Welcome to a post-press conference edition of Irish Illustrated Insider.

I'm Tim O'Malley joined by the full house backfield today of Tim Priester and Drew Mentock of Irish Illustrated,

John Bryce of Football Scoop, and guys, we spoke with Marcus Freeman today for the first time since National Signing Day,

and that predated the playoff snub. So we will get to Freeman's

commentary on that. But I think we want to get to the most important thing of the January

2 to January 16 of our lives apparently, the sprint that is the transfer portal. And John

Bryce, I use that word. With Marcus Freeman, I use the word as more of a miler because he mentioned

that Mike Martin

told him we got to run our own race coach. And if recruiting is a marathon, this transfer portal is a

sprint and miler and Notre Dame got a little bit of a late start, but it is truly not how you start,

but how you finish. All this running talk has to be fatigued, but Notre Dame has.

I thought it done quite well this week in the transfer portal or in the past few days.

And I thought it was interesting for Marcus Freeman to say sort of unprompted.

I believe we got as much talent in the transfer portal as anybody in the country.

It was a different race for Notre Dame. It was a completely

different operation for Notre Dame this year because guys didn't, there were no wasted visits

in the past for people coming to Notre Dame on the portal with the exception or like a

a Braden Fisk. And that was earlier in the Bidding War era. But in recent years, Riley Leonard was coming to

pick out where he would live, not to see if he would live and play for Notre Dame. And similar

to Malachi Fields, Malachi Fields, that deal was done. And then he came and checked out Notre Dame

still came despite the, despite the cold because he was signed. But Notre Dame had a more

deliberate approach. There was

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