Charlie Weis will coach the Irish next season. By merit, he does not deserve to.

I am extremely grateful I did not waste any timing penning a post on whether Weis should be fired this year, since that debate has now been rendered moot by Athletic Director Swarbrick. I will need all the energy I can muster to defend the undefendable: that Weis is to be given two more seasons than the previous coach, even with a lower winning percentage.

On the merits of coaching, there is very little one can offer to answer the question of why Weis is still around. His last two seasons have been complete abominations. We have lost to teams like Navy, Air Force, and Syracuse. We have been mutilated by USC for three straight years. There has been little if any improvement in the passing game, the rushing attack, the offensive line, the defensive line, the linebacker corps, or special teams. Some teams have holes to fill; this one has craters. If you're still in doubt as to the failures of Charlie Weis, consider this passage, written a year and a week ago, by our Great Leader, Sean:

"Charlie: You fielded a team that actually got worse as he season went on. Our ugliest, most mistake-prone game occurred at the very end of the season. You suck because you brought a pro mentality to the college game, but you’re going back to New England for answers?! Have you learned nothing?! Fundamentals! Physical practice! Emotion! Go talk to Pete Carroll for Christ sake. Bellicheck can’t tell you anything you don’t already know."

Sound familiar?

We were still right to fire the previous coach when we did. His tenure at Washington has proven that, as the Huskies will not again compete for a championship for at least a decade. Weis's failure does not retroactively make the Molder's dismissal an error. It just makes Weis's hiring so.

So why give Charlie another year? Innumerable pundits are, at this very moment, falling over themselves to be the first to write the "Notre Dame is hypocritical/racist/double-standard column. Let me be the first, then, to say that they're half-right. Weis deserves to be fired, just as his predecessor did. My advice to Domers is to confront these commentators with their own logic: if the rush to can Gold Pro led to a bad hire in Weis, why should we let Charlie go only to repeat the process?

Ultimately, I believe Weis's enormous buyout played a role in his retention. But I posit that the primary justification for it was the lack of quality head coaches available to replace him. His tanking occurred in the last half of the season, affording less time to evaluate possible replacements. Despite every Meyer/Stoops/Carroll fantasy, there is not currently a viable candidate waiting in the wings for the Irish. We took the New Jersey devil we know.
Another season of Weis is not without its benefits. Unlike the previous head coach, Charlie does love this University. He works so much that we're lucky we don't pay him by the hour. The 2009 class of seniors will be the first since 2001 to have played all four years under the same head coach. And he can recruit better than anyone since Holtz. This is not to say that I think he will do well enough next year to stay on in 2010. But it will buy us some time to muster his buyout cash and investigate alternative coaches.

A rough outline of what needs to happen next year for Charlie to keep his job would look like this: marked improvement in offensive production, with an emphasis on the running game; a minimum of 9 wins; no loss to a .500 or less team; no loss by more than 10 points (including USC); the word "Heisman" being used in connection with one of ND's many offensive weapons; a victory in a New Year's Day bowl game.

Going forward, I sincerely hope Irish fans can put aside the enmity that is tearing Notre Dame Nation apart. Weis will be back and bitching about it won't change things. Go to the games, buy merchandise, donate (otherwise how to we afford the buyout?). Weis and the administration are already on notice as to how upset we are, so there is no need for further dissension in the ranks. If he fails to live up to our standards next year, as I believe he will, Weis will be fired. In the meantime, cheer for these players. Our most talented athletes will be juniors and sophomores in 2009, and if nothing else, they will be fun to watch.


Update:

Okay, so this isn't an update per say but an addition nonetheless. Knowing Dan's taste for emo/pop, I'm surprised he did not embed this music video himself... it fits the title of the post. -ls

Labels: coaches, Debbie Downer, Weis Doomsday Clock

Still formulating my thoughts on that little Weis fiasco that seems to be all the rage these days. In the meantime, why don't you take a look at this piece by one ndoldtown on Ndnation.com.

I don't often link to Ndnation, because one usually finds more intellectual coherence in a gerbil. Not true in this case though. Money quote:

"As you know, the last three coaches here failed and were, in effect, fired. At one time we were the top brand in college athletics. Now, we are rapidly becoming a punch line. We still make lots of money off of our name but we know that the product is defective and that we are just milking a few more years from an ever-decreasing asset doomed to extinction unless we change things. We know that the revenue stream we count on from this program is on the brink of being permanently compromised. We also know that the historical identity and spirit of the institution will be compromised if the football program collapses. The failure of this program will have long-term and widespread impacts on the entire University and everything it does.

As fiduciaries of the University, we know that this situation is dire and that we are very close to permanent and irretrievable damage to the brand. Mistakes have been made by all of us: the administration, the Board, the priests, the athletic department. They have been made for over a decade. The bottom line is that we cannot afford another whiff. It might be too late already."
Regardless of whether you want Weis's head on a South Dining Hall plate, read the whole thing. You will be smarter, and girls* will be more attracted to you.

*Guys, in the case of Bethany and Irish1L.

Labels: coaches, God Country Notre Dame, Weis Doomsday Clock

"What do I want to see? I want to see us go down to Boston College and kick their teeth in. That's what I want to see more than anything else.

