ATLANTA (AP) — As far as coaches Marcus Freeman of Notre Dame and Ryan Day of Ohio State are concerned, those dramatic pregame speeches that inspire a football team to victory are the stuff of Hollywood.
Both said Sunday they have nothing special planned for their final words in the locker room before kickoff of the College Football Playoff championship game Monday night.
The message to their players will be to keep doing what they've been doing, because that's what got them here.
“You’ve got to do what we’ve done, and you’ve got to do it better,” Freeman said. “We’re facing a great opponent. You’re in the national championship game. You might say it with a little passion. The natural emotions will come out in that moment.”
Day said there will be no shortage of emotion on the field and that there's no need for him to try to fire up his players beforehand.
“Being in the locker room is a special moment. It is,” Day said. “But you all of a sudden can’t just like ramp a guy up in the last second to get a guy to go play really, really hard. It’s a buildup that usually starts 48 hours out to get your body, your soul, your mind ready to go play in a game like this.”
Notre Dame kicker Mitch Jeter overcame lingering hip and groin injuries in the nick of time. He was just 6 for 12 on field goals in the regular season. He is 7 of 8 in three playoff games, and his 41-yarder with seven seconds left gave the Fighting Irish a 27-24 win over Penn State in the Orange Bowl semifinal.
Jeter went through daily treatment in the Notre Dame training room. He also got help from his chiropractor father, Andrew Jeter, who would travel from the family's home in Salisbury, North Carolina, a couple of days before every game to give his son care.
“I’m super thankful for him to accelerate that healing process," Mitch said. “Chiropractic is about aligning the body and he helped myself become aligned again, which allowed the muscles around my body to heal faster. He’s been a big part of my life and everything I’ve done so far this season.”
Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman has tamped down questions for a week about his ties to Ohio State.
He grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and played for the Buckeyes from 2004-08. He was a starting linebacker on the Jim Tressel-coached teams that lost to Florida (2006) and LSU (2007) in Bowl Championship Series title games. The BCS was the CFP's predecessor. He counts his teammate and current OSU linebackers coach James Laurinaitis as one of his best friends.
Freeman has coached against the Buckeyes twice before, losing 21-10 in 2022 and 17-14 in 2023.
“Everybody knows where I went to college,” Freeman said. “But as I’ve continuously said to our program and everybody around our program, this opportunity is about this opportunity. This isn’t about where I went to school. This isn’t about the last two times we played Ohio State."
Nine players from the state of Georgia are on the Buckeyes' roster, including four starters. Ohio is the only state with more representatives. Notre Dame has four players from the Peach State, but none will be starting.
“Most of our guys who are on the roster from Georgia are from the Atlanta area, and when they saw that the national championship game was in Atlanta from the jump, they were excited about that opportunity if it arose and we reached this game,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said. “They’re excited. A lot of chatter in the locker room about going back to Atlanta, and they’ll have a lot of friends and family here.”
Notre Dame is the No. 7 seed in the first year of the 12-team playoff and Ohio State is No. 8. In the 10 years of the four-team playoff, only once did two bottom-half seeds reach the championship game. That was 2018, when No. 4 Alabama beat No. 3 Georgia 26-23, also in Atlanta. ... Ohio State has won six straight meetings with the Irish and leads the series 6-2. ... Ohio State is the first two-loss team to play in the championship game. ... This is the third CFP championship game between teams from neighboring states. Alabama and Georgia met in 2017 and 2021. The Notre Dame (Indiana) and Ohio State campuses are 251 miles apart. ___ 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
