{"id":567639,"date":"2026-04-06T09:53:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T09:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/567639\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T09:53:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T09:53:17","slug":"marcus-freeman-explains-why-he-is-a-fan-of-fights-in-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/567639\/","title":{"rendered":"Marcus Freeman explains why he is a fan of fights in practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Notre Dame<\/a> isn\u2019t named the Fighting Irish by accident. Last week, Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman<\/a> revealed why he doesn\u2019t discourage players from fighting at practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese dudes are competitive. And I don\u2019t want them to lose that competitive spirit,\u201d Freeman said<\/a>. \u201cIf we don\u2019t have scuffles or tussles\u2026 then, we\u2019re probably not as competitive as I aspire to have our team to be. But we do have a simple rule. Two guys fighting is the max, and we\u2019re not gonna have full-team melees.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, if two guys are fighting, they\u2019re fighting. Everybody else\u2019s job is to break them up. And we have to be proactive about that in terms of showing them and teaching them. And our guys do an unbelievable job at pulling guys apart. Then, you\u2019re not wasting time. We got so much work to do, we can\u2019t waste two minutes breaking up a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notre Dame likely has plenty of frustration to get out this offseason. After suffering back-to-back losses to start the 2025 campaign, Notre Dame rattled off 10 consecutive wins.<\/p>\n

Two of the Fighting Irish\u2019s 10 wins were against ranked opponents. Only one of those two teams finished the season in the AP Top 25.<\/p>\n

The College Football Playoff<\/a> selection committee excluded Notre Dame from the 12-team playoff. It was disappointing outcome for the Fighting Irish, who had reached the national championship in the previous year.<\/p>\n

With an offseason to stew on its snub, Notre Dame is hungry to bounce back in 2026. While Marcus Freeman doesn\u2019t discourage his players from fighting at practice, he insists they leave any ill will on the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cMe and my brother, when we would fight, it\u2019s just like brothers, we fight. But there\u2019s a line you don\u2019t cross,\u201d Freeman said. \u201c\u2026 Everybody\u2019s line might be a little bit different. But that\u2019s ours.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf two guys are fighting, don\u2019t cross the line and don\u2019t take it off the field. It can\u2019t be personal. \u2026 If I hear about that, then we have a bigger issue. Our captains and our leaders gotta make sure we stop it or I ultimately do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next season will be Freeman\u2019s fifth season at the helm of Notre Dame. He\u2019d led the program to a 43-11 record during his tenure. Multiple NFL teams showed interest in hiring Freeman this offseason, but he ultimately decided to return to South Bend for another season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Notre Dame isn\u2019t named the Fighting Irish by accident. Last week, Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman revealed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,171205,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-567639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-marcus-freeman-04-wayne","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}