Marcus Freeman gets a rare opening on Sunday night: a chance to beat the coach who helped shape him and do it in a game that carries plenty of personal history.
Notre Dame and Wisconsin may not be rivals in the traditional sense, but the matchup has no shortage of familiar faces. Freeman and Badgers coach Luke Fickell know each other well, and their shared past runs deep enough to give this Week 1 meeting a different kind of edge.
Fickell coached Freeman at Ohio State before the two crossed paths again at Cincinnati, where Freeman worked as the Bearcats’ defensive coordinator under his former position coach. The respect between them is obvious, but so is the competitive fire.
“I got a lot of respect for Luke Fickell,” Freeman told the assembled media during his first press conference during a game week of the year. “At the end of the day, it's not about us.
It's about our team and our program, but it'll be good to see him pregame. I haven't seen him in a while.
I have a lot of respect for him.”
Freeman also said Fickell played a major role in shaping who he is and helping get him to this point.
Fickell returned the sentiment on Monday, sounding genuinely pleased to see Freeman leading Notre Dame into the matchup.
"I've known him for a long time, and I've been around some really good coaches,” explained Fickell at his own press conference on Monday. “Coaches like that continue to find ways to make themselves even better. So seeing the growth of that program and that team from afar, there is a part of it that makes you happy about it, having a history with a lot of the guys that are there with that staff.”
The coaching connections don’t stop with Freeman and Fickell. Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock, quarterbacks coach Gino Guidugli and receivers coach Mike Brown all worked for Fickell at Cincinnati.
Guidugli and Brown later followed Fickell to Wisconsin before Freeman brought them back. Joe Rudolph also has a relationship with Fickell from his time as a grad assistant at Ohio State, when Fickell was the linebackers coach.
Chris Ash and Fickell were co-defensive coordinators together when they won the national title in 2014.
Those overlapping histories make Sunday night feel like more than a season opener. There’s plenty of familiarity on both sidelines, and plenty of competitive pride too. When the game kicks off, neither staff will be thinking about old friendships for long.
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