Sept. 23, 2023, was not the finest moment for Marcus Freeman or Ryan Day. Their football teams battled for three taut hours, and at the end everything went off the rails to a degree that left you wondering whether either guy was well-suited for their very demanding jobs.

Freeman’s Notre Dame Fighting Irish were trying to hold onto a 14–10 lead in the final seconds. With Day’s Ohio State Buckeyes just two yards from taking the lead, the Irish botched their substitutions and wound up with 10 men on the field defensively—not just for one play, but two in a row. That included the one where Ohio State running back Chip Trayanum budged the ball past the goal line—lunging right through the hole where a missing Notre Dame defensive lineman should have been.

That became a 48-hour tempest of reaction and criticism, during which Freeman stoically took the hits and blamed no staffers and players but himself. It was a brutal way for a young coach to lose a big game. 

But immediately afterward, Day chose a brutal way to win a big game. He bellowed on live TV about toughness and long-retired Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz and a lack of respect for his team. “It’s Ohio against the world!” He declared. Then in his postgame news conference, Day doubled down, continuing to go after octogenarian Holtz for comments he’d made on The Pat McAfee Show about Ohio State lacking toughness.

“A lot of people took a lot of shots at this team over the last 48 hours,” Day said, a hard edge to his voice. “That hit home with me. … You think we’re not physical and not tough? You’re wrong.

“We’re not going to stand for that. That’s not even close to true. I don’t know where that narrative comes from. That ends tonight. I don’t know where [Holtz] gets off just saying those things. I’ve got some more things I’d like to say, but I’m not going to say it because I’m more respectful than he is.”

This seemed like a masterclass in overreaction, aimed at an elderly man who had moved to the sport’s periphery. Day appeared to be caught up in listening to the “outside noise” coaches so often preach to block out.

Twenty-three football games later, both men have grown, evolved and improved to the point that they’ve proven their worth to be where they are. It hasn’t all been a clear path of triumph—Day still has his Michigan Wolverines recurring nightmare, and Freeman had the Northern Illinois Huskies debacle—but they’ve come a long way. They’ve each won a string of massive games in ways that underscore their abilities to recruit, prepare, coach and lead young players.

Monday night, 484 days after both Freeman and Day simultaneously spawned doubts about their ability to do it, one of them will win a national championship.

The great news for both men is that they have jobs where playing for a title is possible, with commensurate resources, revenue and institutional support. The bad news is that anything less than a title—someone has to lose Monday—means some percentage of the fan base will go back to saying they have a coach who can’t do it.

“When I think about the similarities, more than anything I think the expectations that both programs have for themselves,” said Freeman, who played at and graduated from Ohio State. “Every season you go into the season wanting to be national champions. Obviously Ohio State has achieved that goal in more recent years than we have, but those are the expectations, to be at the mountaintop.

“I think there’s not a tremendous amount of programs that can truly say that every year. I think that’s part of the reason why we’re both at these places. We want to be a part of a program that every year has expectations of being the best, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to try to achieve that result.”

At Notre Dame, where the last national title was in 1988, many have doubted during the intervening 36 seasons whether it could still be done. That included the longest-tenured coach in school history, Brian Kelly, who left in 2021 for LSU to chase a championship. That fateful decision turned out to be the elevating moment Notre Dame needed, promoting Freeman.

It was a bold master stroke by then-athletic director Jack Swarbrick, who could have hired any number of more established coaches. Instead, in a move that was heavily second-guessed, Swarbrick moved quickly to promote Freeman, with the enthusiastic support of the players in the program at the time.

At Freeman’s introduction, I wrote the following: “Rarely has Notre Dame been so likable for people not already predisposed to like Notre Dame. And rarely do you see and feel such unanimous excitement about a hire that carries no small element of risk. In introducing a charismatic people person, the Irish won the press conference Monday by as wide a margin as they usually lose College Football Playoff games.”

Now 39, Freeman has remained a likable figure while going 33–9 to this point at Notre Dame. The school would probably trade some of its newfound likability for an animosity-regenerating national championship Monday. 

Day’s record is even more spectacular at 69–10, but he’s been dogged by more pressure and more critics. Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden, who hired Day as a wide receivers coach at Temple in 2006, took issue with the famed Jim Harbaugh slam of ’21: “Sometimes people that are standing on third base think they hit a triple, but they didn’t.”

Said Golden on Saturday: “Ryan comes on his interview [at Temple] and basically everything he owned was in a duffel bag. People that said he had it easy, that’s all nonsense. He worked his ass off. He rose above some hardships, some tragedy [Day’s father died by suicide when he was young]. Worked his way from Temple to BC, back to Temple and then into the NFL. It wasn’t going great. I think at one point they got let go. He ends up at Ohio State. And the rest is history. So I couldn’t be more happy for anybody because of his work ethic and what he’s become.”

Day has checked every box except the two biggest boxes at Ohio State, beating Michigan regularly and winning a national championship. The fourth straight loss to the Wolverines on Nov. 30 was a new low, with Ohio Stadium turning on the Buckeyes and specifically on Day. Being there that day, it seemed impossible that he could continue as coach of the Buckeyes past this season. But the victories have piled up since then, and a national title is within reach, and even the infamous fringe of Ohio State fans who obsess all year about Michigan would have to be satisfied with the trade-off—lose the rivalry game, win it all.

What happens after Monday night? Freeman might interview with the Chicago Bears. Day could find some interest from the NFL as well. Both men have been so focused on the task at hand, trying to complete this long playoff run with a title, that they’ve had little to say about their futures. At the very least, both are in control of their futures at this point.

On a September night in 2023, that looked like it might not be the case for very long. These two coaches have come a long way since then.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as A 2023 Matchup Embarrassed Ryan Day, Marcus Freeman—Now They Play for a CFP National Championship.