MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman has a simple mantra for his team going into 2026: Leave no doubt.
Freeman’s season started with a loss to Miami at Hard Rock Stadium. And Freeman was back in that stadium on Monday, for the Miami-Indiana final in the College Football Playoff national championship game. He was brought in to appear on ESPN programming.
He said in a pregame appearance on ESPN that, after a day or so, Notre Dame’s disappointment about missing the CFP field had to subside and the team had to move on.
“My message was, ‘It’s up to us to leave no doubt.’ We left doubt,” Freeman said. “We lost by four, five points the first two games. We left doubt.”
Notre Dame started 0-2, with losses to Miami and Texas A&M. They didn’t lose again, going 10-0 but ended up as the first team out of the playoff.
Miami passed Notre Dame in the final ranking, largely because of the Hurricanes’ Week 1 win.
“At first, when you find out, you’re disappointed. You get in front of your team and you don’t have the answers for why,” Freeman said. “And this was never a situation where we deserved to be in the playoffs in front of Miami or Alabama or anything like that. This was, ‘OK, the rankings have shown if we continue to win on the path that we were winning, it looks like we’re going to make the playoffs.’ And we didn’t.”
The Irish will see Miami again next season, playing host to the Hurricanes on Nov. 7.
Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here. AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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