Notre Dame Fighting Irish Head Coach Marcus Freeman celebrates with his team after winning the game against Penn State Nittany Lions at Hard Rock Stadium on January 9, 2025 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Michael Pimentel – ISI Photos / Getty Images)
By Joe Saunders January 10, 2025 at 9:24am
It was a question that didn’t deserve to be asked — but it got an answer far better than it deserved.
After Notre Dame’s victory over Penn State at the Orange Bowl Thursday night, ESPN reporter Molly McGrath nearly managed to stain the celebration by asking Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman a question that focused on his skin color.
But Freeman batted it aside — with a quiet, classy simplicity race-baiters could learn a lot from.
Check it out here:
ESPN reporter tries to play the race card with ND Head Coach Marcus Freeman – Freeman turns it down. pic.twitter.com/oHfxoxRb3F
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 10, 2025
“You are the first black head coach to go to a national championship game in college football,” McGrath said, as the crowd roared.
“Just hearing that response alone, how much does mean to you?”
There’s no telling what McGrath or her corporate masters at Disney-owned ESPN were hoping for. Maybe she thought she could spark some sort of screed, a grievance-laden, pseudo-scientific mixture of sports and race in America in 2025.
Was McGrath’s question out of line?
What she got was Freeman answering the question like a football coach, like an American, and like a man. And he did it in a way that obliterated the premise of the question.
“I’ve said this before, I don’t ever want to take attention away from the team,” he said.
“It is an honor, and I hope all coaches — minorities, black, Asian, white, it doesn’t matter, great people — continue to get opportunities to lead young men like this. But this ain’t about me. This is about us. We’re going to celebrate what we’ve done because it’s so special.”
The key part of that sentence is “it doesn’t matter.” Freeman wasn’t interested in talking skin color, he wasn’t interested in delivering a discourse on “diversity,” on “injustice” or whatever buzzword the left wants to throw out there today.
He was interested in celebrating the moment with his team of young men who’d just reached the pinnacle of their college sport.
And the social media reaction was overwhelming — praising Freeman’s answer and bashing McGrath’s question. Here’s a sample:
I like this guy. He’s had to say this multiple times and the media still throws the race card at him. THEY want his race to be the story and his answers always humbly focus on the team. I feel a change and a movement back to merit, not skin color, determining who we are.
— Someone Important (@justimportant2) January 10, 2025
It’s always about race with these guys.
— BlueCollarPatriot (@JustinSutliffe) January 10, 2025
Race-baiting failed epically! Good for him.
— Nick (@nofiltersnick) January 10, 2025
Kudos to Marcus Freeman for shutting down the race card! His focus on team success over identity politics is a winning mentality that America needs more of. Reminds me of Trump’s “winning, not whining” attitude.
— GABRIEL (@TheGabriel72) January 10, 2025
And then there was this one, asking the question that really matters when it comes to journalists missing the point:
Why is the left so obsessed with race?
— Will (@NoLeftTurns) January 10, 2025
There’s no question that leftists — and the progressives in charge of American establishment media outlets — are obsessed with race, and presenting a skewed racial narrative that will further leftist political goals. (Jussie Smollett is still in the news, after all.)
But there are signs the country could be waking up.
The election of President-elect Donald Trump for a second shot at the White House is doubtless the biggest, of course. His backing among black and Hispanic voters — as reported in exit polls — was a stunning rebuttal to the endless liberal accusations that Trump supporters are racist.
But there are other signs, as major corporations are also backing away from the hideous “diversity, equity and inclusion” propaganda that only makes things worse.
The United States is a long way from perfect — no human endeavor will ever be perfect — but it remains the greatest, freest country on earth, with a system built to reward individual achievement, and the achievements of teams of individuals working together.
Marcus Freeman’s answer, in front of a stadium full or fans and a national TV audience, was one more sign of what is possible.
The reflexive race-baiters will likely learn nothing, of course. But the rest of the country just might.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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