The formation of Marcus Freeman: How Ohio State shaped his Notre Dame blueprint

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Marcus Freeman knew he needed guidance. As he weighed the defensive coordinator positions at Notre Dame and LSU, Freeman also knew what calling Jim Tressel would mean in terms of getting it. There would be no turn-by-turn navigation, only questions on top of questions, his former head coach at Ohio State picking apart Freeman’s position and letting him put it back together for himself.

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What would relocating to South Bend mean for Freeman’s family of eight compared to Baton Rouge? How stable was Brian Kelly compared to Ed Orgeron? And how did either place fit into Freeman’s goal of becoming a head coach, the kind who could lead his program into the biggest college football game of the season as the first official scene in the next act of his career?

“I hung up after an hour and was like, ‘I think he’s telling me to go to Notre Dame. No, wait, I think he’s telling me to go to LSU. I don’t know what he was saying,’” Freeman said. “He’s amazing. That’s what makes him so unique is that he makes you formulate what your opinion is based off looking at every single option. It’s really, really unique in terms of how he gives you his answers.”

For whatever caricatures exist of Tressel – the sweater vest, the senatorial style, the throwback Big Ten schemes – how he supports his players endures. And for Freeman, who’ll make his regular-season debut as Notre Dame’s head coach on Saturday night in Ohio Stadium, that’s offered an action plan to follow.

Freeman required no such conference with Tressel when he replaced Kelly nine months ago. Ready or not didn’t matter for Freeman. Jobs like Notre Dame don’t open. And 36-year-olds without head coaching experience don’t get offered them. Still, Tressel has been a sounding board for Freeman ever since. Sometimes the subjects are as banal as media access to training camp. Sometimes they’re as consequential as how to hire a coaching staff.

Always, Tressel lets Freeman do the talking while he listens. Always, Freeman leaves the conversation with a path forward. It’s just one he still has to walk on his own.

“That may be a little bit of the Aristotle in me,” Tressel said. “Aristotle thought the answer was within you, you just have to be asking yourself the right questions and come to your conclusions. The thing I try to make sure I keep solid is that, hey, I’m not there every day, I can’t see everything that’s going on. And I don’t pretend to know what your need is for this moment.”

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Come Saturday night, Tressel will see exactly what Freeman has and what he needs. Ohio State will honor the 2002 national championship team, meaning its former head coach will be back in Ohio Stadium along with some of Freeman’s old teammates. As Tressel watches, he may see as much of himself in Notre Dame as he does Ohio State.

Freeman has embraced much of Tressel – the traditions, the empathy, being a leader players want to follow. And that will all matter on Saturday night. Not because Freeman is going home, but because of how much his home has already shaped Notre Dame.

Marcus Freeman jogged west onto Woodgate Drive, trailing his father and older brother, known as Big Mike and Little Mike, around the neighborhood. Take a right on Johannsen Avenue before a quick turn north on Dial Drive, followed by two more rights, the first onto Longford Road and the second onto Old Troy Pike, which led Freeman back home as the sun started to rise.

Michael Freeman Sr. would run most of this 1.5-mile loop to stay in shape. He’d walk parts to let his sons (mostly Marcus) keep up. That was all the charity offered in the Freeman household, a modest three-bedroom in Huber Heights, Ohio, just north of Dayton. Michael didn’t believe in it, not after serving 26 years in the Air Force and bringing military discipline home from deployments to South Korea and Turkey.

Back home, the boys – Michael Jr. is three years older than Marcus but only two grades ahead of him in school – would do their father’s strength drills: pushups, air squats, situps, jumping jacks. When they got older, they bench-pressed, did curls and put weight on their backs. Michael Sr. installed a squat rack in the living room, which didn’t contain much else beyond mother Chong’s refrigerator of Korean food. Michael Sr. and Chong met during his deployment to Asia.

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The mornings started around 5:30 a.m., at least for Michael Jr. and Marcus. In elementary school, the brothers shared a room and awoke to their dad’s heavy breathing as he lifted on his own. In middle school, Michael Jr. moved down the hall to the guest room. Then their dad would blow open both bedroom doors and command his sons to rise. There wouldn’t be a second request. If Michael Sr. still had a few lifts to go, he’d tell his sons to run in place while they waited. Sometimes Marcus and Michael Jr. just pumped their arms and kept their feet still, hoping their dad wouldn’t notice.

“If you want to beat the kids in Centerville, you want to beat Fairborn, you got to do something that they’re not doing,” Michael Sr. said. “So we’re gonna work out when we know they’re sleeping. We want to get an edge.”

By the time the brothers started their sweat, Chong was out the door for the first of three jobs. If the boys wanted to complain to mom, they could do it after she got home to make dinner 12 hours later and before she took them to football practice or Taekwondo lessons that night.

The workouts became part of Marcus Freeman’s wiring. Now Notre Dame’s head coach will run around campus before the sun comes up or sweat in the Gug as his players arrive for their morning lifts. He likes to pass the “God, Country, Notre Dame” door at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on runs. He is his father’s son, especially before breakfast.

