Sports
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)
Sports
Ex-NFL star Shawne Merriman explains why his MMA promotion has no interest in competing with UFC
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Former NFL star Shawne Merriman is building his mixed martial arts company to stand out from the rest.
Lights Out Xtreme Fighting introduced game-changing AI technology for advertisers a few months ago and will provide more data for fans and MMA officials alike with glove technology that will be introduced with its next fight card. All of that on top of Lights Out Sports that Merriman created to highlight his promotion as well as a variety of different sports.
Shawne Merriman spoke to Fox News Digital about new innovative happenings at Lights Out Xtreme Fighting. (Robert Hanashiro, USAT, USA TODAY via Imagn Content Services, LLC)
Merriman said while he sees other companies trying to compete with UFC and burning through cash in their attempts, Lights Out Xtreme Fighting is doing something completely different.
“We never looked to compete. We’re creating. We don’t want to compete with the UFC.We don’t care,” he told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. “We know there’s other promotions and other organizations out there trying to compete with the UFC.
“In my opinion, I don’t think there will be anybody bigger than the UFC and there’s a lot of promotions that are just trying to spend their way to the top with money. Just outspend their way and not (having success). We are (successful) because we’ve been more efficient and we are an incubator. We’re not trying to compete with anybody. We’re a hub for this technology, this data and these great fights, and for guys to go into the UFC when they become champions for Lights Out Xtreme Fighting. That’s where we are.”
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Shawne Merriman, former NFL and Maryland Terrapins linebacker, is recognized on the court for his charity Lights On Foundation’s during the second half of the game against the George Washington Colonials at Xfinity Center on Nov. 11, 2021. (Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports)
Merriman said he wants the company to focus on building and implementing new technology to make them stand out from the rest.
“We want to change the game. We don’t want to keep going down the track and trying to be like everybody else. We don’t even compete with the UFC because honestly, truthfully, we don’t care,” he said.
Lights Out 29 will take place on Dec. 6 in Long Beach, California, at Thunder Studios. Jake Babian, Sam Fournier, Jordan Azurdia, Dalton Hambrock and Corvan Allen are expected to be in action.
“This growth that we’ve had over the past year has been unprecedented,” Merriman told Fox News Digital. “I don’t think anything like this has happened ever in combat sports. We’ve sent five fighters to the UFC in the last two months. We love that, man.
San Diego Chargers linebacker (56) Shawne Merriman against the Baltimore Ravens at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego on Sept. 20, 2009. (Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports)
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“We love to be able to let those guys go and follow that platform. Just the notoriety we’ve gotten over this past year, we want to be considered one of the best in this business and we’re on our way.”
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Red Sanders, the legendary UCLA football coach, once said the rivalry with USC wasn’t life or death, it was more important than that.
Now, some 70 years later, almost half the Bruins roster needed a primer on what it means to play the Trojans.
“We have so many transfers and things,” interim coach Tim Skipper said, “so I wanted to make sure everybody knew how significant this game was.”
That could make Ciaran Dooley, the team’s creative content producer, a rivalry hero rivaling John Barnes, Anthony Barr and Dorian Thompson-Robinson. Dooley produced a video that tried to pack the essence of a nearly century-old rivalry into about five minutes.
Putting aside any worries about where college sports are headed when one needs to explain anything about his biggest rival, the video had its intended effect, sparking cheers nearly a week before kickoff.
Starting with a minutelong hype reel narrated by Barr, the video explained some of the rivalry basics, such as both teams wearing their home uniforms and the winner getting to take possession of the 295-pound Victory Bell before painting it in their primary school color — preferably blue.
“A lot of it was like clips I’ve already seen being from L.A. and around the game,” freshman linebacker Scott Taylor said, “but a lot of the guys who haven’t been here don’t understand how big a deal this is to L.A. and how special this win can be.”
Rivalry lexicon such as “It’s always 8:47 in Westwood” — a reference to the Bruins’ 13-9 upset of No. 2 USC in 2006 — and “Eight more years!” — a chant that broke out at the Rose Bowl in 1998 at the end of the Bruins’ eighth consecutive victory over the Trojans — might need some explaining to a roster that includes 57 newcomers, 52 transfers and 42 players from out of state.
“I made this video to show what the rivalry is really about — the history, the passion, the bragging rights,” Dooley told The Times. “I know everyone on the team already knows what it is, but if there’s anything that I can do to motivate the guys just that much more for the game, I’m going to do it every time.”
Linebacker Isaiah Chisom, a transfer from Oregon State, said the coaching staff also brought in several former players to explain the significance of the rivalry before the Bruins (3-8 overall, 3-5 Big Ten) face the No. 17 Trojans (8-3, 6-2) on Saturday afternoon at the Coliseum. Veteran offensive lineman Garrett DiGiorgio and defensive back Cole Martin also talked about what the rivalry meant to them.
