The Wrong Guy

Let me just cut to the end of Notre Dame's season right now...on November 29th, the day after the Irish beat Stanford, they will release a statement confirming the firing of one Charles Joseph Weis. After their defeat at the hands of a Michigan team that was clearly not as talented and couldn't match up against Golden Tate or Michael Floyd it became obvious that Charlie isn't the right guy for the job. He has brought in top 10 recruiting classes for the last 3 or 4 years, including 2007 top recruit Jimmy Clausen. And while Clausen has shown some real promise this year (although I want to see him against USC) and has lived up to the "Golden Boy" stature that comes with being a Notre dame quarterback, the rest of the team, in particular the defense just hasn't improved. Now don't get me wrong, he has added some nice pieces to the puzzle with Tate, Floyd, tight end Kyle Rudolph, and running back Armando Allen, but where's the defense? They still can't stop anyone except a terrible Nevada team and gave up 38 to true freshman Tate Forcier (although no one can tell me that he isn't the real deal. Some kids just have IT, and he's one of them)! You can argue that he hasn't improved Notre Dame's talent level since Tyrone Willingham (for the record, Ty got a raw deal, but he wasn't right for Notre Dame either) left. If you remember, he left good ol' Charlie some future NFL kids named Brady Quinn, Jeff Samardzija, Maurice Stovall, Darius Walker, Anthony Fasano, and John Carlson. Coincidentally, they are all offensive players! Charlie was able to turn that into two good seasons of BCS bowl games, although they were over matched by Ohio State and LSU. Since then he has been in rebuilding mode and Notre Dame and their fans have been patient long enough. This was suppose to be the season when they got to the magical 10 win plateau or maybe even 11. With the loss to Michigan they have now dropped out of the top 25 and have revealed some serious flaws. They still have a few dangerous games like Michigan State, Purdue, Washington, and Pittsburg. Not including the automatic loss to USC. It's going to be hard to get to a BCS game with their light schedule on paper and the fact that they aren't in the top 25 now. Not to mention they don't have a conference affiliation so they would have to be an at-large team (at the moment I think BYU and Boise St take those two spots).

The Notre Dame job should go to an established coach with a great track record or a young, up and coming coach. It's arguably the most high profile job in college football (name two better jobs in the land with all things being equal...I dare you...ok USC is one, another one?). Notre Dame made the mistake of hiring Willingham in the first place and fell in love with an old, out of shape career assistant coach with no personality and the worst sound bites outside of Bill Belichick (but somehow they work for him. they are actually so dry that they are funny. Does anyone else besides me think that all of Belichick's assistants try too hard to be just like him? Do they dress up like him for Halloween or wear his pjs to bed?). Weis just isn't Notre Dame. And on top of that, they are paying him like he is Pete Carroll! Like he's won a national championship in the past 7 years, Robert!!!

I would argue that the only way he should keep his job is if they can beat USC and get to the 10 win mark. Anything other than that is unacceptable. He had all the stars lined up for him this season. Great offense, his starting line had the mythical 100 combined starts rule behind them, a soft schedule, and USC without an experienced QB. I believe because of his affinity for offense he has neglected his defense and forgot the age old saying that offense wins games but defense wins championships, or at least gets you to a BCS game instead of the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Day.

Notre Dame needs to go in a new direction, bite the expensive bullet and pay his enormous buyout clause. He needs to be an offensive coordinator in the NFL and Notre Dame needs Urban Meyer, Chris Peterson (Boise State), or a dark horse real energetic guy, kind of like Carroll, Jon Gruden (he could actually be perfect, think about it. Control freak, high energy, thinks football 24/7, and doesn't sleep. Kids would come and play for him. And unlike Weis, he has a Super Bowl ring as a head coach. Although Dungy made the dinner and Gruden just served it). Start the interview process now!


Leo