I wish I could use the color of my skin as an excuse for every bad thing that ever happened in my life whether it was my own fault or not.

Yay! By that measure, it means Northwestern’s off the hook until at least 2050. I never thought I’d thank God for Denny Green, but there you go.

You know, getting that 2005 loss vacated isn’t going to make you feel any better about this season.

Many thanks to ND for beating UCLA though; hope that SC can manage to do the same this year. That would be embarrassing otherwise.

Thanks for the reply. Without reposting your note, I’ll respond. But first, and this is not directed at you, but other posters, I think it’s ironic that those who accuse people of “crying racism” love to then declare people to be “Notre Dame haters” or even more offensive, “Catholic haters”. Nothing further from the truth. One, I am Catholic. Two, I’m a twelve year Catholic (Jesuit) school vet. So I have no inherent prejudice against ND or against Catholism (my eight year old wouldn’t go to Catholic school if I did).

Now, to the reply:

1. One, you assume I don’t follow ND football. That would be a mistake. ND is a national team so you have to follow it along with your own team. From the Holtz years to the present, it’s not only easy to follow ND, good or bad, but much easier than your own team if you live out of town.

2. The reasoning for why Davie’s received five years is based on assumptions. The extenuating circumstances in the ND athletic department are neither here nor there. Turmoil or relative calm, football pays the ticket for most sports on most campuses. And when Willingham was fired, it was quite clearly done because of pressure from those OUTSIDE the athletic department, as you have noted. If it was no time to fire Davie after White was hired, how was it suddenly time to fire Willingham in the same scenario? As you probably have noted, many ND fans hold Willingham responsible for this last class, however it can also be said that by hiring an NFL coach who could recruit full time until the end of the playoffs, ND created their own mess.

3. One of the arguments for Charlie Weis is that he took ND to two BCS bowl games before this disaster of a season. That’s a fact. But could it be argued that in every game Weis has coached against a team either equal in talent or better, he’s lost by huge margins? And that he’s rewarded for a close loss to USC. Whereas Willingham, in his final year, he beat a top ten Michigan and Tennessee in an inconsistent year.

3. Hope for Weis: I agree that three years is too soon to judge a coach. But I’m consistently puzzled on how ND fans can project future success for Weis in a year where his teams have no underperformed against top and bottom talent, while Willingham is thought to have no shot at guiding his juniors and seniors to BCS type records, despite the fact that they would go onto do so. What you want people to do is prove a negative in that if you think Willingham was a bad coach and recruiter, then he couldn’t possibly have success in the future. While in spite of the evidence today, you want people to be an optimist when it comes to Weis’ future on the basis of Weis’ development, or lack thereof, of his own recruits.

4. Extension: Again, the reasons for regretting extending a coach are curious. White is sick about giving Davie an extension. Fair enough. So he doesn’t give Willingham an extension. Fair enough. But he then gives Weis an extension. Whoa. Let’s first get something straight. Extensions have nothing to do with deterring the NFL. The NFL gets whoever they want. The NFL makes a profit, a huge profit, without a single fan purchasing a ticket. So buyouts don’t deter them. Buyouts DO deter other colleges to a bigger extent, but Top 25 schools can overcome those too. So what are buyouts? Buyouts are votes of confidence in coaches. It says that we’re trying to tell recruits that we have laid a firm foundation and this guy is our coach. That’s why Weis, in the face of a 1-8 season, can say he’s going to be at ND for a long time. So did ND, after Willingham went 8-0 in a season most people figured he would have a 2007 Weis season, think that Willingham wouldn’t be at ND long term? Curious.

5. Someone once said that to end racism, it’s not that people have to get the same opportunity to be great, but the same opportunity to be mediocre. Most people in this world, including college coaches, are mediocre. I would include Willingham, Faust, Davie and Weis in that column. How they got treated side by side, with circumstances that are remarkable similiar (once you get rid of the rationalizations) then you can point to race as being a factor in decision making. And if you can’t figure that out, then it’s pretty difficult for me to believe that you’d ever objectively recognize it.

#71, 72 – Geronimo: Ty W was fired not because he is Blaaque, but because Urban Meyer was available and making googlie-eyes at his favorite univ in the whole wide world (ND). Subsequently, Meyer left ND at the altar.

