DANIA BEACH, Fla. – As Notre Dame and Penn State meet in tonight’s Orange Bowl, two power programs seeking to end national title droughts that stretch back to the late 1980s, it won’t just be about head coaches Marcus Freeman and James Franklin.
Instead, there will be five head coaches on the field inside Hard Rock Stadium – four of them current or former Power Conference leaders.
Freeman’s Notre Dame staff features former Miami Hurricanes and Temple head coach Al Golden as its defensive coordinator; Franklin has ex-Indiana head man Tom Allen running his defense, as well as former NCAA Division II head coach Justin Lustig as special teams coordinator.
It’s a similar tale in Friday night’s Cotton Bowl pitting Ohio State against Texas for a spot in the Jan. 20 College Football Playoff Championship in Atlanta.
Steve Sarkisian has former Rutgers head coach Kyle Flood as his Texas offensive coordinator and offensive line coach; Ryan Day’s Buckeyes staff features former Oregon, UCLA and NFL head coach Chip Kelly triggering the offense and former FCS head coach Jim Knowles orchestrating the defense.
Plus, as Franklin notes, there’s likely additional future head coaches on all these staffs.
“Being able to have guys on your staff that got tremendous experience -- my special teams coordinator has been a head coach, my defensive coordinator has been a head coach, my offensive coordinator (Andy Kotelnicki) will be a head coach, and I've got a ton of assistants like that, as well,” said Franklin, who shepherded Vanderbilt’s program before taking over 11 years ago at Penn State.
“Just the more guys you can have on your staff that have tremendous experience -- I think sometimes when you go back to being an assistant after being a head coach, it makes you a better assistant. I think it makes you a better coordinator.”
Notre Dame graduate-senior linebacker Jack Kiser has unique perspective. He knows three of the head coaches involved in tonight’s tilt quite well.
“I think you really see that just with (Coach Golden’s) poise and the way he’s able to galvanize the defense,” said Kiser, a two-time Notre Dame graduate who will extend his program record to a 69th career game. “You look at our defensive unit meetings and the way he shows his fire and gets the guys pumped up and ready to go out and play for him, you can just tell he has that head coach niche to him.
“Coach Allen, I was fortunate enough to be recruited by him and I remember seeing that from him, too. You could just see his passion and the way he talks to his players. I’m sure the Penn State defense feels that for him, too.”
For Freeman, the hiring of Golden to complete his inaugural staff in early 2022 – after Golden had helped coach the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals to a Super Bowl berth – was about both experience and philosophy.
“When I hired Al Golden three years ago, it was for two reasons. One, I believed he had a great defensive mind and could do great things with our defense,” said Freeman, who turns 39 on Friday, “but two, at that point we did not have a former head coach on our staff, and I thought it was important to get somebody that had experience where I had none on our staff.
“The growth we've made in three years has been tremendous, right, the growth of our defense. And our defense is doing really great things right now, and Coach Golden gets all the credit, and that staff and the players.”
In this first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff, Freeman found he could tap into the knowledge of both Golden and associate head coach/running backs coach Deland McCullough, who won a Super Bowl as a Kansas City Chiefs assistant.
“I've never had experience in a playoff, so I spent some time talking to Coach Golden who had in the NFL, Deland McCullough our running backs coach who had in the NFL, and some of our other coaches that had experience dealing with the playoff in terms of the mentality, in terms of how we practiced, and some different things,” Freeman said.
“I believe in them. I believe in trying to gain wisdom from other people that have experience. That was a huge part in the decision making of hiring Al Golden.”