Utah quarterback Devon Dampier (4) holds the ball and pushes Bruins linebacker Isaiah Chisom (32) on Aug. 30 at the Rose Bowl.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“I think they’ve done a pretty good job at kind of bringing everybody together,” Chisom said, “so we all know how important this game is.”
Chisom didn’t need a refresher, having grown up in Southern California and played for Bishop Allemany High and Chaminade College Prep. He said he’s already attended a rivalry game and learned about the Bruins’ hatred for the Trojans from Chaminade assistant coach Reggie Carter, a former Bruins linebacker.
“He didn’t like anybody wearing any red,” Chisom said of Carter. “It’s been something I’ve been told for a long time.”
Skipper said he grew up watching the rivalry no matter where he lived — his father, Jim, was a coaching lifer who moved from one city to another and his older brother, Kelly, was DeShaun Foster’s running backs coach at UCLA.
“It’s awesome to finally be part of this thing,” Tim Skipper said. “You watch it so much, I’ve never been to one of these games, and to be able to work it and coach it is going to be awesome.”
Signs of rivalry week have greeted anyone who walked past the boarded-up John Wooden and bear statues on campus, though it’s been a little quieter than the Bruins would have preferred. That’s because they haven’t been able to ring the Victory Bell that’s residing across town after USC won last year’s game, 19-13, at the Rose Bowl.
“We want to get it back, we want to ring it after the game,” DiGiorgio said. “The [USC] guys, they planted flags on our field last year. I don’t know if we’re going to reciprocate that energy because I don’t know if that’s going to start anything, but we’re definitely looking forward to getting that bell back.”
The Bruins have won their last two trips to the Coliseum, giving DiGiorgio motivation to make it three in a row and end his college career 3-2 against the Trojans. There was a consensus at the team meeting Sunday that a victory over USC would make up for all the frustrations the team has endured during a season in which Foster was fired after only three games.
UCLA offensive lineman Garrett DiGiorgio (72) is confident a video the Bruins’ staff produced helped his teammates understand the importance of winning the USC rivalry game.
(John McCoy / Associated Press)
“Beating ‘SC would undo every wrong that has happened this season — that and the Penn State win [over the then-No. 7 Nittany Lions],” Chisom said. “I don’t think we could ask for anything more.”
Even those making their rivalry debut will know what they’re getting into thanks to the handiwork of a content creator whose video might help produce an upset.
“I believe that it enlightened, lit a fire under the guys,” DiGiorgio said, “to be a little excited for this week.”
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The Cincinnati Bengals didn’t have a great start to their Thanksgiving Day.
The team’s flight on Wednesday night from Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport was scheduled for 5 p.m. ET, but they weren’t able to get into the air for their trip to Baltimore until 10:32 p.m. ET, according to FlightAware.
As a result, the Bengals, who play their AFC North rival Ravens on Thanksgiving night, didn’t get to their hotel until after midnight.
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Ja’Marr Chase of the Cincinnati Bengals looks on prior to an NFL football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Paycor Stadium on Oct. 16, 2025, in Cincinnati. (Michael Owens/Getty Images)
The team was supposed to land in Baltimore at 6:19 p.m. ET, but they technically landed on Thanksgiving, arriving at Baltimore/Washington International Airport at 12:03 a.m.
WLWT in Cincinnati also reported the Bengals had to switch planes, though there was no word on why they were forced to change.
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It wasn’t an ideal situation for the Bengals; however, it could’ve been worse if the flight had been delayed any later. If the game were played earlier in the day, it certainly would have been more of an issue.
The Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions had the first game on Thanksgiving Day, while the Dallas Cowboys hosted the Kansas City Chiefs for the 4:25 p.m. ET start.
While the Bengals are 3-8, this is a massive game for the franchise as they welcome back starting quarterback Joe Burrow, who recovered from toe surgery after an injury in Week 2 this season.
Joe Burrow of the Cincinnati Bengals looks to pass during the game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Paycor Stadium on Sept. 14, 2025, in Cincinnati. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
Burrow didn’t play this past Sunday despite being a full practice participant, but head coach Zac Taylor made the call with the short week ahead and the Thursday night matchup in mind.
Cincinnati has lost its last four games. However, Burrow hasn’t lost a game since December 2024, going 7-0 in his last seven starts.
Burrow also had qualms about playing the Ravens for the fourth straight year in prime time on the road.
“Maybe we can get one of those in Cincinnati next year, please,” Burrow said back in May.
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Meanwhile, Lamar Jackson and the Ravens are winners of their last five games after starting the season 1-5 in shocking fashion. They share the AFC North lead with the Pittsburgh Steelers, making this another crucial game for the franchise’s playoff hopes.
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