“My dad’s just the type of person that you do things right. And you do them the right way,” Freeman said. “You get up and you work. It’s not saying, ‘I got to work longer than anybody else and be up and be the first one going.’ It instilled in you that you get up and you go to work. And you work from the time you get up to the time you’re done.”

The routines sharpened the Freeman boys, an edge they’d use on one another. When Marcus and Michael Jr. weren’t trying to keep up with their dad on runs, they’d race mailbox to mailbox on Woodgate Drive. Marcus was the sprinter, so anything under 100 yards favored him. Michael Jr. was the distance runner, so he wanted to extend the race. The brothers got so good at Taekwondo they’d often meet in area tournament finals. They kept track of who had more trophies on their dresser.

Eventually they became high school football teammates. During his junior year, Michael broke his ankle against Xenia High School and was replaced by his freshman brother, the moment everyone wondered if they’d just watched the next great football player from greater Dayton. Michael can’t remember if his mom went to the hospital with him and his dad stayed at the game or vice versa. He just knows his brother balled out while he got a cast.

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On the Wayne High School basketball team they were separated between varsity and JV, which meant Marcus practiced against Michael. One day Marcus set a hard pick on his brother. Michael turned around and threw a punch. Marcus, already 50 pounds heavier, wrestled Michael to the ground. The head coach kicked them both out of practice.

“I don’t think we could ever do something friendly,” Michael Jr. said. “We fought all the time. Anything you could make a competition, we would try to.”
This was how their father wanted it, too.

“I don’t look at life through rose-colored lenses. I know about life,” Michael Sr. said. “I know this (job) is something he wants to conquer and he wants to be a part of. We’re all all-in behind him. But his dad looks at things sometimes skeptical. I’ll tell you what, he’s got his work cut out for him.”

A military man straight out of high school, Michael Sr. grew up in Columbus and served as an usher in The Horseshoe as a Boy Scout. When Ohio State played on Saturday afternoons, the family watched. When Freeman was deciding among Ohio State, Notre Dame and Michigan, Michael Sr. joked that if Marcus chose the Wolverines that he’d see him play at least one game every year. He was only half kidding.

“He knew where my heart was,” Michael Sr. said. “I’m not gonna say I swayed him in any way, shape or form. But yeah, I did tell him that. ‘Look, I love you, but I can’t make all the games up there.’”

Marcus stayed home and became an All-American linebacker for Tressel. He still describes himself as an Ohio State fan. He still calls Tressel his head coach. This summer when Ohio State sent out an invitation to former football players for a town hall Zoom with Ryan Day, Freeman got the link. He chose not to click it.

Marcus Freeman arrived at Ohio State in January of 2004, an All-American recruit walking into a linebacker room of actual All-Americans such as AJ Hawk and Bobby Carpenter. Freeman’s reputation out of Wayne High School preceded him, because that’s how it works at places like Ohio State when one of the state’s prized prospects stays home.

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Hawk played at Centerville, a half hour south of Huber Heights on the other side of Dayton. Carpenter played at Lancaster, about 90 minutes east, just outside Columbus. Both became first-round picks. That Ohio State team also included eventual Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith and future first-round picks Ted Ginn Jr., Anthony Gonzalez and Donte Whitner. All were Ohio products.

“All guys are kind of wide-eyed when you get in, but we had a tight linebacker group, a bunch of meatheads,” Carpenter said. “Anytime you got a guy who’s as highly rated as he is, everybody razzes him a bit, like you’re coming to take our job, like laughing about it.

“All the linebackers started working out after practice, all of us together, and not really anyone else did. We just pulled Marcus along and pulled James (Laurinaitis) through until those guys eventually started doing that when AJ and I were gone.”

Luke Fickell became Freeman’s mentor on the field, eventually hiring him as defensive coordinator at Cincinnati. But Tressel took the lessons Freeman learned at home and amplified them. Forever the coach-philosopher, Tressel created the Block O of Life and forced players to reflect on six categories: personal/family, spiritual/moral, caring/giving, football/family, academics/career and strength/fitness.

Every offseason, every player wrote down how they wanted to advance in each category during the next year and into adulthood. It was all deeper than a lot of college football players wanted to go. The exercise could take an hour. The legal pads got so big some players called them “the placemats.” All listings had to be specific and measurable. If they weren’t, Tressel sent them back. If you repeated last year’s goals – Carpenter tried – Tressel would send that back too.

“He would challenge you to think about stuff bigger than football, and really developed you as a human,” said Laurinaitis, who joined Notre Dame’s staff last winter. “You sort of talk through spiritual goals. … My freshman year I wrote, ‘Find a church in Columbus.’ What are my family goals? I don’t know, ‘Call my mom once a week?’ He would make you have a goal and then it would be tangible ways you accomplish it. So you couldn’t BS your way through it. You had to think it out.”

For Freeman, that meant reflecting on life after football while he was still playing it, the same thing he asks of Notre Dame’s players now. Writing his future into existence helped him become a graduate assistant in the athletic department as a fifth-year senior under athletic director Gene Smith, a Notre Dame football alumnus. Ohio State created the position for Freeman, who sat on budget meetings and helped with search committees. Basically, he got a look at the kind of big-picture thinking that might serve a future head coach.

