...let's play "what if". What if they do fire Weiss? (word is the buyout would just be a drop in the bucket anyway) Who's available and who do you think they really need? Personally, the big name PRO Coach hasn't made it happen yet. Been there done that. So do you think an up and comer fits the bill? And who would that be? Here's one who should be considered: Turner Gill (1) He's young (big plus in todays times) (2) Motivated (3) Has done an EXCELLENT Job at Buffalo (4) Doesn't run a HS offense, and doesn't try and complicate things by going overboard with a hard to learn Pro style. (5) Was my pick to come back to NU in the 1st place. That should be all the endorsement he needs to begin with! I don't know...what do guys think? (Buckle up AJ)
Turner Gill has done an excellent job at Buffalo and Syracuse should hire him ASAP. But he's not even in the conversation at ND. He needs to do it at a BCS school before we'd consider him. Like you I am not of the opinion we should get another NFL coach. I think it will be a college coach, Brian Kelly is the hot name right now. Everybody always wants the homerun hire, but they just rarely happen in college football. Successful guys like Meyer, Carroll, Tressel, Stoops, Brown, Saban, are earning tons of money and have things almost on cruise control. This whole idea of needing a new challenge is just bunk, if guys in that position leave they leave to go to the NFL. Nick Saban, Steve Spurrier and Jimmy Johnson are examples of that.
I thought that Brian Kelly would have been perfect for MSU when they dumped whacko Smith. I have to admit that Dantonio has done a fine job up there. Dantonio would be on my short list. But of course I'd defer to whoever ND Nation picks. After all, they know everything about college football coaching.
I would caution against another pro coach. The pro game is completely different from the college game. There is a lot more teaching and "parenting" involved at the college level. And you have to serve the whole community. These are the areas that Charlie can't cope with in my opinion. If this indeed is going to happen my first call would be to Urban Meyer. If he is not the best coach he is 1A. I think he is about to win his second NC at Florida. He has five years tenure at Notre Dame so he knows what comes with this job. He professes it is one of his two dream jobs. He is from Ohio. And this would represent the ultimate challenge and give him a shot at immortality in Notre Dame lore. I would make him turn down the ND job twice.... I'm not sure he could. No offense to my Gator friends, of course. Its business. If he's not interested then Brian Kelly represents an interesting choice. His career path resembles Jim Tressel's at this point in his career. After that, I'm fresh out of ideas.
For a coach, say like Urban Meyer, to walk away from UF to take over at ND is a huge risk for him. At UF he has it all in place right now, he has his recruiting going A+++, his offense is firmly established as can work, he's built a very tough defense. He is approaching legendary status as a Gator. Recruiting to UF is easier than ND for several reasons...the whole Northern cold vs Southern warmth deal, the party school vs the academic school (aknowledging that UF is also a good academic school), lower academic standards, that is UF can recruit players that ND can't. ND expects and demands a high grad rate from it's coaches, while from what Bill has posted here UF under Urban has improved it's grad rate and Urban talks about academics being important, I doubt if the UF AD gets much pressure to have a NDlike grad rate. Plus at UF there are lots of majors available that are less taxing, at ND not so much. Huge risk to move to ND for any of these guys.
The best is ChuckWeis.com where they want him fired and replaced by Chris Peterson. I believe that would be the best, a Scientologist as the new coach at ND. :roll: Glad Charlie isn't going anywhere. It's actually getting quite disgusting reading all this stuff out there from ND fans. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Good point Gip. Most of the top guys all are at schools in areas loaded with talent, where distance and weather is not a consideration. I'm starting to think D'Antonio is the guy if Charlie goes down. I like his background better than Kelly.
Just FYI, last week was senior day at the Citadel game where we had 17 or 18 seniors, I don't remember the exact number. What I do know is that one thing Urban Meyer said about them that he was very proud of is that each and every one of them were going to graduate.
Ha you know what is great...I compared all this crying to Yankee Fans. Guess who disagrees....My Howell Buddy! When Charlie stays as coach and they have a great year next year, I'll let you buy my tab at Mulligans next year. ND can't go back to step one......Offensive line is the reason to blame, they could have sealed games.
Ultimately, this is what it's all about in college football. Somewhere along the way in to hundreds of millions of $ in revenue, that message got lost. Congratulations, Florida.
