Notre Dame is in the College Football Playoff title game with all of Luke Fickell’s former assistants

Quantifying the impact that coordinators and other assistant coaches have on a college football team’s success is often challenging.

For example, when Georgia won national titles with Kirby Smart at the helm at Dan Lanning as defensive coordinator, it’s hard to explicitly state how much of the defense’s success was due to Smart (Nick Saban’s former defensive coordinator at Alabama), and how much to Lanning. That same principle can be applied to Smart’s time under Saban.

We often learn the quality of those assistants and the importance of their work after the fact. Smart left Alabama and has since won two national titles at Georgia, while Lanning left Georgia and currently has Oregon operating as one of the best programs in the country. It’s safe to say both played integral roles in their former programs’ respective success.

This preamble is a long way of getting into Wisconsin’s connection to Notre Dame‘s College Football Playoff semifinal win over Penn State on Thursday night.

The Fighting Irish made a last-second field goal to defeat the Nittany Lions 27-24. It is their 13th consecutive win dating back to a inexplicable Week 2 loss to Northern Illinois (and former Wisconsin assistant Thomas Hammock). The win advances them to the CFP title game to face the winner of Ohio State vs. Texas.

Wisconsin has significant connections to this Notre Dame team.

The Fighting Irish are led by Marcus Freeman — Luke Fickell’s defensive coordinator at Cincinnati from 2017-20. The offense is run by Mike Denbrock — Fickell’s offensive coordinator at Cincinnati from 2017-21. The quarterbacks are coached by Gino Guidugli — a top assistant under Fickell from 2017-22 (running backs coach in 2017, quarterbacks coach from 2018-21, offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach in 2022). The wide receivers, finally, are…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/notre-dame-college-football-playoff-141820463.html

Author : Badgers Wire

Publish date : 2025-01-10 14:18:00

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