There are elements of a Notre Dame football game day for first-year athletic director Pete Bevacqua that have a universal ring to them.
The “don’t bother me” stare if someone tries to distract him from the game’s action. The angst.
“Like every true Notre Dame fan, nervous until the very last second,” he said during a roughly 45-minute press conference at Notre Dame Stadium Tuesday ahead of a rare Friday night home game and a ground-breaking first-ever College Football Playoff game played on a college campus.
How rare?
The last time the Notre Dame football played a home game on a Friday game, before the upcoming CFP first-round 8 p.m. matchup (ABC/ESPN) between the No. 7 seed Irish (11-1) and 10th-seeded Indiana (11-1), was an Oct. 27, 1899 clash with Northwestern that ND won 12-0 decades before Notre Dame Stadium was built.
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That tidbit — and the correction that a 1900 game against Chicago Physicians and Surgeons, publicized as the most recent Friday home game and was actually played Thursday, Nov. 29 — was provided by friend, Cappy Gagnon — a 1966 ND grad, devoted Notre Dame historian and former head of the Notre Dame Stadium usher program.
Meanwhile, the 53-year-old Bevacqua’s game days might deviate some from the average fan experience. As in healthier than, say, grazing at a tailgate.
“I start every home game day super early in the morning by running around the lakes,” he said. “I think it's a great way for me to kind of see the campus start to get in the mood of the day before the campus really wakes up.”
But when the game kicks off Friday night, he’ll be right there in the elements, watching outside with the fans, not stuffed up in a luxury suite nibbling on caviar and foie gras.
And this time watching history unfold.
“People always ask me, ‘What's the best sporting event I've ever been to?’” Bevacqua said. “And I've been lucky, because of what I've done professionally, but I've always had an easy No. 1. I graduated in the spring of ‘93 and came back in the fall of ‘93 for that great Florida State game with Charlie Ward [No. 1 vs. No. 2].
“And that's where my expectations are heading into Friday, that type of atmosphere, where it felt like the whole country was focused singularly on a sporting event. And I think because we're the first game, because it's in Notre Dame Stadium, because it's going to be this great intrastate game in primetime on a Friday, I think it really has the chance to be a spectacular moment in sports, and spectacular — hopefully — moment in Notre Dame sports history. And certain things will be different, right?”
Three more first-round playoff games follow Saturday, with 11 seed SMU at 6 seed Penn State (noon on TNT), 12 seed Clemson at 5 seed Texas (4 p.m. on TNT) and 9 seed Tennessee at 8 seed Ohio State (8 p.m. on ABC/ESPN).
Bevacqua covered a lot of ground during his Tuesday press conference, including great detail about Friday’s game, and avoided a single dreaded word salad in the process of doing so.
Here are the most significant takeaways from that session with the media, his first since officially succeeding Jack Swarbrick on March 25:
The details and timing of Freeman’s contract extension
The news of a new six-year deal for third-year head football coach Marcus Freeman — two remaining years on the original contract and a four-year extension — spilled awkwardly into cyberspace Sunday evening, hours after Freeman himself had a press conference with no mention of it.
The lack of a university-driven press release helped give some shelf life to innuendo around the details that Bevacqua was able to clean up on Tuesday.
There’s no carve-outs/special clauses that would provide a trap door to either an opportunity in the NFL or for Freeman to parachute out to alma mater Ohio State, should that job come open before the contract runs its course through the end of the 2030 season.
There was not a bump in the assistant coaches’ salary pool, but rather a commitment to perpetuating being ahead of the curve in that regard.
“The conversations I had with Marcus were never about Marcus,” Bevacqua said. “It was always about his staff, which tells you a lot about him. The good news is we have been incredibly competitive with his staff, and it wasn't a question of catching up, because we're there.
“It's more a question of, ‘Hey, do I have your commitment — me, Pete — to stay there and to respond to changes in the marketplace?’ And I said, ‘Yes, 100%.’ I don't think it's any secret that we're keeping our foot on the gas.
“When you think about Marcus's extension, when you think about the assistant coaches that we have, when you think about the fact that if you go outside, you see the Shields Family Hall emerging from the ground. You know, Notre Dame football is a priority, and winning national championships is a priority.
“And I would tell you — and I said this to Marcus and we were laughing — you know, we're both kind of maniacally obsessed with winning a national championship and more in football.”
As for the timing?
“It's something I wanted to do, and I've been thinking about it all year,” Bevacqua said. “He's our coach. I want him and Notre Dame wants him to be our coach for the foreseeable future. This isn't about any game or any stretch of games. He is the right person to be our head coach, for on-the-field and off-the-field reasons.
