Sports

Marcus Freeman’s moment is significant for Black coaches: ‘It gives us validation’

Published

1 year ago

January 18, 2025

Marcus Freeman’s moment is significant for Black coaches: ‘It gives us validation’

Minutes after Notre Dame beat Georgia to clinch a berth in the College Football Playoff semifinals against Penn State earlier this month, Tremaine Jackson’s phone buzzed.

“Well, we’re guaranteed one,” the text message read.

Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman and Penn State coach James Franklin would be facing off in the Orange Bowl, assuring that a Black coach would advance to the national title game for the first time in history.

Jackson, 41, who was hired as Prairie View A&M head coach in December, has found himself trading texts and phone calls with fellow Black coaches at the start of every season, wondering who can be the one who coaches his team to the pinnacle.

“We look at the guys who have real opportunities and say who can it be?” Jackson said. “And as the season goes along, you’re all like, ‘Hey, I’m pulling for him.’”

Freeman, whose father is Black and mother is Korean, beat Franklin’s Penn State team for the right to make history. His Fighting Irish meet Ohio State on Monday night in Atlanta for the championship.

Standing on the stage after the Orange Bowl, ESPN reporter Molly McGrath used her third question of four to ask Freeman: “Coach, I know you’re all about team, but I want to give a moment for everyone here to be able to celebrate you, because you are the first Black head coach to go to a national championship game in college football.”

The crowd cheered.

“Just hearing that response alone, how much does this mean to you?”

“I don’t ever want to take attention away from the team. It is an honor and I hope all coaches, minorities, Black, Asian, White, 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 something special.”

“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.”
Marcus Freeman on becoming the first Black and Asian American head coach to make the FBS national championship 👏 pic.twitter.com/KHMksJUNdK
— ESPN (@espn) January 10, 2025

Clips of the exchange almost immediately went viral. The video posted by ESPN alone has 2.6 million views on X.

Much of the response there and elsewhere the clip was posted praised Freeman and criticized McGrath and ESPN for the question. Some believed ESPN was injecting race into a moment where it shouldn’t be present.

Black coaches across the sport can tell you why it should be.

“We’re talking about it because it’s real. What are you pushing when you’re telling me I shouldn’t be talking about this?” said Van Malone, the assistant head coach, defensive pass game coordinator and cornerbacks coach at Kansas State, who has worked with a variety of minority coach associations and serves as the CFO of the Minority Coaches Advancement Association.

“It’s a really, really massive deal,” said Archie McDaniel, who coaches linebackers at Illinois and serves as president of the Minority Coaches Advancement Association. “For me personally, it’s monumental.”

Said Jackson: “When you realize we’ve been playing football since the 1860s, you just go, man, look how far we’ve come. I’m rooting for Marcus like hell. Because it gives us validation.”

Across all levels of college football since it began in 1869 — FBS, FCS, Division II, Division III and NAIA — only seven Black coaches are believed to have coached a game that could have clinched a national title.

Rudy Hubbard won a Division I-AA title at Florida A&M in 1978.

Mike London, who won an FCS title in 2008 at the University of Richmond, is the only coach to hoist a national title trophy somewhere other than at an HBCU.

Jackson, hired in 2022 as the first Black coach in Valdosta State history, led his program to the Division II national title game last month and lost. He parlayed his work into the job at Prairie View A&M, a historically Black university that competes at the FCS level.

In his almost 20 years as a coach, McDaniel has lost count of how many times he’s heard it. He’ll sit down with a player and talk about life after football. Lots of them bring up coaching, but he’ll hear a familiar phrase from his Black players.

“I would love to be a head coach,” McDaniel said they tell him. “But I don’t know if that’s really possible.”

Currently, 18 of the 134 (13.4 percent) FBS programs have a Black head coach. In the SEC, that number is zero. The ACC has two. Deion Sanders is the only Black coach in the Big 12. Four Big Ten coaches are Black.

