Watching in horror, I sat in front of the TV absolutely numb to yet another USC drumming of ND, seeing the all too familiar number 38 next to our opponents name (hey, at least we got 3 this time right?). As the game progressed, I knew what would be coming. There would be no good news for the next couple of weeks concerning ND football.

Pick your media poison — they are all saying singing a similar chorus. How much is it going to cost ND to buy out Weis’ contract? Will Weis be fired? Will Weis step down? Why hasn’t Weis been fired yet?

It has been a whirlwind of despair to say the least. Knowing that your current head coach now holds a worse winning percentage than both Davie and Willingham isn’t exactly the most encouraging stat in the world. Seeing ND get beaten for the seventh straight time against USC doesn’t help. Finishing 6-6 against a weak schedule is depressing.

So now what?

Weis won’t be having any type of meeting with AD Jack Swarbrick until next Monday and about the same time, we will find out our bowl fate as well. In the meantime, Weis is out recruiting in the West and Swarbrick will no doubt have every pissed off alum/administration member/donor/fan screaming in his ear to fire him.

Swarbrick, must to the anger of some it seems, has been standing fast on his stance that he will review the entire year and make the best decision for the program. It seems everyone is ready to say that the “best decision” is obviously to fire Weis. Folks on the fire Weis bandwagon also seem to not be too fond of hearing our AD mention things like GPA and graduation rates in Weis’ review. I’ve seen more than one post in regards to this topic saying ND clearly doesn’t have its priorities straight and should be focus far more on football than academic standards.

In my opinion we are currently at a very defining moment for ND football. Swarbrick, in his first year, has quite a large decision (no pun intended) in front of him. This decision isn’t just simply, fire a coach, get another and move on. ND for the most part used to have either one of two things happen: the coach would have a long tenure and retire (Ara, Leahy), or retire/resign on their own (Devine, Faust).

Not since the departure of Leahy has ND seen the program get hit so hard. Even then, only one of those coaches was actually fired by ND (Terry Brennan). Joe Kuharich resigned following Brennan, and frighteningly enough, there are some scary parallels:

[Kuharich] took the head coaching position at the University of Notre Dame in 1959, realizing a longtime ambition to return to his alma mater. He had earlier been courted by Notre Dame after the 1956 season, after the Irish finished 2-8, but before he had a chance to accept an offer, Terry Brennan was given a reprieve. He brought a professional touch to Irish football, putting shamrocks on the players’ helmets and shoulder stripes on their jerseys. Kuharich compiled a 17-23 record over four non-winning seasons and remains to this day the only coach ever to have an overall losing record at Notre Dame. Included was a school-record eight-game losing streak in 1960, a year in which the Irish would finish 2-8. It was one of the worst stretches in Notre Dame football history. The consensus opinion was that Kuharich never made the adjustment from pro football to college football, attempting to use complicated pro coaching techniques with collegiate players, and never adapted to the limited substitution rules in effect at the time, having big, immobile linemen playing both ways in an era where smaller, quicker players were preferred. He often said, “You win some and you lose some,” and seemed perfectly content finishing 5-5 every year. This did not sit well with the Irish faithful, who expected Notre Dame to beat everybody. The team played listlessly, showing no emotion. When the pressure of winning became too much to bear, Kuharich resigned in the spring of 1963 and assumed the post of supervisor of NFL officials. Because it was so late in the spring, Hugh Devore was named interim head coach while the search for a permanent replacement was being conducted. Little did Joe know at the time that the players he had recruited would come to within 93 seconds of an undefeated season and a national championship in 1964 under first-year coach Ara Parseghian.

Now, a couple things that I want to point out here. Yes, we have some scary parallels with what is going on now. And most of the complaints in the wiki article (which from the tone, sounds like it was written by a pissed off Irish fan), seem to be the only echos that we have been able to wake up the past couple of years. However, I want to point out two very, very critical points.

1. ND Football has been bad, dreadful, God-awful, etc. before. This line of thinking that somehow the almighty program of ND doesn’t hit a rough spot somewhere along the line is completely out of place.
2. Read the last bold excerpt. Ara nearly won a national title with the same players one of the worst coaches in ND history put together. I do wonder what would have happened had Kuharich coached another year (before anyone thinks I’m about to bash Ara, back off, I’m not, keep reading). Perhaps the results wouldn’t have been as good as Ara, but then again, what would the results have been if Ara wasn’t…well Ara.