"I'm sick of hearing about this. I'm sick of hearing about that. And when I say I, I mean we. Our whole team is.

"I'm not even going to get on a rant and rave so it can get all over YouTube. But I will say this. We've got good kids here. And we've got good people. And everybody wants to see us lose. So we get everybody's best shot.

"And that's what we want at the end of the day. Because when we start giving people our best shot, OK, we're going to be hard to deal with.

"That's it."

Read the whole thing!



NOW GO OUT THERE AND DO IT!!!

Labels: coaches, Impending Ridiculous Punishment, Repressed Sports Pain

The law has a concept known as the "evidentiary burden", also known as the burden of going forward. This concept determines which party in a case must actually produce the evidence to support his claim. For example, the government must present some facts tending to prove that you were driving under the influence; you don't have to produce evidence that you were sober.

There are times, however, when this burden, will shift from one party to another. If a plaintiff can make a prima facie showing of all the facts central to his claim, the burden moves to the defendant to present some evidence that is capable of refuting the plaintiff's assertions. Even if the plaintiff's evidence is questionable, it is still up to the defendant to rebut it. It behooves the defendant, then, to offer some contradictory evidence, because the consequences of not doing so are usually not pretty. "Not pretty" being a precise legal term meaning "FAIL!"

My point of boring you with the last two paragraphs is this: I now believe the evidentiary burden on the continuation of Charlie Weis's tenure at Notre Dame has shifted. Before last Saturday, Weis's detractors needed to present evidence that he should be fired; now, the onus is on Weis to show us that he should stay.

Blame for the 2007 season falls on nearly every individual associated with Irish football. Because so much went wrong, I do not accept that last year made the prima facie case for firing Weis.

But this season, and after the previous game, things have changed. The schedule is softer, the talent more available, and the players more experienced. We have beaten the teams that we should have beaten (sometimes barely), but have now lost to three teams that we have the potential to beat. The last one was particularly painful because Notre Dame showed that it could dominate an under-manned Panthers team in the first half. But as the third quarter began, one could tell that Weis had been out-… coached?...adjusted?...motivated? Whatever it was, it was the exact same thing that happened during the North Carolina game, only this time it was at home, after what amounted to a bye-week of a game against the Huskies, and to a coach who probably has no business wearing a headset on a sideline.

Think it wasn't Weis's fault? Blaming it on an overthrown Clausen pass? Considering this question from the boys over at Section 29, Row 48, Seat 10:

"How do you outgain a team, win the turnover battle 3-0, have your unreliable kicker nail four straight field goals, commit fewer penalties than your opponent, do better on third downs than your opponent, get more sacks than your opponent, more first downs than your opponent, hold a 14-point lead at half and still manage to lose the game?"

The answer is, of course, coaching. Both teams made mistakes down the line that cost their respective schools opportunities to win the game before the fourth overtime. However, one coach set his men on fire during halftime, and the other failed to sustain momentum. One coach played to his team's strengths in the second half, and the other ran away from his best strategies. Weis's problems run deeper than dropped passes or missed field goals; they call into question his very competence to be the coach of this storied football program. Weis has not responded.

I used to scoff at the notion of (or lack thereof) Weis's "signature win". We had horrible bowl draws, impossible schedules. But close losses and a tough slate of opponents do not excuse incompetence. If they did, You Know Who would still be coaching Washington next year. Weis has to "make a play", and soon. I cannot defend someone who will not defend himself. I will not accept empty promises or gestures of improvement. I am done with silver linings. The doubters have won me over.

I remain persuadable, but the clock on the Weis era is now ticking. A victory over Boston College (in my mind, the least of North Carolina, MSU and Pitt) won't win me back immediately, but it would be a step in the right direction. No, Weis's only chances at a signature win this year are USC and possibly a formidable bowl opponent. If he fails in these games, he'll still coach the Irish in 2009. But if he hasn't shown us something by this time next year, if he still hasn't won a game that Irish faithful re-watch over and over even a decade later, then it'll only be a matter of time. Notre Dame will not suffer mediocrity.

Labels: Charlie Weis, coaches, Weis Doomsday Clock

The addition of Jon Tenuta, a proven defensive mind, seems like an obvious benefit to the Irish. While Corwin Brown's 3-4 showed promise last season, it also suffered from certain consistent flaws: lack of a pass rush, linebackers out of position, and so forth.

Tenuta's experience thus should be a blessing for the team. His aggressive blitz packages should put pressure on the opposing team's QB, allowing the rest of the defense to function at full potential. Look at how ND's defense did against UCLA this season. It was their best game and they got their best pass rush all season.

Another sign of promise with Tenuta's hiring is that he agreed to take the job. If he felt the Irish were a lost cause, he would not have agreed to join the staff. Considering that he was being mentioned as head coach material, his decision to be an assistant at ND is quite heartening.


/./././


New poll

Ok so while I'm glad to see Tenuta join the Irish, there are a couple coaches I'd have liked to see go... Which assistant coach do you think most should have been replaced, if any? Poll in the sidebar.

Labels: coaches, polls