Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman said Wednesday that he was misquoted in remarks construed as critical of academics at Ohio State, his alma mater.
The Fighting Irish and Buckeyes open the 2022 season Sept. 3 in Columbus.
Speaking on 97.1 The Fan with former Buckeye teammates Bobby Carpenter and Anthony Schlegel, Freeman said he did not disparage Ohio State in comments he made to CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd at a speaking event to Notre Dame boosters in St. Louis.
In the CBS Sports story, Freeman compares academics at Notre Dame with those at Ohio State and Cincinnati, where he was the Bearcats’ defensive coordinator.
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“You don’t go to class (at places like that)?” Freeman was quoted as saying rhetorically in the CBS Sports story. “OK, take some online classes, show up for your appointments. At Notre Dame, you’re forced every day to go to class.”
Marcus Freeman leaves the field after Notre Dame defeated Purdue at Notre Dame Stadium. (Matt Cashore, USA TODAY Sports)
Wednesday, Freeman said he used the comparison only to contrast Notre Dame’s limited capacity to have online classes as a much smaller school than Ohio State or Cincinnati.
“I wanted to set the record straight in that I was misquoted by Dennis Dodd in this article, and key words and context were missing from the quote that upset a lot of people that I care about,” Freeman said. “I’m very proud of my two degrees from Ohio State. I would never discredit the quality of education those degrees represented.”
He said the CBS Sports story left out the word “if” at the beginning of the sentence referring to attending class. CBS Sports has subsequently changed its story to add the word to the quote.
“When you see a quote that says Marcus Freeman says, ‘You don’t go to class a place like that,’ that changes the entire narrative, right?”
He said he was making the point that Notre Dame, with an enrollment of about 8,500, didn’t even offer online classes until…