God knows chris w and larry b and I have discussed the Ty bit enough. I don't know how the rest of you feel, but it's an article that merits an examination. Here's the latest from Pat Forde. who calls himself "The Dash".
Domers, Your Credibility Is On The Clock
When Notre Dame (2) trap-doored Tyrone Willingham (3) after just three years on the job in 2004, it established a precedent for the next coach: You've got three years, pal. Have it up and running at full speed or else.
Trap-doored. I guess the intent is that ND management deliberately hired Ty to fail. I don't imagine you have anything to back that up. I admit it's a possibility, but I'm not sure I can agree with that sentiment. As for the three-year bit...
Or at least that should have been the established precedent, if Notre Dame was interested in treating its next coach the same way it treated the first African-American coach in the school's history.
Nice. The race card. Third sentence. Damn racists.
But Charlie Weis (4) probably can go 2-10 in this, his third year, and still be back in 2008. Why? The simple answer is fairness -- the majority of coaches should get a fourth season, no matter how the third one turned out. But since fairness didn't factor in with Willingham (6-5 in year three, 21-15 overall), The Dash will offer another reason. Weis (0-2 in year three, 19-8 overall)
Weis was 9-3 in Year Two, Willingham was 5-7... indicating, in some sense, the improvement you mentioned in your first line, Pat. Also, stop calling yourself "The Dash". It smacks of smarmy self-image, which is exactly what you're trying to expose at Notre Dame.
was awarded a 10-year, $30 million-plus contract during his first season -- something that would make a firing very costly. He got the contract largely on the strength of a close loss to a great USC team and some interest from the NFL -- although Weis said at his introductory news conference in December 2004, "I don't come here to leave and take a job in the NFL in three years. This is not a stepping stone. This is an end-all for our family. When we come to Notre Dame, we come here with the intent of retiring here." So either Notre Dame hysterically overbid to keep an unproven coach
That was a wild shot, Pat. Ty had head-coached at the lower-D1 college level. Charlie ran an NFL offense to Super Bowls. That "unproven" was inflammatory rhetoric leaking through your otherwise tame article. If you had a case here, you'd make it. But you don't.
come who had no intention of going anywhere, or else Weis' loyalty pledge turned weak enough that the school felt compelled to overpay to keep him. I think I agree with this sentiment. I wouldn't be surprised to hear much more from the "Fire Charlie" front if it could be done more cost-effectively. From what I've heard, a combination of factors beyond winning % contributed to the denial of that fourth season to Ty. I don't know to what extent a coach has to suck up to the surrounding community, and I don't know whether Ty was unfairly tagged for not brown-nosing. What I have heard in several cases is that Ty's practices as a football coach happened to distance him from important people in the university.
Either way, Charlie and the Irish would appear joined at the hip -- even while the Notre Dame of Weis' third season is starting to bear strong resemblance to the Notre Dame of Ty Willingham's intolerable third season. Agree.
Actually, it's worse. Far worse. That doesn't mean it can't turn around, but the current product is dreadful.
It's pretty damned awful. But you do a shit job of explaining why.
Dating back to last season, the Irish have lost four consecutive games by at least 20 points. Last time Notre Dame lost four straight by 20 or more? How does never sound? But then again, they've only been playing football in South Bend since 1887. In the 120-year history of Notre Dame football, they have never played four consecutive teams currently ranked in the top 15, as those last four are. Just thought that stat might be useful.
(One of the big knocks on Willingham, by the way, was too many blowout losses.)
Agreed. Though the most damning, in my opinion, was the annihilation at the hands of an unranked Syracuse team at the end of the 2003 season. Not the same as getting annihilated in a BCS bowl. Not the same thing at all.
It could turn out that the teams that ripped the Irish this year, Georgia Tech (5) and Penn State (6), are the best teams in the ACC and Big Ten, respectively.
Nice to know. Could be. I think you only threw this in to set up something else. Oh wait -
But that would only continue Weis' trend of beating the bad teams and losing to the good ones. He's 4-6 against ranked opponents (including four straight lopsided losses)
Like I mentioned before, "Dash", against what "could turn out to be" one of the most difficult stretches in recent football. Certainly no other team in all of NCAA football can claim to have played the #1, #2, #13 and #15 teams in the last four games, with only one of those at home. And don't tell me the Sugar Bowl wasn't a home game for LSU. Just don't.
and 15-2 against the unranked. Average end-of-season Sagarin rating for the 19 teams Weis has beaten: 62nd. Average end-of-season Sagarin rating for the 21 teams Willingham beat from 2002-04: 55th.
Fair points, though I find it amusing that he quotes Sagarin rating, a generally unused football statistic. I guess the Sagarin rankings help you qualify the wins over unranked teams, but is that really necessary?
Also, here's my problem with evaluating the current situation at ND: I want to compare Weis to the standards he sets for himself and the standards set at the University, rather than comparing his win-Sagarin to Willingham's win-Sagarin.
