I.B.Nation.

IB Nation college football fans, Notre Dame fans. Welcome back to another episode after almost a week off, the Irish Breakdown podcast brought to by our friends over at Fanduil. Hope everybody had a happy holidays. Hope everybody had a Merry Christmas. A lot of traveling on my part. So happy to be back home, kind of back in the home setup. And we have another fun loaded show coming your guys as way, especially after being off for a week. We're going to get this thing kicked off and started, kind of like a news and like news report, news and notes, things that have happened in the last couple of days, really the last week. And then we're going to dive into the discussion of his Notre Dame truly a line-driven program. We're going to kind of evaluate that on both sides of the ball. And then we're going to wrap everything up today with the mailbag. A lot of breaking news. We haven't talked to you guys in about a week. So you have questions, comments, concerns, put a little MB for mailbag or a little mailbox emoji in there. Let's us know to set your question aside. But Brian, good to see you after about a week. We have a lot of things to get covered today, man. Oh, yeah. I mean, so it was funny, Trev, before the show started, we were going to going over the outline. And I told you, hey, listen, I was told a week ago that that Marcus Freeman's extension was going to be announced this week. And in typical Notre Dame fashion, that it was like no kind of like actual real announcement with really, real information to us, just, you know, sourcing given to national media about the details of things. And so, but I was told last Monday, Treb, I think I told you even on Monday when I was driving home from my vacation, that something's going to be announced for the next week.

And it was.

It was a week later, Marcus Freeman announced he's coming back.

It wasn't announced sooner because Coach Freeman was on vacation last week with his family for Christmas, which is a much-deserved vacation for a coach who goes very hard during the season.

And then obviously with a very short off-season in 2025, you know, obviously summers are now about recruiting. They didn't have very little, they had very little time between the end of the season and spring ball starting. So, I mean, this staff and this coach, and especially Coach Freeman, have been going kind of consistently here for well over a year. I think he needed some time away with his family, much deserved

time away with his family. Now that he's back, he's announcing that he's coming back for 2026,

going to run it back in 2026. If you're a premium member at Irish breakdown, you're not surprised

by this. I've been given my opinion on this multiple times. My concern of Marcus Freeman leaving

was not this season. I anticipated him being back

this season. All of my good sources told me he'd be back this season. Next season's a different

conversation. And hopefully, you know, certain things change between now and then. But our focus

right now is going to be on the fact that Marcus Freeman will be back for the 2026 season.

And Trevor, I wasn't overly concerned about him leaving this offseason.

Like I said, it's more so next season.

But it is nice to kind of have that officially over that Marcus Freeman is officially announced

he's going to come back.

Knowing Marcus Freeman like I do, and I don't know him that well personally, but like I know I know of him.

I know about him. I know a lot about him and those type of things. I'd be shocked if some job

came along that would get him to kind of go back on his word of he's coming back in 2026.

I'd be really shocked by that. I just don't see that happening. I think we as Notre Dame fans can kind of rest easy and say, okay, it's back for 26. Now we can actually start focusing on this 2026 football team. And so that's obviously a bit of good news there for Notre Dame. It was reported by Pat 40, what we kind of knew to be true. This isn't just Freeman announced he's coming back. This is part of a deal that's been worked out with Notre Dame. Freeman is now going to be one of the highest paid coaches in college football. Notre Dame doesn't normally reduce or release that type of information, but you can be, if you look at what some other coaches are getting paid, you know, take the top of that list and you'll see Freeman is going to be in that category. And honestly, he's earned it.

And a lot of people say, well, you know, you haven't, you haven't won a championship yet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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