For as excited as we all get for the start of every college football season, it’s the tail end of the season where we often find ourselves in the middle of the loudest parts of the season. The college football playoff
rankings, coach firings, National Signing Day, Awards season, Rivalry week, and so much more are flying around our heads like the jolting sound waves at a Tool concert. Some call it noise… some call it perfection.
It’s what makes the college football season continually better than every other sport’s regular season might just be this “noise” that we have to endure, because it’s what sets itself apart from everything else. Notre Dame fans are certainly experiencing this sensation right now — pretty much all of it, and most of it is 100% welcomed.
That is, of course, all of it that doesn’t include Marcus Freeman being employed somewhere else next season. There really isn’t a college football job open in which Freeman’s name hasn’t been mentioned as a possibility (real or unreal). Now, this coaching move noise, has reached the ranks of the NFL with the New York Giants in particular. Freeman was asked about this at his weekly Thursday Zoom session, and he offered this response:
“I feel like it’s necessary, I do. A lot of times in things I say to the team, it may come out in terms of, a great example, is, ‘What’s the noise you’re putting in your head?’ Just because the noise in somebody else’s head is one thing, doesn’t mean it has to be your noise.
“And so, as I told them, I’m sure I’ve said before, like just because somebody else might be saying my name’s up for whatever job or being considered, that isn’t the noise that I’m going to put in my head or I need, that ain’t my noise.
“And so, I can address it directly, indirectly. If I’m going to spend time talking about something like that, I’ve got to make sure it’s in a way that it’s beneficial for the players, right? Your time in front of the players is so limited.
“And so, if I can use it as an example, I will, but also more than anything, I want to make sure that I can give them some type of message to make sure that they’re doing something positive for themselves.”
As a Notre Dame fan, I think I would like to hear something more definitive than, “that ain’t my noise,” but Freeman is always looking to use anything and everything he can as a toll or a message to his team. It’s why his answers are full of mantras and old school wisdoms, and they lack short, and more definitive responses.
But Freeman is right. It’s nothing to be worried about right now. It’s only noise when you let it be. Notre Dame has a job to do this weekend and that’s to utterly destroy Pitt, and to keep marching toward the college football playoff. It ain’t his noise — and it shouldn’t be our noise.
