Marcus Freeman Forcing Himself to Watch Ohio State Celebrate Guarantees a National Championship in Notre Dame's Future

In the words of the wise and influential philosopher Mike Vrabel, "You can find out what your culture looks like when your family, your business, or your team is at its low point. It's not when you're winning Super Bowls. It's not when you're 7-1 or 10-1, then everybody's waving towels and everybody's happy and they're excited to come to work. But when you get hit in the mouth or you're down or the chips are against you, then you can take a snapshot of what your company or your team looks like, and then you'll find out what kind of culture you have."

So very, very true. 

Well we've had a very big sample size of what Notre Dame's culture is like under Marcus Freeman in good times. Because there have been a lot of good times. From the moment he walked into the room for the first time as head coach after that duplicitous worm Brian Kelly ditched them in the middle of a playoff run:

To his 33-10 record to reinstating the time-honored tradition of morning Mass on game days that the loathsome lizard person Kelly had suspended. It's been all good. But, as Vrabel so correctly pointed out, it's different when you get hit in the mouth. And I'll add, kicked in the nads. So last night's disastrous result in the National Title game was surely going to test Freeman's culture. 

And I'm beyond overjoyed to report he aced the test with this display:

That's what you look for in your cultural tone-setter. Some men are motivated to avoid pain. Others accept it as a necessary evil on the way to achieving true greatness. Winners accept that suffering is good. It heightens the senses. Increase your heart rate. Get blood to your extremities and oxygen to your brain. It's a superpower to be used, not eliminated altogether.

Some men seek comfort over fear. But the ones who change history treat it as a friend. The Ancient Greeks named their deity of fear Phobos, from whom we get the word "phobia," and believed he accompanied them into battle.

Some are unwilling to peer into the abyss. The true warriors stare into it until it stares back. 

All this is precisely what Freeman was doing in this moment. Absorbing this pain. Letting it sink in. Committing it to memory. In order to see to it that neither he nor the program he has brought back to respectability will feel this way 52 weeks from now. 

This is him as Bruce Wayne, watching his parents bleed out in an alley. Peter Parker holding Gentle Uncle Ben as he imparts the lesson about power and responsibility with his last breath. He's Achilles watching Patroclus die outside the walls of Troy. And like them, Freeman is using this pain as motivation to do heroic deeds and bring justice to a wicked world. 

Vengeance will be his. And Notre Dame's. Next January can't come soon enough.