The one thing Weis was supposed to deliver was a state-of-the-art offense capable of carving up any defense. He did that -- when Willingham's players were there. The 2007 Irish have not scored an offensive touchdown, even though Weis told his players his first season they would have a "decided schematic advantage" in every game. Some advantage: They've scored 13 points on the season -- fewest through the first two games of the year since 1942. They're last in the nation in rushing offense and total offense.Played two *decent* defenses. Have no offensive line. Surprise? This is probably the best paragraph in Pat's whole article - at this point, he's actually bringing in evidence that Charlie Weis isn't that much better of a coach than Tyrone Willingham is. Shame he goes on to make some idiotic and reasonably uninformed remarks.
The easy fall guy for Domers protective of Weis is the same fall guy they pounded in 2003 and '04: Willingham. They'll tell you his lackluster recruiting left the cupboard bare, setting the stage for this difficult season. They like to talk about the rankings of recruiting classes. dan-bob likes to note that a mere 22 players exist in Notre Dame's current junior and senior classes. 22 - the normal size of one recruiting class. Ty recruited only 33 players for both of those classes. The Dash might hate recruiting rankings, and to some extent they're not perfect, but you can't simply throw them out altogether. Here is
Rivals.com's list of Notre Dame's classes from 2002-2008. Clear disparities exist between the 2003 class (Ty's most effective) and the 2004 class, which is the current senior class Weis has to lead the team.
dan-bob also notes that
a recent article by Pat Forde mentions the up-and-coming status of Illinois based on the quality recruiting done by Ron Zook. But that was Pat Forde. This is "The Dash". Deep down, I bet you The Dash doesn't throw out recruiting numbers, but he sure does here. Because it's convenient to his point.
The Dash likes to talk about productivity.
Fuck you, Dash. Here's where you are exposed as an idiot.
For instance: Of the 856 points Notre Dame has scored with Weis as head coach, 19 of them have been scored by players who originally committed to and signed with him. That includes the defensive touchdown, the extra point and two field goals that constitute this season's scoring. A Weis recruit has scored exactly one offensive touchdown in 27 games: George West (7) on an 11-yard run last season against Purdue, one of three times West touched the ball from scrimmage in 2006. Clearly, Charlie Weis hasn't been recruiting the last few years because his recruits suck ass. Clearly, if George West's ass was any good, he would've outplayed the 3 1000-YARD RECEIVERS who caught all those passes and scored all those touchdowns in 05-06. I bet even you, Dash, would not have elected to throw George West the ball the last three seasons when you had Fasano, Stovall-don't-know-you, Samardzija, and McKnight.
Honestly. Arguing that Charlie Weis is a shitty coach because George fucking West only touched the ball three times last season is like arguing that ... shit, I don't know what it's like, but it's moronic.
Was this the same media outlet that praised the Weis regime for recognizing and coaching the Samardzija/Zbikowski duo to a success they had never dreamed of achieving under Willingham? I remember that piece I caught in ESPN the mag. But that's what happens. ESPN writers are the ones that sell Notre Dame when it's high, and sell Notre Dame stories when it's low. ESPN writers don't do investigative journalism on actual double standards in sports, ESPN writers get hits on their websites by telling the masses what they want to hear. This is why we at this blog generally loathe them.
It's true that Weis coached many of Willingham's players better than Willingham ever did. It's also true that Weis owes Willingham a large debt for at least getting the likes of Brady Quinn, Jeff Samardzija and Darius Walker on campus.
Pat, if you're going to argue that Willingham is responsible for bringing in three quality recruits, you can't simply ignore the many more shitty recruits that he also brought in who are either riding the pine or who left the program! You just can't!
Meanwhile, Washington (8) is 2-0 in its third season under Willingham, having won by 30 points on the road to open the season and then ending the nation's longest winning streak in a two-touchdown upset of Boise State (9). Irrelevant to the discussion of the current double standard at Notre Dame.
Willingham is in a place that suits him better than Notre Dame ever did.
Quite possible.
He might never have won truly big in South Bend
This could be termed "fact".
and might never have been truly happy.
I don't care if the ND coach is happy.
But the criticism of Willingham was as excessive as the praise (and compensation) accorded Weis. That's the double standard Notre Dame has set in place, and the double standard it must live with.
A fair point. In general I agree with some of the sentiments in your article about the respective hoopla created around coaches. It might be nice to consider that you writers, as a group, have a large say in creating hoopla. In a way, it might be a more impressive article if you were to look at the internal ways the University evaluates its coaching practices - and I'm sure it will be roundly discussed at the round-tables under the Dome if Weis's season continues as abysmal as it has begun. Will Charlie Weis's job be more secure not just because of the money he makes but also because he rubs more ND people the right way?
Pat, here's the thing: you've avoided several significant points:
1. the non-football reasons Ty was decidedly "out" with the ND inner circles that probably have more to do with the double standard you cite than any of your bullshit stats about recruit productivity that The Dash subscribes to. I would like to know more facts about this.
2. the lack of an effective strategy on offense based on available personnel, most notably in the meltdown vs. GT two weeks ago. the relative lack of improvement between GT and PSU.
3. the shitty 2005 recruiting season, since Ty got the axe in December and Charlie didn't start the job until after the Pats' run to the Super Bowl, almost at signing day.
4. the difference in willingness to make staffing changes and replace underperforming coordinators (reportedly one of the significant reasons for #1).
5. the offensive line's utter inability to protect the green quarterbacks or generate a rushing yard.
Some sensationalism, a few random facts, the underlying race card, another ESPN article.