And this comes back to my main point in my last post. I flat out don’t see another Ara-like coach out there right now that isn’t already employed. Weis is still putting together top-flight classes and laying down (and more importantly repairing) the foundation for ND football talent-wise. We are still a very young team for the most part and young teams don’t just figure it out automatically. Of course, that leads to the argument of Weis just can’t get production of the team and someone else can do better. Well oddly enough, let’s follow the Kuharich/Ara senario:

After an undisclosed initial disagreement, Parseghian was hired as Notre Dame’s 22nd head coach, inheriting a team that had finished 2-7 in 1963 and taking it to within 1:33 of an undefeated season and a national championship in 1964.

Ara’s superior organizational skills had a lot to do with this rapid turnaround as well as his ability to put the right players in the right positions. He discovered underutilized talent in quarterback John Huarte and end Jack Snow. These two players went on to set numerous school passing and receiving records and Huarte wound up as the 1964 Heisman Trophy winner, the first non-monogram winner ever to do so.

2005 ringing any bells? Underutilized talent (Jeff Samardzija) and being able to put people in the right places (his play schemes, leading to Quinn exploding). Hell, you could even say Weis nearly made a run at a title (OT loss to Michigan State, “Bush Push” loss to USC).

Weis is still, believe it or not, placing people in the right spots. Golden Tate was converted from RB to a huge WR threat. Michael Floyd starts over Harold Kamara and David Grimes as a freshman (and you can’t tell me not having him hasn’t killed the offense lately). On the defensive side of the ball Robert Blanton has made a huge impact as a freshmen CB. Pat Kuntz went from being called a horrible fit for a 3-4 defense to an amazing NT. Hell, even walk-on Mike Anello turned into a special teams phenom for ND. You can’t tell me that Weis hasn’t been squeezing out as much talent as he can from his young squad.

If we really want to take a real long, hard look at what is wrong with the team, does it completely fall on Weis? As I look at ND right now, the two biggest problems performance-wise that I see are the O-Line and Clausen’s regression.

Weis was able to scheme around O-Line problems in 2005 and 2006 by running a ton of screens, look routes and draw plays. Needless to say, other defenses have caught on. The problem is though, we can’t just switch to running the ball down people’s throats when we can’t block. I’ve been critical of certain play calls seeming “too cute” on things like 3rd and 1, but you know what…can you look at our O-Line and say for certain “Oh yeah, they’ll get that yard.” It is hard to follow the K.I.S.S. principle here when your team can’t perform the simple. So what happens next? You try to out-scheme and out-think easy situations to try to actually succeed.

So what does Weis need to do to remedy O-Line woes? Well, he sure as hell doesn’t know the precise fundamentals of blocking in my opinion, but guess what, he doesn’t teach them. The O-Line coach does. Clearly, Coach Latina has not been performing up to par. In Weis’ current recruiting run, I sure hope he is able to give Swarbrick name of a damn good O-Line coach as a part of his job defense. We clearly need it. I don’t care who the head coach is at ND — if the O-Line can’t do it’s job, we will forever be one dimensional and continue to be a mediocre football team.

So now, what about Clausen, isn’t Weis supposed to be the QB guru? Well, what if Clausen simply just isn’t the “guy” for ND. He wouldn’t be the first highly recruited QB to be a bust/mediocre player (see: his brothers). Now, I have no doubt he was the best choice to start this season, and remember, things didn’t exactly “click” for Quinn until his junior year.

At the very least, Weis made (in my opinion) a very wise move to resist the temptation of burning Dayne Crist’s red shirt year and throwing him into the fire. Best case scenario, Clausen goes through another bowl game and spring ball as well as fall camp with Crist competing for his job and comes out as the QB we all expected him to be. Worst case scenario, we find out Crist is the better player and he has four full years to work with.

There is no doubt in my mind if those two parts improve, this team comes out firing on all cylinders. The defense will improve not just from more experience, more talent and time with our new blitz-happy style, but also spending less time on the damned field. Improvement from the O-Line will make people at the very least respect our running game (and take a look a this year’s games…when we ran well, we dominated) which will open up the passing game and take the pressure off of whoever our QB is. Let’s be honest, how badly to you think defenses are really biting on play action passes when they know the D-Line is already in the backfield?

Is this all an entirely over-optimistic view of our current situation? Probably. Do I think I am too far off base in this analysis? Not really.

The fact of the matter is that Weis has indeed built a solid talent pool. Next year will be the first time in quite a while that we can look at the roster and see four consecutive top ten recruiting classes. And better yet, the transfers that most programs suffer from in getting such classes, doesn’t really seem to be affecting us. Clearly, the players and current recruits still believe in Weis despite the troubles we’ve had.

