Jordan Faison's two-sport excellence for Notre Dame football and lacrosse comes at a price

SOUTH BEND — Jordan Faison’s ambitious timeshare arrangement between Notre Dame football and the school’s two-time defending national championship lacrosse program rolls on.

Sunday afternoon in Columbus, Ohio, where the unseeded Irish (8-4) will face No. 4-seed Ohio State (14-2) in a first-round NCAA Tournament game, Faison gets yet another crack at the Scarlet and Gray.

Three and a half months after the Buckeyes outlasted Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff title game, the wideout/midfielder smiled at the notion he might owe them one in this cross-sport rematch.

He even chuckled a bit at an offhand suggestion he could somehow find a way to throw a two-point pass as he did during the feverish second-half comeback in Atlanta.

“I might,” he said.

Irish followers have long since learned to put nothing past Faison. From capping his freshman football season with MVP honors in the 2023 Sun Bowl to helping the 2024 lacrosse edition repeat as national champs, the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., dynamo has rarely taken a breath.

“It’s the last month of our season, but for Jordan he’s been in season for about 600 of the last 660 days,” Notre Dame lacrosse coach Kevin Corrigan said Thursday. “Imagine that the first two years of your college experience as a student, as an athlete and everything else.”

After missing the first two games this spring in the interest of rest and recovery from the football grind, Faison enters NCAA play with just 11 points through 10 games: eight goals and three assists.

He’s been limited to just two goals and two assists over his last five games, a stretch that includes a pair of losses to Syracuse.

In 2024, Faison played all 17 games and finished with 30 points (22 goals, eight assists). His remarkable freshman season saw him record three hat tricks and score at least one goal in all but two games.

His only multigoal outing this spring was a two-goal showing in a loss to Maryland on March 1 in Atlanta, and his last multipoint effort was against Michigan in mid-March.

“I think he’s done an amazing job of keeping himself motivated on a daily basis,” Corrigan said, “but there’s a price to be paid for trying to do everything. That’s part of the deal.”

Ascending or peaking? Why not both for Jordan Faison?

Originally signed as a football walk-on but better known for lacrosse, Faison was placed on scholarship midway through the 2023 football season.

After taking primarily mental reps at spring practice in 2024, he dressed out for more football activity this spring while juggling a similar lacrosse workload.

“I had to do a little bit more time over there in football, so I had a couple less lacrosse practices during the week,” Faison said. “That’s pretty much the biggest difference that was made. I still was over here, doing my time for lacrosse as well, but a little more time on football.”

A high right ankle sprain suffered in the season opener at Texas A&M caused Faison to miss three early-season games. Limited to just 67 offensive snaps through mid-October, he eventually got going in what became a 16-game march to the title game.

The sophomore hopes to extend his lacrosse season as well. Asked if his game is ascending or peaking, he opted for both answers.

“Definitely ascending,” he said. “Around the peaking area, too. You have to be at this point in the season. It’s win or go home, so you have to put it all out there right now.”

Faison managed two points (one goal, one assist) in the March 8 home loss to Ohio State, which was ranked 15^th at the time. Notre Dame, then No. 2 in the nation, fell 10-9 on a point-blank goal with seven seconds remaining.

“It was a full 60-minute game, a battle until the end,” Faison said. “They ended up canning a goal with a couple seconds left to win the game. But it was a great game, back and forth.”

The takeaway for the Irish?

“I think it showed we were a good team, but we still had some work to do,” Faison said. “We took that to practice with a chip on our shoulder every day and kept that throughout the season as well.”

The high-octane attack that made Notre Dame nearly impossible to defend last spring has only made brief appearances in 2025. A postseason resurgence from Faison would help that cause greatly.

“Right now we don’t have as many goals as we would like, but it’s coming together,” he said. “We have a great offense, dudes that can score at any spot on the field. We’re going to go out and show that in this postseason. That’s what we plan to do.”

Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for the South Bend Tribune and NDInsider.com. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.