Notre Dame football is officially a cautionary tale for Texas Longhorns

If the Notre Dame football team’s loss to Northern Illinois wasn’t bad enough, Marcus Freeman’s handling of the situation has led to other National Title contenders using the game as a way not to behave.

The comments from Freeman and the rest of the Irish have been panned almost universally. Especially the talk about how the team bought into its own hype. And that’s what Texas Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian is singling out.

Sarkisian took no time at all to point to Notre Dame football as a kind of wake up call for his own team. During his Monday press conference, the Longhorns’ coach said he showed his squad clips of the Northern Illinois game.

The UT coach said he did so as a "good reminder that we're entitled to nothing. We're capable of anything. We've got a really good team, but we're entitled to nothing and we're going to earn everything we get. We're going to have to earn the victory here Saturday."

Notre Dame football is a cautionary tale for competitors

It doesn’t feel great that Marcus Freeman has turned his team into something everyone else points to as “don’t do this.” That is in fact the opposite of what teams usually want their opponents to feel.

It’s another gut punch in what has been a bad week. It is, unfortunately one of those things that seems to underline the idea that the Irish is one of the softest teams in the sport. Even when people talked about the Blue and Gold going to the playoffs, they gave them very little chance of going anywhere.

The team that just lost to Northern Illinois certainly doesn’t look anywhere near a team that could beat one of the best teams in the country. Not when those teams are talking about how they definitely don’t want to be Notre Dame football.