It is like a middle-aged man leaving his frumpy wife for the hot secretary. Only to find out too late that the slutty secretary was interested in someone else. So, the middle aged sap is left with a hefty alimony bill and a bunch of could-woulda-shouldas.

You have to admit that ND lost something when it went against its long-standing tradition and firing someone after three years.

Former Notre Dame president Theodore Hesburgh made no secret of his disapproval of the decision. In his 1990 autobiography, Rev. Hesburgh wrote that if his football coach graduated players and followed NCAA rules, “he would not have to worry about alumni pressure. If he lost some games, or even had a losing season occasionally, I would take the heat, not he. If hired, he would be assured of a five-year contract.” *

* http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&id=3097324&sportCat=ncf

DOH!

Please don’t confuse us with the facts. Racism just sounds better, and is easier to ‘understand’

/end uniformed ND hater

Sorry about the length of #72. I find it distressing when an institution I love is repeatedly smeared with a charge backed up by a superficial account of what actually happened. Don’t even get me started on the case of the Catholic Church vs. Galileo, the most misunderstood scientific and religious episode in history……

Best wishes to all…..

Lawrence –

“And then you have to look into all of the factors for that inequality. When you check to see, and notice that everything else is equal (including record), then you have to look at other factors, including race.”

Yes, you can examine if race was a factor. However, that involves actually investigating whether or not race played a factor. The truth of the matter is that Bob Davie, Ty’s predecessor, would have almost certainly been fired after year 3 had it not been for the turmoil in the ND administration in Nov.-Dec. 1999, and definitely been fired after year 4 had his team not suprisingly gone 9-2. Since you obviously do not follow ND football closely, I will inform you of some things you do not know.

The “every coach gets five years” policy was the policy of Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, who was president from 1952-1987, and his VP, Rev. Edmond Joyce. That is why Terry Brennan (1954-58) got five years, and Joe Kuharich (1959-62) would have gotten five years if he had not left for a job with the Washington Redskins after his fourth year. It is also why Gerry Faust (1981-85) got five years.

Hesburgh retired in 1987. Rev. Edward “Monk” Malloy took over as president, with Rev. William Beauchamp taking over as VP. In regards to the football program, to call their tunure a clusterf*ck would not be a case of overstatement. Malloy, Beauchamp, and (as of 1994) athletic directory Mike Wadsworth’s relationship with Lou Holtz deteriorated to the point of Holtz resigning in 1996. It is often claimed that he was pushed out, a claim with considerable merit, but one I won’t get into here.

Bob Davie took over, and ND’s on-field performance dipped considerably. Though Davie never signed a recruiting class ranked worse than #15, the Irish went 7-6, 9-3, and, with a talented and senior-laden team in ‘99, 5-7. ND fans and alums wanted him gone, but he was not fired. However, Davie’s retention was not because of any “five year commitment”. In fact, he would have been fired if not for the fact that ND in December of 1999 was in no way prepared to conduct a head coaching search, for it had a much bigger problem at hand.

Throughout the fall of ‘99, the ND athletic dept. waited for the NCAA to hand down its decision in regards to the “Kim Dunbar Affair”. Ms. Dunbar, a South Bend resident, had spent in the neighborhood of $10K on gifts and trips for 4 Irish football players in ‘94-’96, one of whom she had a child with and later married. Holtz knew of these expenditures, but since she was neither an agent nor a student, alum, nor faculty or staff member of ND, Holtz did nothing. When it was discovered later (’97-’98-ish) that she had embezzled the money from the company where she worked, it raised some eyebrows at the NCAA, which unlike today ([cough] Reggie Bush [cough]) was still interested in enforcing its own rules. Though Dunbar had committed a crime, since she was neither an agent nor a student, alum, nor faculty or staff member of ND, it was thought that no NCAA violation had occurred…….until the NCAA discovered that Ms. Dunbar was a $25 member of the Quarterback Club, a group that was treated to a luncheon on Fridays of ND home football weekends. The NCAA (ridiculously) ruled that this made her a “representative of the university”, and continued their investigation through ‘99 with the promise of sanctions coming. It was thought that they would be announced in Nov., but Thanksgiving and the end of the season came, and still no announcement. AD Wadsworth was rumored to be on the way out, but the athletic dept. was pretty much in a holding pattern waiting for the NCAA.