Whether or not fans don’t like to hear it, Weis has gotten the football team to have a 3.0+ GPA during his tenure and continued to hold a graduation rate above 95%. I don’t know about everyone else, but I would prefer to not be like most of the other top-flight programs that can’t graduate their players (and minority athletes, I’m looking at you Michigan). We seem to love to use this argument before on how we are “doing it right” and hearing that some people want to kick this to the curb is beyond me.

I’ve finally come to grips with the fact that ND currently is *gasp* rebuilding. This might be a dirty word for some ND fans, but is there any doubt that is what has been going on the past two years? Not everyone has an Alabama-like resurgence. Does anyone reading this think Michigan is going to recover from 3-9 to BCS/NC contender in one year? I sure don’t (and they are losing players on top of that). I know people aren’t happy with saying going 6-6 from 3-9 is improvement. I’m not either. However, if Clausen happens to hit a wide open receiver against Pitt and ND doesn’t blow a lead against Syracuse, we are all of a sudden 8-4 and I have a feeling I don’t even have to be writing this post.

There are so many variables going into next season that I believe it is impossible to say that firing Weis is going to be the cure-all for this situation. Make no mistake, I still believe this team underperformed and you do have to place some of the blame on Weis. And, should Weis keep his job, I fully expect nothing less than a 9 win season and winning a bowl game of worth — actually, I would expect this with any coach next season with our talent and schedule.

We don’t need to put another quarter in the coaching carousel this year. We don’t need to be like every other program in the nation that freaks out after a couple of bad seasons. Davie got 5 seasons with a similar winning percentage, and before anyone says “Well Ty got 3 with a similar record!”, I’m sick of hearing it. If there is any doubt that Ty can’t cut it, I direct you to look at Washington and ask their fans how they feel about his abilities coaching and recruiting. We shouldn’t be handcuffed by that decision. Given Weis’ performance with recruiting and his seasons, I don’t see why ND shouldn’t at least give him the same time as Davie.

Since people love to toss out the winning percentages and such as arguments to fire Weis, I want to leave you with some numbers. Everyone seems to be comfortable saying that 2007 was more the result of Ty leaving us in a recruiting hole, so taking that 3-9 season away from Weis you get:

Bob Davie: 35-25, .583 win percentage
Ty Willingham: 21-15, .583 win percentage
Charlie Weis: 25-12, .675 win percentage

And just to play fair, taking the worst season away from all coaches:

Bob Davie: 30-18, .625 win percentage
Ty Willingham: 16-8, .667 win percentage
Charlie Weis: 25-12, .675 win percentage

Food for thought.

Saturday I felt like I was in the middle of a dream. Syracuse 24 – ND 23. The Irish lose on Senior Day — the one game on the schedule in which we beat the ever living hell out of the opposition and have every non-starting senior get their moment in the sun at Notre Dame Stadium. Instead, we had this:

Inexcusable. In a game that should have been nothing more than a glorified scrimmage and a celebration of seniors, we instead have senior David Bruton in tears over one of the worst losses in ND history.

As if the loss wasn’t bad enough, Yahoo! Sports decides to write a nice hack article and spin it so that it appears as if the student section was so pissed off by the loss, they threw snowballs at their own team. I won’t spend anymore time on that BS than this: If you qualify drunk college students throwing snowballs around in the first quarter as “pelting” their own team, you have lost your mind. Granted it shouldn’t have been happening in any fashion, but there is no reason to spin the article in such a ridiculous fashion.

I am angry, furious, and completely pissed off. I’ve detailed before our issues and problems and the positives this season has shown us. I have also detailed my opinion on the current differences between Ty and Weis. However, despite any credit I have tried to give Weis and believing that this is just a young team, we found ourselves on the losing end of a Syracuse game in which we blew a 4th quarter lead and used all of our timeouts well before Syracuse’s eventual game-winning drive.

Absolutely embarrassing.

Weis is now firmly planted on the hot seat. Past failures that were shaken off as building the program up are now huge glaring errors. His signature game is a loss to USC. His biggest win was against an overrated Michigan at the Big House in 2005. And in that time, he is 0-3 (and likely soon to be 0-4) against USC, had Michigan State plant their flag in our field, lost to Navy, lost to Air Force, and had the worst season in ND history at 3-9.

John Walters at NBC sports summed it up perfectly:

And, as Notre Dame heads out to USC for a game that will truly test its character next week, I leave you with these numbers:

Bob Davie, five seasons, 35-25 record.

Tyrone Willingham, three seasons, 21-15.

Charlie Weis, just under four seasons, 28-20.

What do each of the last three Notre Dame coaches have in common? As of today, the same exact winning percentage at Notre Dame: .583.

