Welcome back, everybody, to another edition of Irish Illustrated Insider.

It's Thursday, January 4th, and I am Tim Priester with Tim O'Malley of Irish Illustrated.

We were joined once again by Pete Sampson of the Athletic.

And Pete, I wanted to start with you because you weren't with us for our Tuesday podcast, January

2nd. Just some leftover thoughts from the Sun Bowl, as we talked about, O'Malley and I did on Tuesday.

Great weather in El Paso. It made a big difference compared to 13 years ago. And Nardame played

again, all the credit in the world for Marcus Freeman. There's a lot of teams out there that

weren't ready to play their bowl game. Nor Dame was definitely one that was ready. And

credit to Marcus Freeman and his coaching staff and the players, of course. Yeah, I agree with

that. I agree with what you said on

Monday, not to sound like a bowl representative, but like I thought the Sun Bowl did a great job.

I mean, it was well organized and, you know, they took care of the media down there. I think

they took care of the teams down there. So they it's a it's a nice bowl.

Um, yeah, everything about it was better than 13 years ago for Notre Dame and anyone who covered it. So we'll credit to the Sun Bowl there. I thought, you know, Marcus Freeman, it was, um, an opportunity that he took advantage of to kind of put his fingerprints over the program a little bit more.

The players that played took the message that he was putting down and ran with it and beat the crap out of Oregon State with it.

And I don't think that sort of happens by accident. and ran with it and beat the crap out of Oregon State with it.

And that, I don't think that sort of happens by accident.

I thought that the players that opted out,

um,

I don't know if they would have been all in if they had participated.

And I think that the players that did play were all in.

I know you guys sort of referenced Bertrand a little bit on the show earlier this week.

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