In mid-December, the ND was officially put on NCAA probation for the first time in its history. Malloy forced AD Wadsworth into retirement, and relieved VP Beauchamp of his duties as overseer of the athletic dept. and put himself in charge. So now the two people who had conducted both the previous football coaching search and the previous spring’s men’s basketball coaching search (both botched, IMO) were no longer involved with ND athletics, and Malloy certainly wasn’t going to conduct a coaching search on his own.

Ariz. St. AD Kevin White was hired as ND AD, but did not begin his tenure at ND until mid-April 2000, hardly the time to replace coaches. However, it was common knowledge that, as the SB Tribune put it at the time, he “was the man hired to find Bob Davie’s replacement”. Had Davie’s 2000 season (his fourth) been a subpar one, he most certainly would have been fired. However, the Irish finished the regular season at 9-2, and received a Fiesta Bowl bid. In Dec., White updated Davie’s contract, extending it two years but also adding a buy-out clause. The two-year extension proved to be an unwise move. The Irish were destroyed in the Fiesta Bowl and went 5-6 the following season, after which Davie was fired.

In contrast, Malloy and White had no intention of firing Willingham after 3 seasons. However, Malloy was retiring in 2005, and new president-elect Rev. John Jenkins and the ND Board of Trustees saw clearly that ND football had no future with Willingham:

->The Irish were about to complete their second consecutive non-winning season. They had never ranked higher than 81st in total offense under Ty, and their veteran and senior-laden defense in 2004 had been the 2nd worst pass defense in the country. However, Ty refused to change coordinators.

-> His first recruiting class was a Top 10 class in most rankings, but his next one (the current Irish seniors) was the worst in 40 years. His third one was not going much better as of late Nov. 2004: he had only 6 verbal committments, and ND was not considered as a strong candidate for any of the remaining elite players. It was widely reported and generally accepted that Willingham and his staff were slow and ineffective recruiters. However, after the subpar 2nd class, Ty and his staff had made no changes to their recruiting efforts.

Over the objections of Malloy and White, Jenkins and the BOT forced the firing of Willingham.

Weis will not be fired after this season because there is still some hope of future success with him. He has 22 verbal commitments for this year’s recruiting class, a class rated #1 right now in many rankings. If he keeps this class together, it will be his third Top 10 class in a row, something ND has not had since ‘88-’90. He has shown willingness to shake up his staff, bearing fruit in new DC Corwin Brown.

Mr. Whitlock’s claim of race being a factor in that Weis’ received a hasty extension after a 5-2 start while Willingham received none during or after his 8-0 start is another superficial charge. White had extended Davie’s contract in Dec. 2000. Two weeks later, while on the sidelines during Oregon St.’s demolition of ND in the Fiesta Bowl, the look on White’s face alternated between ‘pissed’ and ‘physically ill’. He came under withering criticism for the extension throughout 2001 as Davie’s last squad wheezed to a 5-6 season. White was also hammered pretty hard for the O’Leary fiasco. Ty’s 8-0 start came less than a year after this, and White was understandably timid about making another move that could blow up in his face. Weis’ extension, however, was 4 years later and prompted by outside pressure: along with major sports news outlets, internet message boards in the two weeks following the epic 2005 USC game were buzzing that Weis’ ND buyout was very low, and that he would likely jump to the NFL after the season. This was a rumor that had considerable legs: when my then-girlfriend hears from another (non-football following) woman at work that “I hear your boyfriend’s team is going to lose their coach”, you can be fairly sure that everyone’s heard it. The extension was a pricey “hands off” to potential NFL suitors, something that was never a factor with Ty.

If you still wish to believe that race is a factor in regards to the way ND dealt with Willingham vs. the way ND is dealing with Weis, then please refer to post #71.

Fine, you win. Yup, you’re right, we Domers are racist. That’s why hired Ty in the first place and gave him what was at the time the most lucrative contract in ND history: out of sheer hatred of the black man. He wasn’t fired for lazy and ineffective recruiting and unwillingness to make staff changes; we were just trying to keep the black man down.

We also hate fat people, which is why we hired Charlie Weis and are paying him even more money. Lord, if we could ever find a blind, homosexual, Jewish dwarf in a wheelchair who wanted to coach football, we’d melt down the Golden Dome into bars and gift wrap ‘em for him. But for now, we’re going to keep Weis, not because he’s a good recruiter and he is willing to make changes, but because we really enjoy making fat jokes.

Of course, most of all, we hate the Irish. Why else would George O’Leary only lasted a week?