“So, in talking with Marcus and primarily with his agent, Clint Dowdle, I just felt like it made sense. The regular season has ended. Let's get this done before the playoff game. Let's put it to rest.”
Notre Dame in step and embracing seismic change
There are really critical issues Notre Dame and other schools are dealing with in regard to the rapidly morphing college athletics model, with more on the way and little certainty about exactly how and when.
And it can all play to the average fan like random C-SPAN footage, ironic because Congress is getting deeply involved. And Bevacqua can rattle off every senator he and university president Robert A. Dowd has met with in being part of the process and not just watching it
And that’s the bottom line here.
Notre Dame is not running away from it, not investing in reasons to justify why it can’t swim in these deeper waters. Instead it is looking for ways to actively tether its academic mission to a modern business model.
And thrive. Without holding its nose.
The next date of note involves the NCAA’s historic settlement of an antitrust lawsuit (House Settlement) on April 7. That’s when U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken, as Bevacqua noted, will either approve it or comment on it.
“I think the expectation by many is that it will be approved,’ Bevacqua said. “Should it be approved, we have a plan in place to be prepared. If it is approved, we absolutely will meet the cap.”
The cap, as in direct payments from schools to student-athletes.
“We want to continue to be very aggressive in what we do in Notre Dame athletics,” Bevacqua said. “And while we’re still in the process of figuring out percentages and the dollar amount, the initial cap, we believe, will be slightly less than $22 million. It’ll be probably $20.5 million.
“There’s an automatic 4% escalator, then a series of look-in periods for that number to change. No secret, a large portion of that will be dedicated toward football. That’s important to us. I think you’ll see that across the nation. And again, we’re going to be strategic. We’re going to be aggressive.
“I think that compensation in a smart, strategic way is proper and benefits our student-athletes. And so again, we think this is a positive step should it get approved. And we think it will create some stability, but we still think it’s not a cure-all. It’s not a total solve. We need to keep having those conversations within the ACC, with the commissioners of the different conferences. …
“I think there's a potential for a moment of stability. You know, stability loosely defined. I think we do need support from Congress. And those are the conversations I and Father Bob and others have had with Congress. But there's this new CFP deal. There's the extension of the CFP deal with ESPN. I think there seems to be some calm in the waters of conference realignment.”
Making the transfer portal right-sized for ND and finding the right fits
Roughly six months ago, Notre Dame football director of scouting Matt Jansen started to accrue 30 to 50 transfer candidates at each position group, a tiny sector of whom in turn could be added to the Notre Dame roster for the 2025 season and many of who never considered entering the transfer portal when it actually opened on Dec. 9.
That exhaustive scouting and research — and paring down that followed — is what allowed the Irish to be so confident in lining up and landing Alabama defensive back Devonta Smith earlier this week, and whatever is yet to come in the portal cycle.
“I think Marcus says it best,” Bevacqua framed, “that Notre Dame has and will continue to major in high school students. That's the key for Notre Dame. That's the key for our football team, and that extends to all of our programs. I think [men's basketball coach] Micah Shrewsberry and [women's basketball coach] Niele Ivey would say the same thing.
“But you’ve got to be opportunistic. You can't turn a blind eye to the transfer market, to the transfer portal. When Notre Dame is engaged with — let's use football as the example with a potential transfer. There's already been a process. So yeah, it could happen quickly, and quickly could be 23, 24 hours, but the academic achievements, the academic positioning of that student-athlete has been vetted by [ND vice president for undergraduate enrollment] Micki Kidder and her team.”
It took eight recruiting cycles for the Irish football program to finally dip its toe into the grad transfer waters after the NCAA first introduced and enacted that concept in 2006, complete with no sit-out year for only those sorts of football transfers at that time.
The Irish only added three more scholarship-to-scholarship graduate imports over the ensuing five cycles that followed Florida defensive back Cody Riggs’ breakthrough transfer in 2014.
In the transfer cycle after Freeman’s first season as ND’s head coach, it took him three weeks to amass more than all those years combined. He finished with 10, including three who arrived as recruited walk-ons.
This past offseason the number was 11 total, including one non-grad transfer (QB Riley Leonard) and three walk-ons — and 12 total transfers when you count 24-year-old Australian import scholarship punter James Rendell.
“To [Freeman’s] credit and to Notre Dame's credit, I think so far we've really done remarkably well with the undergrad transfers,” Bevacqua said, :which have been more limited than the grad transfers that have come in.
“People who have come into the program and have just fit in, not just on the football field, but with Notre Dame, understanding what the academic rigors are, the academic requirements, understanding the culture of the team that coach Freeman has put together, and that's so very important to him.
“Get the right people here that can fit into Notre Dame and make us better.”
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