach and his tone.”

Freeman’s father, who is Black, was in the Air Force when he met and married Freeman’s mother, who is South Korean. Identity can be a tricky thing – word to Tiger Woods – so I asked Freeman how he describes his ethnicity.

“It depends on who asks,” he responded. “I am a multi-racial individual. My father’s African American, my mother’s Korean. I’m bits and pieces of both of them. They both have a huge impact on my life, and I embrace both sides of it.”

Back in high school, despite Willingham’s recruitment, Freeman chose Ohio State, where he became an All-Big Ten linebacker in the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Ohio State lost the national title game in Freeman’s final two college seasons. So how do those losses influence Freeman’s coaching right now?

“Those two national championship games, they didn’t end the way you would want,” he said. “There’s an itch to at some point be able to hoist a trophy and be the champion.”

At this point Freeman rubbed his hands together, probably unconsciously, as he mentioned winning it all – a rare moment of allowing himself to dream. Then he got back to his Method.

“But when I think about those games,” he continued, “I think about the journey. I think about the people. I think about the exceptional seasons we had in 2006 and 2007 to get there, the ups and downs of those seasons. But most importantly, I just remember the people, the coaches, the players, the journey that we were on.”

I appreciate Freeman’s approach. Sports comes with so much pressure, so many extraordinary demands and expectations, but there can only be one victor each season. Everyone and everything else can’t be defined as a failure, especially in college football, which is the final place most of Freeman’s guys will play the game. If we can’t find meaning in sports larger than winning, then the whole endeavor does more harm than good.

Freeman was chosen in the fifth round of the 2009 NFL draft, but an enlarged heart diagnosis ended his playing career. After starting as a graduate assistant at his alma mater, Freeman coached linebackers at Kent State and Purdue, where he rose to co-defensive coordinator. Then Luke Fickell, who coached Freeman at Ohio State, hired him to run the defense at Cincinnati. Freeman developed the Bearcats D into one of the top units in the country, and became recognized as a rising star. 

In 2021, Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly hired Freeman as defensive coordinator. One year later, Kelly left for LSU. Notre Dame considered a range of candidates – including Fickell, who was finishing a 13-1 season at Cincinnati. But behind a wave of support from players and recruits, Freeman got the top job.

How did that happen? 

“I worked tirelessly at the position I held,” Freeman said. “I worked extremely hard to be the best defensive coordinator I could be. I never came to work trying to interview to be the head coach at Notre Dame. I tell people all the time that if you continue to seek the next opportunity, you’re wasting the one right in front of you. And the best thing you can do for your next opportunity is be great at the opportunity you have now.”

That’s the Marcus Freeman Method. Strap on your blinders, pour everything you can into what you can control, then live with the results. 

Not long ago, though, that approach rarely worked for Black coaches, across all sports. Even today, hard work and strong qualifications are no guarantee – just ask UCLA associate head coach Eric Bienemy, or Boston Celtics assistant coach Sam Cassell … or Willingham.

When Willingham started coaching in 1977 at Michigan State, and even when he got hired at Notre Dame 25 years later, opportunities for Black coaches were extremely rare. Fast-forward to 2021, when Freeman – who had never been a head coach at any level – got the Notre Dame job over the older, more experienced, and dare I say whiter Fickell.

Feels like a new day to me. How about you, Coach Willingham? 

“We now have opportunities to do things that have never been done,” Willingham told me over the phone Monday. “Years ago, we had so many stereotypes to deal with. You couldn’t have a Black center, couldn’t have a Black quarterback because those were the positions of thought. So you couldn’t have a Black head coach because it implied that you have to be thoughtful, a thinker, intuitive.

“I don’t know how to label the barrier, but it was one of those things that as we progressed as a society, it had to be removed. And I think we’re getting to the point, it’s not solved yet, but it’s a lot better than it was.”

Freeman understands the opportunity of this era. 

“I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you there’s days I’m in my office, I’m sitting there in solitude, and I go, ‘You’re the head coach at the University of Notre Dame.’ It’s surreal. I make sure to remind myself. You have to, because if you take it for granted, it’ll be taken away.

“And then,” Freeman said, “you get back into the moment.”