Simply unbelievable. We are now looking at the very real possibility of Weis being fired in the near future. And with USC currently being favored at 28.5 points at the writing of this article, we are starring a 6-6 regular season dead in the face. If all hell really breaks loose, we could also be looking at a Sun Bowl loss and ending the season with a 6-7 losing record and the bowl loss streak extended yet another year (hell we might not even make a bowl). Who would’ve thought things would be going this way after we started 4-1?

Ever since the Pitt loss, ND has looked to be in shambles. The fact though is that the problems that were being overshadowed are just now coming to light and everyone we played has figured it out. Our O-Line is still God awful. We can’t get a rushing game going to save our lives. So now we pin all of our hopes on a sophomore QB to carry our offense — oh and with that same horrid O-Line blocking for him and trying to give him “time” to pass. There is no doubt in my mind Clausen still doesn’t completely have it figured out. He throws a pretty long ball, but if we need to throw that 10-15 yard route, he tries to throw it through the receiver’s chest every time which more often results in inaccurate passes that our WR never have a prayer of making a play on. You flat out can’t win like that.

Our offense was so bad against Syracuse that we managed to turn a blocked punt and what should have been an easy score into an eventual 3rd and 40 and then punt the ball right back. Syracuse wasn’t in a position to ever win that game, but we sure as hell found every damned way to ensure that they stayed in it instead of being able to stomp on their throats and come out with an easy win.

This team isn’t motivated to play. We can’t seem to get it through the team’s skulls that every other team we face is just ready to pounce on Notre Dame and beat us rival or not. Why? Because we are Notre Dame and if you don’t love us, you hate us and you want that win — you want to be the team to further shove ND into the ground.

What happened to that nasty football team mentality? What happened to proving the rest of the nation that WE ARE ND damnit? Where is the chip on our shoulder? What happened to proving everyone wrong and making Lee Corso and Mark May eat their words Sunday morning? And as Rakes of Mallow pointed out, what the hell happened to this:

“You are what you are, folks, and right now you’re a 6-5 football team. And guess what, that’s just not good enough. That’s not good enough for you, and it’s certainly not going to be good enough for me. So, if you think they hired me here to go .500, you’ve got the wrong guy.” – Charlie Weis

I hope to hell that one of the reporters brings this quote up at his next press conference.

Just because we went 3-9 last year does NOT mean a current 6-5 record is anywhere near good enough. Why isn’t Charlie coming out and saying this and making his team believe this?

Has Weis underperformed? Yes. Are the past two years fireable offenses for a ND coach? Yes. Will he be fired? No. Should he be fired? No.

Yes, you read that right. Despite the fact that I think Weis has completely failed the team the past two years, I can’t see a good reason to fire him. This isn’t another cry of “give him another year” and “things will get better just wait.” We are more in a situation of “who in God’s name would we hire in his place?” and “will we lose some of our top recruits in doing so?”

The fact of the matter is that there is no “Urban Meyer” on the scene to prompt a quick firing. There are openings at far too many programs right now and there are also come high profile jobs in the mix too. Tennessee is now looking for someone to rebuild their program much like ND for instance. Staying in the SEC, Auburn’s head coach, Tommy Tubberville, has met with his AD and been told that he will be evaluated after the Alabama game. I don’t know about you, but I read that as: “Beat Bama or Get Fired”. I have a feeling that any top flight coach would rather take stabs at schools like that than to be yet another coach to fail at ND.

Firing Weis and then hiring yet another sub-par coach isn’t the answer. We will cycle back to the Daviham era all over again if we scramble for a last minute coaching replacement. Right now, ND needs to start looking for possible replacements. Test out the waters, and find out who is interested, and most importantly, find a proven head coach. The time for experiments is over, ND isn’t the place for on the job training. If you haven’t proven yourself as a head coach, apply elsewhere.

Weis isn’t dumb, he knows he is one solid head coaching candidate away from being canned. He also has the persona in which he would love for all of us to eat our words and proving us wrong. Unfortunately, I just can’t see that in the cards right now. Weis has been a great recruiter, but he hasn’t been coaching them and even more importantly motivating them like he should be.

I still want to believe, but reality is starting to set in. I am more and more convinced (much like many other fans) that the 2005 and 2006 seasons were a result of great players being great and having the Ty Willingham handcuffs removed. They motivated themselves, they wanted to prove everyone wrong, and they wanted to look at the rest of the nation and say “we told you so.”

Saturday we face USC. Motivating a ND team to play USC should not be hard, especially on the heels of a horrid loss. ND should be foaming at the mouth to take out all the anger, frustration and pain of the Syracuse loss on SC. If we come out flat yet again, there isn’t even a glimmer of hope for Weis. Weis has a chance to redeem himself and this team has a chance to make a statement to end the year.

