Storylines? Oh, There are Lots of Storylines Heading into the Fiesta Bowl
Notre Dame played Stanford a little over a month ago. That month has felt like a lifetime for Notre Dame fans everywhere. Since that last game of the season, Notre Dame has lost its all-time winningest coach, replaced him and still almost made the playoffs. The Fighting Irish were the first team out of the playoffs, which landed them in a New Years Six Bowl Game. Not bad for a team that, coming into the season, was considered in a “rebuilding” year. Notre Dame will face Oklahoma State on January 1st in the Fiesta Bowl. There are just a few storylines, so let’s get into them.
The biggest one is easy. The Fiesta Bowl will be Head Coach Marcus Freeman’s first game leading the Fighting Irish. What a way to start off your head coaching career. When news broke that Brian Kelly was leaving Notre Dame for LSU that Monday after the Stanford game, Freeman was on top of my list of coaches I would want to take over the program. Obviously Notre Dame never looked at my list (shocking), but I wasn’t the only one who wanted Freeman as the next Head Coach. Current, former and future players made it known that they all wanted Freeman too. It was a quick search, and Freeman was named head coach less than a week after the last game of the regular season. So Freeman makes his head coaching debut on Jan 1st vs a top 10 team with Ok St. To add more to this, it’s in a New Years Six bowl game, and if you know anything about Notre Dame football, the words “New Years six Bowl” should give you PTSD…which leads us into our next storyline.
Coming into this Fiesta Bowl game vs Ok St., Notre Dame is on a 9-game New Years Six/BCS Bowl game losing streak that dates back to 1996. Notre Dame’s last big bowl win was 1994, when Notre Dame beat Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl. During this 9-bowl game losing streak, the Irish have been blown out in almost all of those games. So the national narrative is that Notre Dame can no longer win the big bowl game. I believe this is the year Notre Dame can, and will, end that losing streak.
Like every big bowl game that isn’t the College Football Playoffs, players will choose to skip the bowl game and go pro or enter the transfer portal. Notre Dame has two big names that have elected to skip the bowl game and focus on the NFL draft. Kyle Hamilton and Kyren Williams will both skip the game and get ready for the draft. Since his freshman year, Notre Dame fans could tell Hamilton was a 3-year and then draft player, so we had time to accept that. It’s not a surprise that Williams is leaving, but him not playing is a bit surprising. Unlike Hamilton, Williams is not a top 5 NFL draft pick; so another game could have only helped Williams in my opinion. It will suck without both, but I get the reasons – you gotta stay healthy and go get paid at the next level. Even without those two, Notre Dame has more than enough talent to win this game.
I would have been very excited for this game if Brian Kelly was still the head coach, but I am even more excited to watch Marcus Freeman lead the Notre Dame football team on Saturday. This team has looked locked in ever since we found out who the next head coach was. This team loves Freeman and wants nothing more than to make sure they get him his first win in this giant game.