I have read numerous articles in the past several days about this once proud program.
No Win Situation for Notre Dame – SI
Two Coaches, Two Sets of Rules – South Bend Tribune
Notre Dame Keeps Weis, though season ‘fell short’ – Associated Press
Is There Anybody Out There – Notre Dame Insider
Notre Dame Football Coach Charlie Weis To Return After 6-6 Season – Bloomberg
All week writers like the Sun-Times Couch and Telander have given their take on the current state of the team and why they are in the mess they are in. They mention things like recruiting and academic standards. Telander made an interesting statement when he said Notre Dame can’t be USC and an Ivy League school at the same time. Notre Dame is suffering from an identity crisis, nothing more, nothing less.
To a certain extent he is right. However, I went back in my BPD time machine and discovered Notre Dame has had recruiting classes consistently inside the nation’s Top 20. In Fact they had numerous Top 10 classes and lost them late in the process due to Notre Dame’s ability to close. http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/17051890/
So how can Notre Dame have talent issues due to academic requirements and still place recruiting classes inside the Top 20? This is something I do not understand. Either you get good talent or you don’t and quite frankly that is only part of the process. It is what you do with that talent once you have it and the level of competition that you play.
If you consistently recruit in the Top 20 of about 130 Div IA programs you should probably finish with a winning record. When you play schools like Navy (07′), Air Force (07′) and Syracuse (08′) whose classes are outside the Top 50 you should crush them, not lose to them. Sure ND doesn’t have 6′3″ guys that run the 40 in 4.3 seconds but they do have talent.
I also submit the recent success of “brainy” and “smaller” schools Northwestern, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest. Vandy managed to finish 6-6 and had to play a grueling SEC schedule (wins over Kentucky, Auburn, South Carolina and Mississippi). Northwestern doesn’t have a top notch SEC schedule but a Big 10 schedule is challenging in its own right. They managed some big wins over Iowa, Minnesota, at Michigan and Illinois to finish with an impressive 9-3 record. Wake Forest has an enrollment of about 7,000 students. They won the ACC in 2006 and have compiled a 27-9 record over the last three seasons.
So we know the Irish have talent and tough academic standards are really nothing more than a scapegoat to the real problem. This being the case what do they do moving forward? Do they do what THE Ohio State does and let every player with a pulse through the front door? I would lean towards NO on that one.
My recommendation is two fold.
First they need to close. Coffee’s for closers as Alec Baldwin said in 1992’s Glengarry Glen Ross. “First prize is a Cadillac. Anyone want to see second prize? A set of steak knives. Third prize is… Your Fired!” Notre Dame’s biggest problem is they have way too many sets of steak knives and Weis & Co. are leaning towards third place. They had some great players interested in the school and then at the last minute left for schools like Florida State, North Carolina and Illinois. This shouldn’t happen. The ND staff isn’t closing. Notre Dame should be a destination for the nation’s top players, not an afterthought.
Finally ND is having a talent issue but it isn’t on the field. From Athletic Director to the coaching staff Notre Dame is clueless. They hire an NFL coordinator a la Dan Devine bringing with him his playbook and Super Bowl ring and expect to go to January bowl games with regularity. I guess that expectation is fine but when your major bowl games come with another coaches players and you tank to a 9-15 record over the past two season with the guys you’ve recruited that says a lot. The coaches aren’t getting through to the players, they aren’t responding to their planning and preparation and they certainly call poor games on both sides of the ball.
Charlie is one of football’s nicest guys. He is a caring father and is quite charitable. You can’t help but root for a guy like Charlie Weis. However, this isn’t a pagent or popularity contest, it is football and head coach is a job. Sales managers with a two month losing track record get canned let alone two full college seasons coming off of two major bowl games. It is quite the decline with no hope in site.
Firing Charlie would have been a fiscal nightmare for the smallish private school in South Bend, Indiana but it was probably the right thing to do. Regardless of their endowments or alumni association that would have been a mighty hefty contract to eat. To right the ship they must dispatch the whole band of coaches because another mediocre season is going to spell almost certain disaster for the ND program.
What Notre Dame needs is a talented coach from a smaller/rebuilding program. They need a guy that can come in and work with the talent that Notre Dame has. They need a vibrant personality that can sell the school, the program and a guy that will CLOSE THE DEAL. A few names that might work would be Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald ( a guy who does more with less than any other college coach in the NCAA), Miami’s Randy Shannon (a defensive specialist who resurrected a dead program in 2 seasons), Connecticut’s Randy Edsall (took a Div II college program and turned it into Div I Conference champs in less than 10 years) and Rutger’s Greg Schiano (turned Div I doormat into a BCS player in just a couple of seasons). Those are just a few coaches that could come to ND, kick ass, take names, shake down the thunder from the sky and make the ND Fighting Irish a January bowl game staple once again.
2 Comments
+00002008-12-05T08:16:19+00:00312008bUTCFri, 05 Dec 2008 08:16:19 +0000 10, 2007 at 3:32 p12
Weis outdid himself compared to 2007.
+00002008-12-05T09:27:04+00:00312008bUTCFri, 05 Dec 2008 09:27:04 +0000 10, 2007 at 3:32 p12
No doubt 2007 was a total disaster but it bothers me more when you have UNC and Pitt beat and lose late. When you should destroy Syracuse and lose. That is 3 games they should have won and didn’t. That would have put them at 9-3 and in a New Year Day Bowl. Weis is nothing more than a great coordinator who will never be a good college head coach or recruiter.