One answer as to why there are so few Black coaches in a sport played predominantly by African Americans is that the history of college football is the history of America. Schools and conferences didn’t integrate until the 1960s and ’70s amid the civil rights movement.

The Bowl Championship Series debuted in 1998. Five years later, Mississippi State made Sylvester Croom the first Black head coach in SEC history. Twenty-two years after that moment, the league has four additional programs at 16 and one fewer Black head coach.

Opportunities are rare. Opportunities at good schools that are capable of reaching the national championship game are even rarer. Since 2000, the 48 spots in the national championship game have been occupied by just 17 programs. Seven of those have had a Black full-time head coach not in an interim role at some time in their history.

Much of the reason Freeman’s moment means so much to Black coaches in the sport is because they understand the math. They also know of playing the political game, Jackson said. Many don’t want to speak out about diversity publicly, Malone said.

“The older crowd never thought they’d see it,” Jackson said. “The younger crowd expects to see it and thinks it’s easy to get there.”

McDaniel said that a few years ago the Minority Coaches Advancement Association counted the number of minority head coaches by hand at the more than 500 programs at every level of the sport. They found 45.

“I’m a numbers guy. All I look at are numbers. And numbers and opportunity have a direct reflection on one another,” he said.

The National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches — founded by Maryland coach Mike Locksley in 2020 — works to expand schools’ applicant pools when openings arise and point them to candidates that might not be on their radar. One such effort from the group, which has over 2,000 members, paired up-and-coming coaches with athletic directors for an 18-month mentorship program, according to Raj Kudchadkar, executive director of the NCMFC. Freeman was paired with Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez.

Notre Dame promoted Freeman from defensive coordinator in December 2021 after Brian Kelly left for LSU.

In an open letter to Notre Dame shortly after he was hired, Freeman addressed it more openly than he has during this Playoff run.

“Being a part of this coalition has been an important reminder that: Hey, you are a representation of a lot of people. And that’s what I want to be. I want to be a representation, but also more than that I want to be a demonstration,” Freeman wrote. “I want to be a demonstration of what someone can do, and the level they can do it at, if they are given the OPPORTUNITY. Because that’s what is needed: opportunity. We need more minorities to get the opportunity to interview — and we need more minorities to get the opportunity to do a job that they can have success in.”

Multiple coaches pointed to Black head coaches Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith going head-to-head in the Super Bowl in 2007 — Dungy became the first Black head coach to be crowned the NFL’s champion when his Indianapolis Colts won — and noted that Monday night might be remembered similarly, especially if Freeman’s Irish pull the upset.

“What this moment provides is hope for a lot of people that have had a lot of moments of being discouraged,” McDaniel said. “It’s really hard at times to imagine yourself accomplishing something that has literally never been done.”

(Photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)

Related Topics:College Football Culture Featured Notre Dame Fighting Irish

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Sports

Deion Sanders mourns loss of Colorado quarterback Dominiq Ponder: ‘One of my favorites’

Published

9 hours ago

March 1, 2026

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Deion Sanders mourns loss of Colorado quarterback Dominiq Ponder: ‘One of my favorites’

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Colorado Buffaloes quarterback Dominiq Ponder died this weekend, the team’s head coach Deion Sanders confirmed on Sunday with a social media post.

“God please comfort the Ponder family, friends and loved ones,” Sanders wrote on social media. “Dom was one of my favorites! He was Loved, Respected & a Born Leader. Let’s pray for all that knew him & had the opportunity to be in his presence. Lord you’re receiving a good 1. Comfort us Lord Comfort us.”

Ponder was 23 years old.

Details of Ponder’s death are not yet known.

Colorado head coach Deion Sanders watches his team warm up before an NCAA college football game against TCU Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025, in Fort Worth, Texas. (Tony Gutierrez/AP Photo)

Ponder, a 6-foot-5, 200-pound signal caller, joined the Buffaloes and “Coach Prime’s” program in 2024 after spending time at Bethune-Cookman before making his way to Boulder.

Last season, Ponder played just two games for the Buffaloes while serving in his backup role. He recorded two rush attempts and one pass attempt.

