I used to be a Notre Dame fan.

Of course I was - I grew up here, and came of age to really understand and enjoy football just as Holtz was having his best seasons. I (in passing) met Rick Mirer when he was an underclassman - in high school. My grandfather took me to the spring scrimmage games a few years. And those shiny gold helmets! Awesome.

The team has been on a long, slow slide ever since, but I came to terms with that before Holtz even left. College football is what it is - frothing, darwinian, zero-tolerance competition among a hundred organizations. A hundred schools. Were everything even, you might expect "your" team to be the national champion once a century, twice if you're lucky. Everything is not even, of course, and Notre Dame has a number of unfair advantages, but by the mid 90's those advantages were eroding.

When I was a child, only Notre Dame was on television all the time. Some of that perception had to do with the TV market I lived in, but the exclusive NBC contract they've had for ages is still unique. ...but with more and more cable/sat networks looking for sports content, just about any team can be seen regionally, if not nationally. The ESPN talking heads can't just talk about one team, so they'll talk and talk and talk and talk about everyone in the top 25 and a lot of teams outside it. The BCS is flawed as all hell, but it does level the playing field somewhat.

All that's really unique any more is the shiny gold helmets. (And yeah, I know, they never were.) And that was okay by me, since they were "my school", and good guys.

...I think you can see where this is going. I got mad at Notre Dame when they fired Tyrone Willingham. They had let the team stagnate for a while under Bob before they pulled the plug, but here's this guy just starting to get his own recruiting class into starting roles, and the team underperformed a little bit. It wasn't even a losing season, they still went to a frigging bowl game, but for some reason it's such a complete disaster that the coach gets fired before that bowl.

And then... they hired Charlie Weis. I was prepared to attempt to like him, but the first thing he does coming to town was badmouth Willingham, insult the players, and imply that all he needs to do to fix things was scream at them enough to change their attitude. (I tried and tried to find a link to the articles which described this encounter, and only got the edges of some of the things I remember. Which may mean my memory has exaggerated the incident, or perhaps I read way too much into one or two reports. But I definitely recall forming a strong negative impression on the basis of reports of his first meeting with the team. Maybe it was local media...?) That was the day I stopped caring about Notre Dame. Hell, that was the day I really stopped caring at all about college athletics. ...that's a different rant, which I may write on some other occasion.

One thing that a lot of observers overlook is just how tone-deaf hiring Weis was. I'm not talking about the fat-obnoxious-egotistical-whit­e guy replacing the urbane-wellspoken-trailblazing­-black guy (who was the second choice behind a fat-obnoxious-egotistical-whit­e liar in the first place), though that was much commented on at the time. No, I'm speaking of an Indiana school, hiring a new head coach from the Patriots. Yeah, think about that one a little. Not only is the school showing its recruits that it's willing to screw them over by jettisoning the coach at the slightest sign of weakness, it's showing the local/regional kids (and college recruiting, beyond the creamiest of the high school crop, is still a local/regional game) that they don't care about local fan sympathies. And Weis made a special point of wearing a Patriots Superbowl ring when he arrived. And that apparently Notre Dame wasn't good enough for him to leave his current job and get busy with the business of recruiting for ND for better than six weeks after the contract was signed.

But I digress.

I can't say that I can argue convincingly that Weis is a historically lousy coach. But nothing I've seen the last two years contradicts the content of this article in any way.

Good for him. Couldn't happen to a better blowhard, or a better organization. I feel sad for the Willingham leftovers still at the school who have been unable to escape, but that's the extent of my sympathy. And if the school can't find the gumption to jettison him after this season, then perhaps we'll really understand why they fired Willingham.

-Ked (feeling peculiarly embittered on this topic - I forgot I cared this much)

Interesting post. Could you please give me some specific examples of when Weis badmouthed Ty Willingham.

It seems that you have a positive attitude toward Holtz and then you state that you formed a negative attitude towards Weis because of his first meeting with the team. I think you need to go back read up on Holtz's first meeting with the team.

I'm sure that Lou and his coaching staff never screamed at players or were abusive to players in practice. Oh wait, wasn't Joe Moore one of Lou's top assistants? Don't put down Weis because he is loud mouthed and screams at his players when the coaching staff you seem to look back fondly on was renowned for being hard on players.

Your comments on recruiting is just plain ridiculous. Weis has brought in two top ten recruiting classes and currently has the #1 recruiting class in the country coming in next year. So, the schools message that they are going to jettison coaches at the slightest sign of weakness somehow isn't getting through to top flight football recruits. Your comment about Weis choosing to not leave the Patriots until after the Super Bowl is just plain wrong. It is well reported that New England did not allow Weis to leave until after the Super Bowl. He was under contract and he had a professional obligation to the team he worked for. You are really groping if you're going to call him out for that.