There’s a history of Cincinnati influence in South Bend, including Kelly, who spent three seasons with the Bearcats before taking the Notre Dame job. A year before Kelly poached Freeman, he hired Bearcats defensive backs coach Mike Mickens, a Cincinnati alum who was a teammate of Freeman’s at Wayne High School outside of Dayton.

On the first day of 2021, then-coach Luke Fickell took his University of Cincinnati Bearcats football team to Atlanta to face the Georgia Bulldogs in the Peach Bowl. Still coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic,

Never mind that coaching salaries soar into the eight figures for guys who’ve never won a national championship or that exorbitant buyouts protect some failing coaches. Yes, indeedy, the echo chamber says coaching college football is a fool’s errand nowadays.

Here is an in-depth look at Marcus Freeman, who has piqued the Bears' interest following his historic season at Notre Dame.

FOX Sports' Michael Cohen explains how Marcus Freeman constructed Notre Dame's roster and how the Fighting Irish are winning at such an elite level without a handful of five-star prospects.