The Opa Locka, Fla., native also received tribute from a fellow quarterback with the Buffaloes, Colton Allen.

Bethune-Cookman QB Dominiq Ponder takes a snap during the Wildcats’ spring game Saturday, April 22, 2023, at Daytona Stadium. (IMAGN)

“Dom, you were a blessing to so many people,” Allen wrote on Instagram. “You had a presence about you that just made everything better. You brought so much joy to me and everyone around you. I’m grateful for every lift, every practice, every rep, every conversation we got to share. I’ll carry those with me for the rest of my life.”

Ponder was going to be a part of Colorado’s spring practices, which are set to begin on Monday. It’s unknown if Sanders will postpone the start due to Ponder’s passing.

Ponder also received a tribute from the University of Central Florida.

Colorado head coach Deion Sanders watches his players warm up before an NCAA college football game against Utah, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025, in Salt Lake City. (Tyler Tate/AP Photo)

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“Our prayers are with Dominiq and the Ponder family along with all in the Colorado football program,” the university’s football account on X wrote.

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Scott Thompson is a sports writer for Fox News Digital.

Sports

No. 2 UCLA women dominate rival USC to finish Big Ten play undefeated

Published

9 hours ago

March 1, 2026

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No. 2 UCLA women dominate rival USC to finish Big Ten play undefeated

Sunday was “Senior Night” for the USC women’s basketball team at Galen Center, but it was the other team’s seniors who stole the show.

Gabriela Jaquez scored 14 points, Kiki Rice had 11 points and four assists and Lauren Betts had 15 rebounds and five assists as UCLA wrapped up the regular season with a 73-50 victory over its rival and finished undefeated in conference play for the first time since going 18-0 in the Pac-10 in 1998-99 under Kathy Olivier.

Having already clinched the regular-season title, UCLA became the first team to navigate the Big Ten schedule without a loss since Maryland in 2014-15.

“These are two elite programs, we knew it would be different tonight, we knew they’d come with fire,” said UCLA coach Cori Close, who improved to 9-4 against the Trojans since counterpart Lindsay Gottlieb started at USC in 2021. “We knew we’d have to do it with our defense, our rebounding and by taking care of the ball.”

It was the Bruins’ 22nd consecutive win, one shy of the record they set last season. Since their lone loss to then-No. 4 Texas on Nov. 26 in Las Vegas, they have won by 20 or more points 17 times.

Ranked second in the nation in both the Associated Press and coaches’ polls behind defending national champion Connecticut (30-0), the Bruins earned the No. 1 seed for the conference tournament in Indianapolis and got a bye into Friday’s quarterfinals.

Charlisse Leger-Walker, nicknamed “X-ray vision” by teammates, equaled her season high with 20 points for the Bruins (28-1, 18-0) while Gianna Kneepkens added 14 points and five assists.

“Anytime we play together we know we can win,” Leger-Walker said. “We did a good job looking into the scout. Every game we just think about going 1-0. People scouting us know that all five players on the court can score the ball.”

UCLA center Lauren Betts, left, controls the ball in front of USC forward Vivian Iwuchukwu during the first half Sunday.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

UCLA held USC to 27% shooting in the teams’ first meeting — a 34-point Bruins victory at Pauley Pavilion on Jan. 3 behind Betts’ 18 points. It was USC’s most lopsided loss under coach Lindsay Gottlieb. On Sunday, USC shot 39% and was only three for 19 from three-point range.

“Going undefeated [in conference] is a great step in the right direction towards what we want to accomplish,” said Jaquez, who appreciated the flowers she received before the game from USC. “I love this rivalry. It’s super fun to play against them and it was nice that they honored us too.”

UCLA jumped out to a 14-4 lead in the first five minutes and carried a 19-11 advantage into the second quarter. The Bruins widened the gap to 18 points by halftime, holding the Trojans scoreless for the last 3:08.