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“He could fit in with people,” Smith said. “Most people take that for granted; he does that naturally. His emotional intelligence is really high and he’s a good listener.”

When Freeman’s NFL career ended with the diagnosis of an enlarged heart valve after one season and three practice squads, he joined Tressel’s staff as a graduate assistant. That’s when the metamorphosis of Freeman the player into Freeman the coach began, not without missteps. It takes a different kind of energy to be a coach than it does to fill the A-gap.

“Marcus went up to chest bump somebody when he was a GA, and you don’t have a helmet on when you’re a coach,” Carpenter said. “I think his facemask hits Marcus in the mouth and he busts out one of his teeth. AJ used to always joke, ‘You look like a Dayton hillbilly now, Marcus.’ He always had that energy and youthful exuberance.”

One year later, Freeman was coaching linebackers at Kent State. Six years later, he was Purdue’s co-defensive coordinator. Seven years later, he was calling his own defense at Cincinnati. And a dozen years later, Marcus Freeman became Notre Dame’s head coach. Tressel informed every rung Freeman had climbed.

“The best thing I’ve observed from him is the ability to make everybody in your organization feel important, but also make it so that they are important,” Freeman said. “That’s what I want to make sure we reflect here is that everybody in our program has to understand that their role is just as valuable as mine as the head coach.”

At Ohio State, if players were struggling off the field, Tressel had a way of sounding them out, even after their careers had finished. A few years ago, Carpenter’s daughter underwent cancer treatments. And after every scan, Tressel would just happen to check in.

“I don’t know how, he broke a number of HIPAA laws, but somehow someone was feeding him information at the hospital,” Carpenter said. “He would call without fail within a day or two of her scans to make sure. Like randomly talk to me and then ask how she was doing. Marcus probably feels that way and that’s probably a big piece of what he has wanted to be, where I’m always available to my players at all times.”

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At Notre Dame, Freeman’s cell phone number is not a state secret. Texts are often returned in minutes. During one spring practice, he wore a “WOPU vs. Everybody” T-shirt, backing the “Walk-On Players Union.” When captain Avery Davis tore his ACL for a second time, Freeman sat with the receiver in his apartment when the news came down.

“Tressel had an uncanny ability, I’m talking about uncanny, where he would meet somebody and he’s just present and he has a way of remembering it and feeling like you’re the only person that’s important to him right now,” Laurinaitis said. “You can’t fake that. It’s authentic. And Marcus has those traits.”

At the start of training camp, Marcus Freeman called each class to the front of the football auditorium. Players stated their names, grades and hometowns. Then Freeman told each class to sing “The Victory March” together. Most of the seniors could get through it, maybe humming over a couple words. The freshmen had no chance.

“It was disastrous,” said freshman running back Gi’Bran Payne. “Maybe four or five guys could do it.”

Freeman also had the roster sing the alma mater, “Notre Dame, Our Mother,” after at least one team meeting every day. He made sure they understood why there are nine lines in each end zone pointing at a 42-degree angle toward the Golden Dome, because Notre Dame was founded in 1842.

“I had no idea,” said junior defensive lineman Howard Cross III. “Not trying to sound mean, I didn’t even notice they were there. ”

These are pages from the Book of Tressel, whose Name Test was renowned in Columbus. He required every player to memorize each teammate’s name, hometown and high school. Some players had to research All-Americans who had worn their number at Ohio State. Learning “Carmen Ohio,” the school alma mater, was mandatory.

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“To me, it’s an appreciation for what you have and appreciation of where you get to do it at,” Freeman said. “Does it correlate with winning? I think deep down, maybe it does.

“When you love what you’re doing and where you’re doing it at, and you own it … I think you sacrifice a little more for it when things get really hard. That’s my belief in my heart.”

On Saturday night the history of Notre Dame football and the history of Marcus Freeman will collide. The two most impactful men in Freeman’s life will be there to watch. How much Freeman’s blueprint for Notre Dame resembles the one Tressel used for Ohio State may help determine the outcome.

“I’m pretty, right now, emotionless about going back to Ohio State,” Freeman said. “But the emotions you have is that we get to play a great team. You get to go play in a great, hostile environment … like any competitor, you get those butterflies, you get that excitement about going into a place like that and going to compete against a great program like Ohio State.

“That to me is the focus.”

Notre Dame winning at Ohio State would be generational, the program’s biggest victory in nearly 30 years. It would validate Freeman as a head coach. It would move Notre Dame beyond Brian Kelly. It would change narratives about big games and just how good the Irish can be in modern college football. It would install Notre Dame as a national title contender.

If all that happens – Notre Dame hasn’t won as this big an underdog in 15 years – Freeman will find Ryan Day at midfield afterward to shake on it. He may even find Tressel on the sidelines to compare notes. He will definitely find his parents and brother for an embrace. Then Freeman will return to the visitor’s locker room of Ohio Stadium. His players will be there. They’ll sing “The Victory March.” Everyone will know the words.

(Illustration; Wes McCabe / The Athletic; photos: Robin Alam / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images; Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)

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