How that 2025 CFP snub helped Notre Dame football this offseason
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SOUTH BEND ― Nobody associated with Notre Dame football could see it or sense it in the moment, let alone rationalize how it might be of help down the road.
The road the Irish currently travel.
From the head coach to the captains, the assistant coaches to the support staff, everyone was adrift in their own college football fog that Sunday afternoon in early December. No amount of clarity could clear their then-cluttered minds. Not after they watched the logo of the U (Miami, Fla.) appear on television instead of an interlocking ND, which guaranteed that the 2025 Irish would not get a chance to chase a national championship.
In a weird way, months later, as winter hung around South Bend with a layer of snow on the ground and a biting wind ripping through the north end tunnel area of Notre Dame Stadium, the snub of being told to sit and watch the 2025 College Football Playoff is a gift that keeps on giving.
To Notre Dame.
It gave fifth-year head coach Marcus Freeman the mantra for 2026. Leave No Doubt, a phrase that Freeman first offered in January and repeated several times Wednesday during his 31-minute meeting with the media to kick-start spring practice season. Leave No Doubt during the recently completed winter conditioning program. Leave No Doubt in the upcoming 15 workouts. Leave No Doubt in the annual spring game. Ah, well, never mind. That’s not so much a game as it is a glorified practice. Leave that.
Leave No Doubt in summer and during fall camp and in each of the 12 regular-season games that await in 2026. So, there’s that. Mantra assured. You heard it Wednesday and you’ll hear it a lot as spring becomes summer and summer becomes fall and fall becomes winter around a Notre Dame team that many believe have all the pieces to chase the school’s 12th national championship.
Thanks to no return trip to the 2025 College Football Playoff, and no bowl game at all, a first for that program since 2016, Notre Dame had the chance to start laying the foundation for 2026 earlier than anyone imagined. That’s good. That’s a gift.
Last winter, after the longest season in school history (16 games), Notre Dame took an NBA-like approach to the offseason. The core returning guys from a team that went 14-2 worked through college football’s version of NBA load management. Sit. Relax. Rest. Some took it easy in the spring, be it winter conditioning, practices or both. After an exhausting season, the main guys needed a break.
This group can rest next February.
Eight weeks ago, Notre Dame jumped with both feet into a winter conditioning program that effectively ended Tuesday. Eight weeks of basically uninterrupted football stuff. Eight weeks that likely felt like eight months. All devoted to winter conditioning. Devoted to football school, as Freeman put it.
“More individual drill time than we’ve ever had,” he said. “We’re at a different level.”
A level that puts the Irish further along than many other previous Irish teams when the first spring practice period horn sounds sometime after sunrise Friday morning. It may still be too early to say if Notre Dame is indeed a national championship-worthy outfit in March, but at least it will look like one.
Those eight weeks of uninterrupted football will allow Notre Dame to do stuff this spring that it didn’t do that early last spring. More seven-on-seven. More 11-on-11. More inside run drills. More work and less hand holding. More.
“We’re going to do more good on good,” Freeman said. “We’re going to do more football.”
That’s never a bad idea for a group that was last seen by outside eyes on a football field on Nov. 29, 2025, 1,950 miles away at Stanford. That season finale seems like it was forever ago. Notre Dame will look different Friday than it did on that night in Northern California.
All-everything running back/Superhero Jeremiyah Love is gone. Tight end Eli Rairdon is gone. Wide receivers Malachi Fields and Will Pauling are gone. The entire defensive assistant coaching staff outside of coordinator Chris Ash, all of them, gone.
Gone, but like the CFP snub, not forgotten. Over those 15 workouts stretched across 36 days, table that memory. Go get better. Be the best version of your spring self. We’ll circle back to it in time. It doesn’t matter. Not yet. Bring it out in September and October. Let them sting in November and December.
This offseason was unexpectedly long, and that’s OK. This regular season is expected to again run long. Another CFP appearance. Another few big-time bowl games. Another appearance in the national championship game, this year, in Las Vegas. Yes, please.
Freeman could have stepped to the podium in his presser and guaranteed that the Irish will be a CFP finalist, but he didn’t. He could have vowed that the Irish will win their first national championship since 1988, but he didn’t. He could have said that this group is the best collection of talent he’s ever had as a head coach, but he didn’t.
He kept it very Freeman like. Low-key cool, confident, committed. New season, same Freeman.
No soap opera-like storylines surfacing from Wednesday’s presser, and that’s fine. There will be plenty of time for that in fall. Quiet is good. Keep it that way. Let spring unfold with a returning quarterback (what a concept?), a defense that might be borderline great and a group that has no shortage of motivation.
Leave No Doubt. Choose Hard. There will be time to trot back out all of Freeman’s snappy slogans. Spring is here and that’s the next step.
Take one and thank those 2025 CFP selection committee members later.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame football ready to get rolling with 2026 spring practice
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