Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman made history on Thursday night, but he was not prepared to talk about it.
Freeman became the first Black head coach to lead a Division I program to a national championship game when he coached the Fighting Irish to a win over Penn State in the College Football Playoff semifinal on the night.
The 39-year-old’s father is Black and his mother is South Korean, which also makes him the first coach of Asian descent to compete in the CFP.
His ethnicity came up after the game, with an ESPN reporter pointing it out. But Freeman refused to be drawn into speaking about race, keeping the attention on the team and stating he hoped all coaches could have an opportunity to lead young men such as the ones on his roster.
“I’ve said this before: I don’t ever want to take attention away from the team,” he said. “It is an honor, and I hope all coaches — minorities, Black, Asian, white, it doesn’t matter, great people — continue to get opportunities to lead young men like this. But this ain’t about me. This is about us. We’re going to celebrate what we’ve done because it’s so special.”
