For those of you who didnt catch it and/or are not in the Columbus market - Marcus Freeman reached out to Bobby Carpenter (and guest host Anthony Schlegel) this morning to come on 97.1 The Fan Morning Juice radio show and address, head on, his comments. He articulated very well that Dennis Dodd omitted sections and words from his interview to make is sound like a shot at OSU and also Cincinnati. Marcus went on to say he requested the tapes of the interview from Dennis Dodd to confirm what he thought he said. The gist of his comments are that OSU and Cincy have huge student bodies and lots of offerings to make student life easier, especially for athletes. He was simply pointing out that Notre Dame has an entire student body of 8500 and nowhere for them to hide and/or take on line classes in private. He went on to say he is extremely proud of his TWO degrees from Ohio State and always went to class. I thought it was a classy move and deserved mentioning given the polarizing nature of Marcus' offseason comments.
Here is a snippet from the interview:
However, Freeman cleared the air on Wednesday, reaching out to The Fan 97.1 to get on the air and clarify his comments, claiming to be misquoted by Dodd in the interview.
“I wanted to set the record straight. I was misquoted by Dennis Dodd in this article, and key words were missing from the quote that upset a lot of people that I care about,” began Freeman. “I’m very proud of my two degrees from Ohio State. I would never discredit the quality of education those degrees represent. I was just specifically really talking about the academic rigors of Notre Dame.”
Continuing, Freeman explained his thought process, and even revealed the full quote from his interview.
“Notre Dame has 8,500 students. Online classes were not a part of the standard curriculum here. In fact, before COVID, they weren’t even offered. So, when I was first made aware of this quote making it’s rounds yesterday in a negative way, I was surprised,” explained Freeman. “I walked away from that interview with Dennis Dodd and had no sense of anything that I said would offend anybody. So, I asked him to share with me the audio so I could share exactly what was said.
“I wrote it down — here’s exactly what I said: ‘There study habits are formulated every day. You can’t cheat academics at Notre Dame. If I didn’t go to class at Ohio State, 60,000 students. Cincinnati, another big public school, there’s 40,000 students. If you don’t go to class, okay, take some online classes, show up at your final. At Notre Dame, you’re forced every day to go to class. But it formulates this work capacity, this learning capacity.’ So, the only reason Ohio State and Cincinnati were referenced was because they were large schools with large student bodies compared to Notre Dame, which is a small school at 8,500 students.”
“.. It wasn’t meant to say that you don’t go to class. When you see a quote that says you don’t go to class at places, that Marcus Freeman says you don’t go to class at a place like that, that changes the entire narrative. .. I would never say that and disrespect my alma mater.”
As you can see, Marcus Freeman was distraught over the way his comments were perceived by Ohio State and Cincinnati. While some feathers were ruffled, both universities will appreciate Freeman setting the record straight.
