GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman knows Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell well enough to realize the Fighting Irish would face a bigger season-opening challenge than the recent results of these two teams suggested.
Freeman's team eventually responded.
CJ Carr threw two touchdown passes, Aneyas Williams ran for 90 yards and two more scores and No. 4 Notre Dame pulled away in the second half to beat Wisconsin 41-13 on Sunday night at Lambeau Field. Notre Dame led just 13-10 at halftime before dominating the final two periods.
“Human nature is maybe you look at somebody else’s record last year — and everybody has expectations on what you should be this year — to think this is how this game should go,” said Freeman, who played for Fickell at Ohio State and coached alongside him at Cincinnati. “I don't know how they thought it would go, but I wanted to make sure at halftime they knew it was going to be a babble and going to be a struggle. I told them that all week. Sometimes you don't believe it until you're in it.”
This was the first college football game at the home of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers since 2016, when Wisconsin upset a fifth-ranked LSU team 16-14. Wisconsin also hung around for a while in this one as a three-touchdown underdog as it attempts to bounce back from two straight losing seasons.
Notre Dame's first touchdown came on a 3-yard reception by Green Bay resident James Flanigan, whose father and grandfather (each named Jim Flanigan) both played for the Packers.
“There's three generations of Flanigans who have been on that field and made some plays,” Flanigan said. “That's really special.”
Carr went 19 of 29 for 239 yards. His other touchdown completion was a 28-yarder to Nolan James Jr. with 1:51 left.
The Irish entered this season pledging to leave no doubt about their College Football Playoff worthiness after getting left out of the field last year despite winning their last 10 regular-season games by double-digit margins.
But the Irish’s performance early on created plenty of doubt about how effectively they can run the ball without Heisman Trophy finalist Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price, the only two running backs selected in the first round of this year’s NFL draft. Notre Dame rushed for 111 yards on 32 carries — including just 29 yards on 16 attempts in the first half.
Notre Dame's offense eventually got in gear. The Irish scored touchdowns on each of their three second-half possessions.
“I don’t have a great explanation for the second half,” Fickell said. “I give them a lot of credit. We kind of held the energy and created a lot of momentum in the first half. In the second half, we could do none.”
Williams’ 3-yard touchdown run capped a 70-yard drive to open the second half. Colorado transfer DJ McKinney then intercepted Colton Joseph’s pass and ran untouched for a 55-yard touchdown to make it 27-10.
Gavin Lahm’s second field goal of the night cut Notre Dame’s lead to 27-13 near the end of the third, but Williams capped the Irish’s next drive with a 5-yard touchdown run and James completed the scoring in the closing minutes.
“We prepared for a battle,” Carr said. “We got a battle in the first half. We were really excited, I think, coming out of the second half because Free talks about there’s nothing great that comes from something that’s easy. We knew it was going to be a struggle. It's what we wanted, and (we) ended up finishing really strong."
Wisconsin: After adding 34 transfers, Wisconsin certainly looks better than it has the last couple of years. But the Badgers needed to play mistake-free football to have a shot at pulling the upset, and they instead had two turnovers that led to Notre Dame touchdowns.
Notre Dame: The Irish's defense could face some early adversity. The Irish lost preseason Associated Press All-America second-team safety Brauntae Johnson and defensive lineman Jason Onye to injuries during the game. Freeman had no update on either player after the game. Preseason AP All-America second-team linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa didn't play as he continues to recover from a knee injury that ended his 2025 season early.
One positive development for Notre Dame came from Purdue transfer Spencer Porath, who made field goals of 52 and 26 yards in his Irish debut. Last season, Notre Dame didn’t make a field goal after Oct. 11.
Wisconsin: Hosts Western Illinois on Saturday.
Notre Dame: Hosts Rice on Saturday.
Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here. Visit the Top 25 here and see AP’s full college football coverage here.
