The College Football Playoff National Championship game is set to take place on Monday, January 20, at 7:30 p.m. EST between the Ohio State Buckeyes (who are 13-2) and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (14-1).
Both teams are considered to be among the best in the league, and for Notre Dame, a large part of that comes from their coach Marcus Freeman’s secret weapon: his wife, Joanna Freeman.
According to Marcus, Joanna is his “rock” and the reason he has been able to become so successful at Notre Dame, not only this year but ever since he joined the coaching staff in 2021. But who exactly is Joanna? And how did she and Marcus meet? We dive into all of that and more below.
How Marcus Freeman met his wife Joanna Freeman
Marcus and Joanna met through a mutual friend while he was at Ohio State University and she was at Otterbein University.
“We fell hard. We fell fast,” Joanna said. “We were really young when we met, and in a lot of ways, we really grew and matured into adults together.”
She also shared that they “had a lot of breakups and makeups” in college.
Thankfully, though, it all worked out for the best, because in 2010 the two decided to get married, three years after the birth of their first child, Vinny.
Joanna Freeman: from reporter to coach’s wife
On February 20, 2010, Marcus and Joanna got married, with their son Vinny in attendance,
During this time, Marcus was practicing with teams like the Buffalo Bills, Houston Texans and the Chicago Bears, but sadly, due to an enlarged heart condition, he never actually played in a real National Football League (NFL) game and was already beginning to retire when he married Joanna.
Joanna, on the other hand, was on the road to becoming quite a successful journalist and was working as a traffic and news reporter for a TV station in Columbus, Ohio called WBNS. She would soon leave this career behind, though, after Marcus was offered a coaching job at Kent State.
“If you’re going to do this,” Joanna told Marcus at the time. “we’re going to do this together.”
The family would remain at Kent for a year before moving to Purdue University in 2011.
Marcus and Joanna Freeman: raising a family and moving for football
Between 2012 and 2020, Marcus and Joanna went on to welcome five more children together and had moved from Purdue—where they lived from 2011 to 2016—to Cincinnati, Ohio.
They remained there until 2021 before moving to Notre Dame. They have been there ever since, with Marcus serving as Defensive Coordinator and linebackers coach before eventually becoming head coach.
“There’s no balance,” Marcus said. “There is not a balance [between] being a head coach and being a husband and father.”
Thankfully, though, throughout his entire career, Marcus has had his loving wife Joanna, who has helped him manage all of it.
“To do what I do, you have to have the most unselfish wife in the world,” he said. “A lot of times, she is a single parent. And the other part is that I try to blend.”
“I try to blend my family with our football family as much as I can. My wife can bring two kids and just let them run around at practice. …I want our players to see me as a father and husband.”
Marcus and Joanna Freeman prepare for the championship game
Marcus and Joanna are currently gearing up for the College Football Playoff National Championship game against his alma mater, Ohio State.
“It’s full circle,” Marcus said. “This has nothing to do with the past and where I went to school. This is about this opportunity that lies right ahead of us.”
And as excited as he is for the game, Marcus is worried about it taking away from Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day.
“To me, the attention should be on MLK Day and what he did for our country and the progress he made for equal rights and progress for all people, the courage he had as an individual to stand for what he believes in,” he said. “That was with his words and his actions.”
“Martin Luther King Day is about celebrating that man and the impacts he’s made on our country.”
At the moment, Ohio is favored to win the championship game by an 8.5-point lead, but Marcus isn’t going to let that stop him.
“Obviously, this place [Notre Dame] hasn’t won a National Championship since 1988, and every year, the aspirations are to win a National Championship. That’s why all these players choose to come to Notre Dame; one of the reasons is to be a part of a program that can win a National Championship,” he said.
“I think it’s something that they’ll be able to say for the rest of their lives if they were part of a National Championship football team. There’s a lot of work that goes into getting to that outcome, and that’s what we’ve got to focus on, but it would be special for this university and for these players that have poured so much work into getting the results that we have.”
You can watch Notre Dame play Ohio State on Monday, January 20, at 7:30 p.m. EST on YouTubeTV.