USC (17-12, 9-9) opened the second half on an 11-2 run but gave up 14 second-chance points and allowed 22 offensive rebounds.

UCLA guard Kiki Rice, front, and forward Angela Dugalic celebrate as USC guard Kennedy Smith walks away.

“If we get more possessions than our opponent we’re most likely going to win,” Close said. “We didn’t allow one basket on an out-of-bounds play and they lead the conference in that.”

Freshman guard Jazzy Davidson, USC’s leading scorer, got into early foul trouble but still finished with 12 points. She was held to 10 points on four-for-15 shooting in the first meeting.

“It was a great crowd, we were in the fight but we didn’t rebound or shoot well enough,” Gottlieb said. “We wanted to keep them out of our paint. We swarmed Betts, double-teamed her and got it out of her hands but other people scored.”

Londynn Jones, who spent three seasons in Westwood (playing in 108 straight games) before transferring to USC for her senior year, was held to six points in the team’s first meeting and nine points (on four-of-10 shooting) in the rematch. The Trojans’ other senior, Kara Dunn, was held scoreless in the first half and finished with eight points.

“I love Londynn,” Close said. “We think she looks better in blue, but we love her and I told her that. I appreciate all she gave to our programs.”

Asked if this is the best team she has ever coached, Close had a one-word answer.

“Yes.”

Sports

Israeli national gymnastics team suspends all activities after Iranian counter-attack

Published

21 hours ago

March 1, 2026

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Israeli national gymnastics team suspends all activities after Iranian counter-attack

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Israel’s national gymnastics team has suspended all training and team activities amid the recent Iranian counter-attack on the country following the U.S.-assisted strikes on Iran.

The Israel Gymnastics Federation (IGF) provided a statement to Fox News Digital announcing the violence has caused “unavoidable disruptions.”

“The current security situation in our region has resulted in unavoidable disruptions to our regular training schedule and has created significant uncertainty regarding the national teams’ professional plans, particularly as we are at the outset of the international season,” the statement read.

“At this time, all training activities have been temporarily suspended, pending approval from the relevant authorities to safely resume operations. Naturally, the suspension of training and the closure of airspace are causing considerable stress and concern. However, the safety and well-being of our gymnasts and professional staff remain our highest priority. We sincerely hope for safer and calmer days ahead, when we can focus solely on sport.”

A source within the team told Fox News Digital on Saturday that the gymnasts have been moving between bomb shelters since Iran’s counterstrikes began.

Israel’s gymnastics team is considered one of nation’s strongest Olympic programs alongside its Judo and sailing teams. The team is only a week removed from a successful trip at the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Germany, where the country’s star Artem Dolgopyat won the gold medal in floor gymnastics.

Now, the team will have to seek safety until the attacks are over.

The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem has directed all U.S. government employees and their family members to continue to shelter in place either in or near their residences as Iran continues to fire missiles at Israel.

Additionally, the embassy announced that due to the security situation, it would be closed on March 2, and did not give an estimate on when it would be reopening. The closure includes consular sections in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

The embassy also said it is “not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel.” It noted that Ben Gurion Airport remains closed and there there are neither commercial nor charter flights operating from the airport.

On Friday, ahead of the launch of Operation Epic Fury, the embassy gave all non-essential workers permission to leave Israel, with reports that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee urged those looking to leave to do so as soon as possible.

Iranian airstrikes killed at least eight Israelis on Sunday as Tehran’s latest missile barrage landed just miles from Jerusalem.

The strikes landed in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh. Initial reports said four people were killed when missiles landed in a residential area on Sunday, but that death toll rose to eight, according to Israel’s national emergency service.

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Iran’s military has carried out counterattacks against Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East after a joint U.S.-Israeli strike killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.

The strikes also killed several other top Iranian leaders, including the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

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Jackson Thompson is a sports reporter for Fox News Digital covering critical political and cultural issues in sports, with an investigative lens. Jackson’s reporting has been cited in federal government actions related to the enforcement of Title IX, and in legacy media outlets including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Associated Press and ESPN.com.