Wisconsin wide receiver Malachi Coleman, second from left, celebrates scoring a touchdown with teammates during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Notre Dame Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Kayla Wolf)w,d
VENICE, Italy (AP) — Alex Gibney has made films about powerful people, corporations and organizations before: Enron, Elizabeth Holmes, Scientology and the U.S. military’s abuses at Bagram and Abu Ghraib are just a few. And yet, he said, nothing compares to the scope of power held by his latest subject, Elon Musk.
With a nearly four-hour runtime, “Musk” is having its world premiere this week at the Venice Film Festival. It's one of the most hotly anticipated of the festival and the year — Bleecker Street is releasing it in theaters in October.
Gibney spoke to The Associated Press about upending the Musk myth, his revelations about his power and his support of President Donald Trump.
Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.
GIBNEY: A number of people came to me a few years ago, actually early 2023, and said, would you like to make a film about him? And I initially wasn’t sure, but a really good friend of mine convinced me that it was a good idea because it would be a portrait of kind of 21st century power. And so with that, I dug in.
GIBNEY: In some ways it’s a simple story (with) a lot of complicated details. I think the source of his power comes from, how should I put this, (expletive)? That is to say, his ability to speak with confidence about the future in ways that convince people to invest in his companies. It’s really a future that rarely is in sync with facts or evidence or any remote possibility. So that is really what I discovered. That and the fact I think his genius, if there is a genius, is that he is not an inventor, he’s an investor. His genius is stock pumping.
The other thing I discovered was that the reasons for turning toward Trump were both a break with the past, I mean, people look to the way that he was idolized by many people on the, you could call it the left, or people who regarded him as a kind of climate savior for what he was doing with Tesla. Many people wondered about that transition. I discovered two things. One is, in a way, it was a predictable transition because he goes where the federal government money is.
But the other reason is his companies were facing an enormous number of federal investigations. And indeed, Tesla was under criminal investigation. But out of that case, there was a good chance that under a (Kamala) Harris administration, he might go to prison. He joked about that on the Tucker Carlson show. I think those were two key motivators that I had initially underestimated. A lot of people clocked it to the woke mind virus. After doing some research, I didn’t see it that way.
GIBNEY: Nothing compares to this in terms of the scope of his power. What’s interesting about Musk is it’s not so much something that’s new as an old wine in a new bottle. And Musk, I think like some of the characters that I’ve followed in the past, is afflicted with what some people call noble cause corruption. That is to say, you begin to believe in a cause. And in Musk’s case, it was making us multiplanetary and also leading us into a more sustainable environmental world. And because you’re in line with those important, valuable, good causes, anything you do in the service of those causes is OK. And ultimately that leads you to corruption.
In a way, Musk is not dissimilar from the guys at Enron. He’s not dissimilar from Elizabeth Holmes in the way that he bent the truth to serve his impulses.
The one big difference with Musk is that he has companies (SpaceX and Tesla) which contain a great number of very qualified engineers and executive leaders.
GIBNEY: What is it that physicist Richard Feynman used to say? It’s good to have an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out. There is always bias, but I’m always willing to have my assumptions challenged. I started off as a kind of an admirer and was honest in my desire to want to talk to him, but ultimately he didn’t want to talk to me. Then you start digging into the facts and you follow them where they lead. And where they led for me was to a place that upended the myth, I would say, of Elon Musk as a kind of modern Leonardo da Vinci.
GIBNEY: He didn’t really except in so far as the fact that people were terribly afraid to speak to me on the record, or at least on camera. They were just terrified of Elon. And these were people in his companies. These were people who knew him well. These were supporters and critics.
A lot of people close to him who were his admirers would say, “I can’t talk to you unless I get Elon’s permission.” I thought, wow, for such a big and powerful person, that seems awfully weak.
GIBNEY: This probably doesn’t share that much with the Melania documentary.
One of the things I would say about the film is it’s a dark and dangerous topic, but the film itself is a fun ride.
For ongoing coverage of the 2026 Venice Film Festival, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/venice-film-festival
This combination of images show filmmaker Alex Gibney, left, and Elon Musk. (AP Photo)
