Al Golden kept the receipts.
During his acceptance speech at Thursday night’s Broyles Award ceremony, where Golden was named the recipient of this year’s award honoring college football’s best assistant coach, the former Notre Dame defensive coordinator trolled Desmond Howard for his inaccurate predictions on ESPN’s College GameDay this past season.
With the former Michigan wide receiver emceeing the event, Golden made a quip about how many times the Wolverines picked against Notre Dame on its way to a 14-2 season.
“Des, thank you for picking against us six times this year,” Golden said with a laugh. “We won 14 games and he picked against us six times. It’s unbelievable.”
Al Golden keeps receipts
— Matt Freeman (@mattfreeman05_) February 14, 2025
"And Des, thank you for picking against us six times this year. We won 14 games and he picked against us six times. It's unbelievable." pic.twitter.com/2t4iLDzRvE
Ironically enough, none of Howard’s picks against Notre Dame came in the two games the Fighting Irish actually lost. Nobody outside of DeKalb, Illinois was picking the Fighting Irish to lose when they suffered a 16-14 loss to Northern Illinois in a stunning Week 2 upset. Despite picking Notre Dame to lose in a half-dozen other games, however, Howard picked the Fighting Irish to beat Ohio State in the national championship game, a prediction that of course proved wrong as the Buckeyes won 34-23.
Golden, who was Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator for the past three seasons, is now the defensive coordinator for the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals. Notre Dame replaced Golden by hiring Chris Ash, who was previously Ohio State’s co-defensive coordinator in 2014 and 2015.
