Freeman hire at Notre Dame is a lesson in player power and changing times

Much of the attention in the college football world over the past month has been directed at a coaching carousel thrown into hyperdrive, with 28 schools out of 130 at the sport’s top level changing head coaches for one reason or another.

And much of the chatter surrounding all the tumult has focused on Brian Kelly finding his southern roots and bolting Notre Dame for Louisiana State.

Reporters and pundits have drawn attention to the 60-year-old Kelly for a bunch of reasons. He never led the Fighting Irish to a national title, yet left while his 11-1 team still had a chance at a playoff spot; he broke up with his team by text; the Massachusetts native suddenly found a southern accent; and then there’s the gobsmacking size of his new contract, which starts at $95 million over 10 years before incentives.

To be honest, as a Notre Dame alum and fully indoctrinated Irish cult member, I get why journalists would hone it on all that stuff.

But as someone who watches the sports industry as part of my professional life, and has developed a little distance from South Bend thanks to my role at Penn State, what really stands out about the Notre Dame situation is the unusually strong influence players had — both explicitly and implicitly — in the hiring of defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman as the new coach.

It’s worth pointing this out because it shows some ways players have gained power in the last decade plus, and points to what that might mean in the future, which could affect schools not named Notre Dame.

So let’s run through it.

Explicitly, almost as soon as Kelly walked out of a too-little-too-late meeting with a team that had won 10 games or more for five seasons in a row, players began lobbying for the popular Freeman to replace him on Twitter, in podcasts and more. It might seem an obvious point, but Twitter only debuted in 2007, and it’s one of the older social media platforms out there.

The lesson? If they choose to, players can make their feelings known in ways previous generations simply could not.

The impact of the players was acknowledged by ND Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick, who met with the Irish team captains shortly after Kelly left. “The perspective that those seven captains offered to me put a heavy finger on the scale in favor of coach Freeman,” Swarbrick said at the introductory news conference for the new head man.

And Freeman himself talked about player power a few days earlier, when he first spoke to the team as coach, after being introduced as head coach to the players in a moment that was captured for, you guessed it, social media.

“The reason why I’m standing here is because of you,” Freeman said. “And it’s unbelievable how powerful you guys are.”

Now, what really gets interesting is the implicit player power behind all this — which again is a change from the way things used to be.

From the early 1980s through 2016, when coach openings occurred after the regular season or after bowl games, the schools searching for coaches had a small window to fill the post before recruits could officially commit for the next season. In other words, Coach A at Big School got fired or left, recruits wavered in their loyalty to Big School, and then Coach B was hired and did what he could to keep the class together before signing day in February. That’s the old model.

But as of 2017, recruits have been able to sign letters of intent much earlier, in December. And Notre Dame’s class this year happens to be ranked fourth by ESPN as of this writing — a great year by Irish standards — with Freeman getting a lot of credit as a recruiter. The recruits sign this Wednesday.

Meanwhile, as sports fans know, the NCAA created the transfer portal in 2018, allowing players to change schools and play immediately, without sitting out for a year or losing eligibility. So players who don’t like a coaching change can walk — showing their disapproval by leaving for another team.

Put that all together in real time for Notre Dame and what did it mean? That, if the Irish didn’t hire Freeman, and do so before signing day, they risked devastating their incoming recruiting class. Not only that, with a current team that got younger as the season went on, mostly due to injury, a good chunk of next year’s talent could split for another school if they weren’t happy. The consequences of a bad move could last for years.

Facing that pressure, along with the promise of Freeman’s charisma and stellar credentials, Notre Dame really only had one choice.

It’s been a year when football coaching salaries have gone wild, and one has to wonder whether those numbers will force a change in the disparity between compensation for the guys on the sideline and the guys on the field. Now, after Notre Dame’s coaching drama, I’m also wondering whether united players will be making their voices heard at other schools — and on other issues — more forcefully in the years to come.