Since losing his first three games at the helm, Marcus Freeman’s Notre Dame football teams have improved each season.

The Notre Dame offensive lineman -- then a freshman -- and his teammates had just finished an 11-1 season only to be hit with the news that their head coach, Brian Kelly, was leaving for LSU while they still had an outside shot at making the College Football Playoff.

Notre Dame was going from Brian Kelly, a proven head coach with an extensive résumé and the school’s all-time leader in wins, to Marcus Freeman, who had been a defensive coordinator for only a few years and had spent only one season in South Bend, Ind.

In 1981, Clemson head coach Danny Ford became the youngest head coach to ever win a national championship at the age of 33. Ford led Clemson to a 12-0 season with multiple top-10 wins. The Tigers were crowned national champions after defeating Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.

I spoke to Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman about destiny. Now his Irish are playing for the national champinship. And there's more to the story.

Marcus Freeman's success at Notre Dame has put him on the radar for NFL teams looking for a new head coach, but he's not interested in talking about

Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman said he has put “zero thought” into coaching in the NFL despite reported interest this week from the Chicago Bears.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are appearing in their first National Championship game since 2012 and aiming for their first National Championship victory since 1988. It won’t be easy though, as the No.

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.