Mike Denbrock and family finding home, dreaming big and giving back at Notre Dame 

The charm of Mike and Dianne Denbrock’s third chapter at Notre Dame wasn’t a guarantee but rather how much their leap of faith felt like a promise assured anyway, and in so many ways.

That’s how much belief the now third-year Irish offensive coordinator had in who Marcus Freeman was becoming and what Notre Dame football could evolve into with the two of them rejoining forces from their years together at Cincinnati, and plotting out a blueprint to chart their bigger dreams.

In a reunion that, ironically, started out with a phone call in December of 2023, with the Notre Dame head football coach prefacing his pitch to Mike, “Now, I know you’re going to say ‘no’ but please hear me out.”

The word no never crossed Denbrock’s mind and hasn’t since. It felt like coming home to both him and wife Dianne in the moment. And a little over two years later, it does more than ever.

“Sometimes they say you can’t go home, right?” Dianne said. “And I’m like, ‘well, you actually can.’ And those thoughts of, ‘Will they even want us back?’ disappeared our very first day back. This community has been wonderful to us. And we wanted to find a way to give back.”

A great idea evolves into a foundation

What’s been percolating ever since along those lines now has a name, a logo, a mission and a launch date — the latter coming shortly after the annual Blue-Gold Game wraps Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium.

“It’s like what are we waiting for?” Mike said of the timing. “When is ever the right time? But we’ve had some losses recently, family members and stuff like that. And it’s like, geez, tomorrow’s not a promise, so here we are.”

And with a foundation that is defined by bringing hope to the tomorrows that we do have: The Mike & Dianne Denbrock 2nd Chance Foundation 4 Life (2cf4l.org). Its mission statement: “We didn’t start this because it looked good on paper. We started it because we’ve spent years watching what happens when someone believes in you at the right time. The 2nd Chance Foundation 4 Life was born out of a simple idea: when the next play comes, make it count.”

The four areas the charity with focus on are:

• Childhood cancers: Every child deserves the chance to grow up. We support research, treatment access, and families navigating pediatric cancer—because no parent should face that fight alone.

• Veterans: They gave everything on their field. We help veterans transition to their next chapter through mentorship, mental health resources, and community reintegration.

• Autism support: Every person communicates, learns, and experiences the world differently. We invest in programs that help individuals with autism thrive on their own terms.

• Men’s & women’s health: Early detection saves lives. We fund screenings, education, and awareness programs so people can take control of their health.

“All of those are areas that have touched people in our lives, people we love,” Mike said.
“We’ve been so incredibly blessed as a family over the years to be involved not only with Notre Dame, but be in a position where we’ve benefited from some good things.

“And we want to try to give other people that may need a second chance or a hand up — or whatever it happens to be — an opportunity to have success in their own lives. We’re going to let it drive the bus and see where it takes us. If it goes big, great, then it goes big. If it stays small and intimate, then we’re OK with that too.”

Running the foundation will be Al McKellar, a longtime family friend with foundation experience and who Mike Denbrock first met when he was an assistant coach at Grand Valley State and McKellar was coaching in Michigan in the high school ranks.

“He’s been a trusted friend for 30-plus years.” Denbrock said. “And somebody that’s really given us a lot of sound advice and helped us kind of direct us where it needs to go to have the biggest impact it can have.”

Grateful for the love from the Freeman family

Marcus Freeman and wife Joanna have also been big supporters of the Denbrocks launching the foundation, but the Freemans’ friendship shows up in so many other ways.

“We’re so grateful that Joanna made us feel like we’re home again,” Dianne said, “and we’re grateful Marcus wanted to give Mike another chance at Notre Dame.”

Denbrock first came to Notre Dame in 2002 as an assistant under head coach Tyrone Willingham. During that three-year regime, he and Dianne were married. In Act 2, Denbrock coached for seven seasons under Brian Kelly (2010-16) during which time the Denbrocks’ son, Chance, was born.

“You always want to, a parent always said, leave something better than the way you found it,” Dianne said of the now 14-year-old. “He’s like the second main reason why we’re doing this foundation. Everybody deserves a chance. Everyone should have a chance.

“And that’s why his name is Chance, because he was our chance. We were trying to find a name for him, and I looked at Mike and I said, ‘Look, we only get one chance at this. We’ve got to get it right.’ And we both looked at each other and we’re like, ‘That’s it. That’s his name. He’s Chance. He’s our chance.’”

The Denbrocks’ first chance to get to know the Freemans was when Mike and Marcus were on the same staff together at Cincinnati under Luke Fickell, beginning in 2017 — Freeman as the defensive coordinator and Denbrock as the offensive coordinator.

Brian Kelly hired Freeman away from UC in 2021 ahead of Kelly’s final season of his 12 in South Bend. When Kelly abruptly bolted for LSU after the 2021 season, he hired Denbrock to be the offensive coordinator, while Freeman succeeded Kelly as Notre Dame’s head coach in December of 2021.

How football is in sync with the foundation’s message

On his way out, Kelly detonated the narrative that he was leaving Notre Dame to go to a school where he would have the resources and support to win a national title, implying those didn’t exist at ND.

Denbrock harpooned that perception by taking less than a week after Freeman’s phone call to fill the ND offensive coordinator vacancy created by Gerad Parker’s departure, and leaving no doubt about what he thought the Irish program’s ceiling was.

“It’s Notre Dame,” Denbrock said in a three-word sentence to explain his reasons for coming back — rather, coming home — again in his first meeting with the ND media after his hiring. “I think I’m very content leading an offense and helping Marcus and this program win a national championship here.

“And I want to be part of that, and I want to do that here with these student-athletes and with this coaching staff.”

The foundation is just an extension of what it means to be back. What it means to be home.

And home for good?

“Who knows for sure what the world holds in store for us, right?” Denbrock said. “But we believe this is all God-driven. And this is a spiritual journey for both of us. We don’t know what God’s going to bring our way. We have absolutely no plan of our own to ever leave here again, as long as they’ll have us.”