SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Mike Martin opened his first news conference as Notre Dame’s general manager by leaning into advice from his brother, Chris, a former television analyst and NFL agent. Counseled to be honest and brief, Martin said he could only deliver honestly and then thanked a long list of people who helped get him from Tampa Jesuit to Vanderbilt to NFL front offices and now to Notre Dame.
And when he realized he had forgotten to thank his parents, Martin cut off the first question to double back on gratitude.
“My mom would have killed me if I didn’t say that,” Martin said.
That doesn’t mean how Martin introduced himself and the first impression he made were synonymous. After offering a brief biography and explaining how the NFL and college football are similar and admitting there’s plenty he has to learn at Notre Dame, Martin pivoted to the one part of the job he knows the least about but the one that might define his tenure most: sales.
After taking a final question, Martin asked the media a couple. The second was about how Notre Dame has co-branded St. Patrick’s Day as Pot of Gold Day, basically the day when it offers scholarships to its top targets in the next cycle, meaning players wrapping up their sophomore years in high school. But the first was rhetorical, which was sort of the point.
“Can you tell me any other schools where you can compete for national championships on the field and work in the classroom toward Ivy League-type degrees?” Martin said. “Can you answer that for me?”
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Nobody spoke up, both a nod to the fact media members ask questions instead of answering them and a hat tip to the fact Notre Dame stands apart from the schools it’s competing with in the College Football Playoff, i.e., Ohio State, Penn State and Georgia, etc. If Martin has a lot to grasp about how Notre Dame operates and why college football keeps moving its goal posts, he seems to understand the product he’s selling.
“That’s what we’re doing here,” Martin said. “Just wanted to put that out there.”
Martin arrives at Notre Dame with NFL experience with the Detroit Lions, Carolina Panthers, Houston Texans, Tennessee Titans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, his hometown team that hired him first as pro personnel assistant. When Martin accepted that job, he was on the verge of giving up on football entirely, well aware he wasn’t good enough to play in the NFL. About to accept a position with the uniform company Cintas in Arizona, Martin got a call from Tampa Bay’s pro personnel department.
Martin accepted a return to his hometown, then began working his way up the ladder, all the way to director of scouting advancement in Detroit the past four seasons. In the college general manager position, where there are no best practices, how Martin worked with the Lions may carry over most to Notre Dame.
For all the work requirements managing name, image and likeness contracts and roster numbers, the biggest jobs are attracting talent to Notre Dame and making sure it’s the right talent coming in. Notre Dame director of scouting Matt Jansen will stay in the personnel department (Martin and Jansen overlapped in Houston’s front office). So will director of analytics Anthony Treash.
As much as Notre Dame needs to rebuild its recruiting operation after losing Chad Bowden and Zaire Turner to USC, plus Caleb Davis to San Diego State, it plans to double down on being smarter in scouting. Because while landing five-star talent is unequivocally important, so is finding the next Leonard Moore, a former three-star prospect who developed into a freshman All-American.
“To everything, there’s a process,” Martin said. “Even in an evaluation, there’s a lot more than just seeing a talented kid play football. Digging into the background of kids is important. Process, for me, starts with character. People who are open to being developed.”
Martin is up front that the sales part of the job, i.e., recruiting, is new to him. He knows what he doesn’t know, meaning he’ll lean on new director of recruiting Carter Auman and the rest of the remaining staff. Notre Dame has just seven commitments in its next recruiting class and ranks No. 8 nationally after climbing to No. 1 during the summer in Marcus Freeman’s first two seasons.
“I’ll be the first one to tell you, I don’t have every single answer,” Martin said. “There’s a learning curve here for me, one I’m excited to take on. The recruiting elements will be sort of new to me.”
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Understanding the transfer portal and how to allot NIL funds by position might come easier. The portal isn’t much different than free agency in the NFL, just without an efficient and transparent marketplace, although that may change if the House Settlement allows for revenue sharing later this year. And even the concept of free agency is similar in Martin’s mind between Notre Dame and Detroit.
The Lions didn’t use free agency as a foundational tool in roster building. It was more for making gains on the margins. It’s a similar story for Notre Dame, where portal classes have been more supplementary than primary, at least other than quarterback. The Irish have taken eight transfers each of the past two seasons, hitting on most.
“Similar to my beliefs in the NFL, I believe you build through the draft and you supplement through free agency. We’re in the development business,” Martin said. “We’re gonna lean heavily on our recruits … we won’t live in the portal.”
Exactly how many of Martin’s NFL experiences carry over to Notre Dame is impossible to know, in part because the college football landscape seems to change by the week. Even the allocation of salaries in the NFL may not exactly translate to college based on positional needs. But there seem to be at least some transferrable principles from Detroit under Dan Campbell, who invested heavily in the offensive and defensive lines, and then built out from there. Freeman regularly describes Notre Dame as an “offensive and defensive line driven program,” which could be a tell where NIL resources are invested.
Still, as Martin said, he’ll be learning on the job after taking over for Bowden following Notre Dame’s run to the national championship game. The bet that Martin can get caught up to speed quickly is a wager Freeman was willing to make.
“Every team, it’s a different situation. The team we were last year won’t be where we are this year. And some of the ways we value positions, even that will change,” Martin said. “We have how we like to play football and that influences a lot of what we’ll look for.
“I think there’s a lot unknown. There’s a lot of moving parts. I don’t think there’s any set way. Some of the unknown is what intrigued me about this job. If there’s no challenge, I don’t want it.”