Peacock's 'Here Come the Irish' Tracks Notre Dame's Championship Run

At the end of August, Peacock premiered Here Come the Irish, a seven-episode docuseries profiling the Fighting Irish football team of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and its dynamic young coach, Marcus Freeman.

Premiering on Thursday, Jan. 16, is the episode that documents the Fighting Irish victory over the Nittany Lions of Penn State, to take Notre Dame to the College Football National Championship game against the Buckeyes of Ohio State (a k a OSU) on Monday, Jan. 20.

It'd be great if the series was extended next week to include the championship game, but we'll have to see about that.

UPDATE: 1/25/2025: In the wake of the championship game, a new episode will premiere on Thursday, Feb. 6.

FTP and Notre Dame

In the interests of full disclosure, our parent organization, Holy Cross Family Ministries, is an apostolate of the Congregation of Holy Cross, which also founded the University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame meaning "Our Lady" in French).

The founder of Family Theater Productions was Venerable Patrick Peyton, a Irish-born Holy Cross priest (who attended seminary at Notre Dame), our current national director, and the president of Notre Dame, are all Holy Cross priests. You can tell a Holy Cross priest because he has C.S.C after his name, an abbreviation for the Latin form of the order's name, Congregatio a Sancte Cruce.

So, we here at FTP have a bit of a vested interest in the fortunes of the Fighting Irish. And as Here Come the Irish shows, this season, the team's fortunes have been very good indeed.

Notre Dame's Catholic Coach

At the helm since 2021 is Freeman, a graduate of OSU, a husband and father of six who converted to Catholicism a year after taking over the coaching job.

From NDInsider.com in February 2022:

One of Marcus Freeman’s favorite sayings since his arrival at Notre Dame in early 2021 has been, “This place will change you if you let it.”

Thursday, he offered a little more context to his recent conversion to the Catholic faith, news of which was shared in the Sept. 11 weekly bulletin of his home parish at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Granger.

Freeman, who was raised in the Christian and Korean church traditions, called it a “family decision and personal decision.” His wife Joanna and their six children were already practicing Catholics.

Freeman also restored a Notre Dame tradition.

From WNDU.com in September 2022:

Fans will see a longtime Notre Dame tradition return to gamedays thanks to new head coach Marcus Freeman.

One of the first things he did as head coach was reinstate the gameday Mass and the walk from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart to Notre Dame Stadium.

While the show has mostly focused on football, it did have an episode that showed the players (both Catholics and non-Catholics) in team blazers, attending the Mass, and doing the ceremonial walk.

They've also been shown asking the intercession of Our Lady, Queen of Victory before games.

A Unique Viewpoint on Here Come the Irish

Father Vince Kuna, C.S.C., a staff member at FTP, is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and was a competitive swimmer there. So, I checked in with him to see how he feels about Here Come the Irish:

How have you been enjoying Here Come the Irish on Peacock?

Yes. I’ve always enjoyed reality shows. Actual people are more interesting than TV shows of actors playing characters. Now that Notre Dame football (and a few other of their varsity sports) has its own streaming channel, it’s been impressive seeing people (like the chaplain, Father Nate Wills, C.S.C.) I personally know have their true selves shine.

I'm being a bit facetious, but is it just chance or Divine Providence that the series chronicles the 2024 season, which has now led to the Fighting Irish being in the College Football National Championship on Jan. 20?

I believe in Divine Providence. I don’t believe in luck. Or as a parishioner at St. Monica (the church in Santa Monica, California, where Father Kuna is in residence), a retired Math professor from UCLA, always says: “There’s no luck, only statistics and probability.”

So, Peacock chose to film Marcus Freeman’s third season. Notre Dame won the national championships in 1966, 1977, 1988 in Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine and Lou Holtz’s third seasons, respectively. Even Brian Kelly coached the Irish to undefeated regular season and runner up finish in 2012.

Point being, to chose to film in Freeman’s third season, there was a probability that the Irish would make a run through the playoffs given Notre Dame’s history and abundance of resources for a new head coach.

What do you think the series has taught people about the Notre Dame as a school and a football program?

There's a tragic divide that I'm reminded of when collaborating with the professional teams: Catholic Mass is often celebrated adjacent to the Protestant liturgy of the Word in separate ballrooms. At Notre Dame, the entire team attends Mass, whether Catholic or not.

What do you wish had been talked about more?

I’ve only seen up to the sixth episode, which captures the end of the regular season. While Father Nate Wills, C.S.C. is pictured in the background, I really wish he was interviewed or depicted as a talking subject in some of the segments.

What do you predict for episode seven on Jan. 16?

The national championship will be played on January 20. As I write this, Notre Dame just topped Penn State University in a scintillating battle that came down to the final play. So, I presume, with a week to edit, that the episode will predict the playoff run.

Notre Dame defeated Indiana in a home game in the round of six. In the quarterfinals, they bested mighty SEC perennial, Georgia. That second-round matchup was a delayed a day with the horrific terrorist attack in New Orleans.

Instead of taking the additional day for scheming, the program allowed the players to grapple with the events in a spiritual way ... personal prayer, team Mass or just quiet time. It will be interesting to see if Father Nate plays a bigger role in that particular episode.

What has been Coach Freeman's impact on the program?

The gridiron results speak for themselves. He brings an honest, hardworking approach to the game, like any Midwesterner. He brought back game-day Mass, which was discontinued under Brian Kelly. And he goes to Mass. If “dad” of the family goes, the team follows.

I can’t stress this enough for Christians, whether they’re football fans or not. If dad goes, the family follows. St. Paul stressed a similar approach for fathers as head of the spiritual family. I see this all the time with NFL teams, if the head coach goes to Catholic Mass or Protestant service, the team goes.

What does it mean to have Buckeye Freeman facing his alma mater to win it all?

Ohio State is the class of the playoffs, thus far. In his first two years as a new head coach, Freeman suffered two narrow losses. It would be Cobra Kai-ish story of the century, where the student comes back to face his mentor, with everything on the line. Go Irish. Beat the Buckeyes.

As both a Chicago Bears and Notre Dame fan, what do you think of the recent news that the Bears may be eyeing Marcus Freeman for a head-coaching job?

As much as I like both teams, professional and college sports are vastly different, in that college coaches tend to be formators of young men and women as much as they are coaches. I think Marcus Freeman thrives in that environment.

He reminds me of my college swimming coach, the late Tim Welsh, the longest tenured coach in Notre Dame history in any sport. Our coach was the most influential male figure in my coming of age, next to my father. He was coach, father figure and even pointed us to the intellectual and spiritual life, giving us summer reading lists and always offering us weekly Mass through the team chaplain.

Freeman should be flattered the NFL is courting him, but I don't see it happening, especially given his signing of a contract extension to stay at Notre Dame.

Image: (L-R) Marcus Freeman and The Notre Dame Fighting Irish -- (Photo by: Fighting Irish Media/PEACOCK)

Click here to visit Father Vince Kuna’s IMDB page.

Kate O’Hare, a longtime entertainment journalist, is Social Media Content Manager and Blog Editor at Family Theater Productions.