The University of Notre Dame’s head football coach has a message for all of the corporate media outlets trying to make his team’s Orange Bowl victory about his race: Winning football games isn’t about him or his skin color.

The Fighting Irish won the Orange Bowl on Thursday night 27 to 24 on a 41-yard field goal kicked with mere seconds left in the game. The team’s last-minute triumph secured them the first spot in the college football national championship at the end of the month and should have dominated headlines. Instead, national and sports press rooms alike fawned over the fact that, regardless of the Orange Bowl outcome, either Notre Dame or Penn State’s head coach would become the first black coach to make it to the ultimate FBS faceoff.

The ESPN reporter tasked with covering the coach’s and quarterback’s reactions, after spending a little bit of time asking for Freeman’s analysis of the game, pressed the Catholic convert on how much his position as the “first black head coach to go to a national championship game in college football” meant to him.

“I’ve said this before: I don’t ever want to take attention away from the team. It is an honor, and I hope all coaches — minorities, Black, Asian, white, it doesn’t matter, great people — continue to get opportunities to lead young men like this,” he said. “But this ain’t about me. This is about us. We’re going to celebrate what we’ve done because it’s so special.”