As far as Weis goes, this is all the motivation he should need:

“9-3 isn’t good enough. 10-3 isn’t that much better. 3-9 is inexcusable. 6-5 wasn’t good enough for you or ND when you got here. We are 6-5 now and it still isn’t good enough. 6 straight losses to USC isn’t good enough and it is time to turn all of this around RIGHT NOW. Your time is running out.”

Go Irish. Beat Trojans. God help us.

I wasn’t expecting to be writing about ND football again so fast. I mean honestly, we are playing one of the worst teams in college football this weekend — not exactly much to get excited about. And even some of ND nation has calmed down to a point regarding Weis‘ job security as well, despite nearly blowing the Navy game.

However, I saw a couple of different articles today regarding ND coaching. First off, we turn to Mike Haywood, who will meet with the University of Washington for their head coaching job. This has been (beyond the unfortunate death in his family), the “personal reasons” that Weis has been supporting this week, and why he has not been at practice.

A few things to note here. First off, I would be really happy for Haywood if he got the job. During the time I worked with the team, Haywood was easily one of my favorite coaches. He is very likable, very knowledgeable, and also a damned good recruiter. I know he hasn’t done the best job in the world calling plays; however, I think more often than not he got too cute with play calling and out thought himself. I chalk that up to inexperience though as it was the first time he had to do it — and let’s be honest, this is Weis‘ system not his. It is really hard to live up to that big of a shadow.

Second, he should strike while the iron is still hot. Even on the heels of a bad season, he still has two great years and one season of improvement on his resume. If the interest is there and he wants to be a head coach, he should definitely go for it.

Finally, this proves something that ND fans have been saying in response to the ESPN et al claims that ND was quick to let go of Ty because he was black. The fact of the matter is that ND, for the time being, is the only school with two black coordinators. Head coaching experience doesn’t appear out of thin air, and you look to the offensive and defensive coordinators for that new head coaching talent. And here we go, lo and behold the “racist” school of ND might just be adding a new black head coach to the NCAA ranks. How dare we right?

Anyways, I wish nothing for the best for Haywood. Also knowing Weis, I’m sure he has a list of potential replacements should Haywood get the job. Just take a look at how fast Corwin Brown was hired after Rick Minter was fired for a good example of this.

Now, in the ridiculous category, someone on NDNation found an article saying Urban Meyer would be a great match for ND. Funny part is, this was written by someone from Florida. Funnier still, Meyer is clearly lying out of his ass (to put it bluntly).

So why didn’t Meyer take the Fighting Irish job in 2004? Because the timing wasn’t right. His authorized biography explains, “Florida’s biggest advantage would turn out to be Urban’s and Shelley’s desire for a strong family life, because he could recruit closer to home.”

At Notre Dame, you recruit nationally, which means flying around the country, away from home a lot more. At a state school like Florida, you can recruit a kid, or several kids, during the day, and still be home for dinner, or at one of your kid’s practices, that night. With a young family, that mattered a lot. But even with that in play, turning down Notre Dame was very difficult, as Meyer notes in this passage in his biography:

“I wanted to go to Notre Dame,” Meyer admitted, “but my family wanted to talk about going to Florida.”

Shelley knew how tough the decision was for her husband because “he left his heart at Notre Dame when we left there last time — he really, really, really loved Notre Dame.”

That’s “really” loved three times, if you’re scoring at home.

Uh…we are keeping score here. Forget the fact that he wasn’t happy that he wasn’t going to get academic exceptions at ND and forget the fact that he targets ND recruits and bashes the school that holds his “dream job”. Seriously is this some kind of sick joke?

Weis seems to be doing quite well with his family here at ND. His son is out on the sidelines every game. He has established “The Ranch” for his charity foundation, Hannah and Friends, in honor of his daughter in the area. Hell, Weis even said at a press conference that his family was “sick of seeing [him] so much.” Damn, so hard to have a family life.

Facts are facts. Urban went to Florida because, in my opinion, he believed he had a better chance of winning there. He used the ND “dream job” line to leverage a sweet deal with UF, and I guarantee you he will use it again if given the chance. I can respect him to a point for his “win at all costs” thinking; however, when you have a practice of lying to recruits (hell, he told one recruit, Jevan Snead that he was recruiting Tim Tebow as a LINEBACKER) and you don’t care who’s toes you step on, I don’t want you representing ND.

Thankfully, I personally feel this won’t ever be an issue; however, seeing someone actually publish this opinion and believe it made me laugh out loud.