Notre Dame slips again, Weis surely fired
Going into Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday, UConn was a middling Big East team with a 4-5 record. Notre Dame was 6-4 with a chance to salvage the season with a Gator Bowl bid versus Miami. Irish head coach Charlie Weis needed a win to save his job. Sixty playing minutes later, the Huskies are a win away from being bowl eligible, Notre Dame is looking down the barrel of a .500 regular season and Weis is as good as gone.
It could just as easily be the other way around. Because the BCS has an out for the Irish, it was possible Weis could pull the turnaround and get the team in a major bowl this year. A few bounces of the ball, and it still might be possible. Notre Dame has gone 2-4 in its last six games. In those four losses, Weis’ ballclub has lost by an average of 4.25 points. Versus UConn it was three points, against Navy it was two. Score one more touchdown, give up one less turnover, and the Irish could be 9-2 with a chance to go 10-2 and slide in to a BCS bowl (or 11-1, if you think Southern Cal could have been taken out). But, the old saying is that football is a game of inches, and Notre Dame has been losing those inches in the second half of the season.
Wha’ happen’? Your guess is as good as ours. Weis started out strong, in this season and at the helm in South Bend.
2005: 9-3 (Fiesta Bowl v. Ohio State, L, 34-20)
2006: 10-3 (Sugar Bowl v. LSU, L, 41-14)
2007: 3-9
2008: 7-6 (Hawai’i Bowl v. Hawai’i, W, 49-21)
2009: 6-5
That’s 35-26 through Saturday’s game, a winning percentage of 57.3. That just isn’t good enough, particularly in the light of this season and a supposed Heisman Trophy contender at quarterback and one of the best wide receivers in the country in Golden Tate. Frankly, it’s not just Weis’ fault, though. There’s something institutionally wrong at the university.
Notre Dame, like Alabama, lost its last coach to win a national championship in 1996. Unlike Alabama, Notre Dame did not face two rounds of debilitating major sanctions from the NCAA. It’s all the more reason to wonder why the troika of Bob Davie, Ty Willingham and Charlie Weis haven’t been able to develop a consistent winner. Between 1997 and 2008, the Irish have seen four losing seasons and one 6-6 year. Each of the three post-Lou Holtz coaches has posted a losing season. Davie had two.
Some people point at academic standards. That hasn’t hurt Notre Dame in the past. It isn’t hurting Stanford this year, as coach Jim Harbaugh is developing a winning program. The high-level potentates of Irish athletics need to circle the wagons and look beyond at whom to which to throw a few million. They need to figure out what the program needs, and where the problems have been in over a decade. Because, three men struggling to return a big-name program to the top isn’t an aberration, it’s a trend.