Bill that is terrific, as Sid said it's really what NCAA football should be about. I know the NCAA has changed the rules and there is incentive for teams to have at least a min grad rate or lose scholarships. I think at schools like UF and Texas and USC where football success is great but grad rates are pretty average. There isn't really a lot of pressure on the coaches to graduate players at the rate that ND, Northwestern, Duke and Stanford graduate them. Texas grad rates are somewhat embarassing, and they get talked about and lip service is given to improving them. But the bottom line is that winning is the most important thing. The other thing is that at Notre Dame at least grad rates don't vary much from coach to coach, it's an institutional demand that the athletes attend class and graduate. We don't leave it up to the coach to be the determing factor in the grad rates. I think you have posted data that shows UF grad rates improving and how it is an important goal for Meyer. 17 out of 18 will put that Sr. Class in the top 10 most likely when their year is evaluated. Congrats! But ND coaches still can't recruit some of the players that Meyer can recruit, Chris Rainey was desired by ND but we couldn't recruit him due to grades. Not that he would have chose us over UF. But that's one of the disadvantages that a ND coach has to deal with that Mack Brown, Urban Meyer, Pete Carroll, Bob Stoops, Nick Saban, Les Miles, Mark Richt don't have to deal with.
heck <r>AJ,<br/> <br/> I know you're an outsider of sorts, but you're a smart cookie who does enjoy genuine football talk. So, I will give it to you.<br/> <br/> If we're going to find a replacement for Charlie Weis that will keep the fanbase (read NDNation) happy, then you and I are going to need a few shovels because no one else will simply do.<br/> <br/> When Charlie lost the 'Bush push' game to USC, we already had idiots over there claiming "Charlie can't win the big one." There were others that were less angsty, but that doubt was palpable at the time.<br/> <br/> I've seen Charlie ripped for not kissing the ring of certain alumni, who essentially wanted to be acknowledged for their part in recruiting a kid to Notre Dame. Nevermind the fact that doing so would be Charlie admitting that some sort of major NCAA violation just took place.<br/> <br/> It's funny, that guy wants all the credit when that player goes to Notre Dame, but he certainly doesn't want the blame when that player gets used as a turnstile for 3 years. <br/> <br/> Of course, the unreported 'fact' is that alumn is a bit of a douchebag who is also (in)famous for trying to bully his way into recognition for the past 30 years. In fact, when he railed about Nick Saban being a bad coach, one current member of that team (Jason Taylor) had this to say about him:<br/> <QUOTE><s> </e></QUOTE> I've seen Charlie ripped on character issues that paint him as an egomaniac who is only out for Charlie. To that, I would submit to any non-partisan reading this:<br/> <br/> <URL url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4PL5sWFc0k&eurl=http://www.rakesofmallow.com/2008/10/24/645617/pass-right&feature=player_embedded"><s></s>PASS RIGHT<e></e></URL><br/> <br/> and<br/> <br/> <URL url="http://www.hannahandfriends.org/index.html"><s></s>Hannah and friends<e></e></URL><br/> <br/> To question the man in that light calls in question, to me, the credibility and motivation of anyone who says these things. You poor sods on this board have heard the ND fans here griping about ND coaches who 'don't get it' and 'aren't ND men.'<br/> <br/> That can never be said about Charlie. He's an ND man through and through, so that is what makes this all the more difficult. I strongly feel that changes need to be made, but I do not agree that they need to be made at the head coaching position.<br/> <br/> Go Irish!<br/> Beat Trojans!</r>
Coaching salaries. 1 Bob Stoops Oklahoma $6,500,000 2 Charlie Weis Notre Dame $4,200,000 3 Pete Carroll USC $4,000,000 4 Les Miles LSU $3,751,000 5 Nick Saban Alabama $3,750,000 6 Jim Tressel Ohio State $3,500,000 7 Urban Meyer Florida $3,400,000 8 Kirk Ferentz Iowa $3,030,000 9 Mack Brown Texas $2,910,000 10 Bobby Petrino Arkansas $2,850,000 11 Tommy Tuberville Auburn $2,825,000 12 Mark Richt Georgia $2,800,000 13 Rich Rodriguez Michigan $2,500,000 14 Bobby Bowden Florida State $2,500,000 15 Philip Fulmer Tennessee $2,400,000 16 Mark Mangino Kansas $2,300,000 17 Greg Schiano Rutgers $2,250,000 18 Mike Bellotti Oregon $2,100,000 19 Frank Beamer Virginia Tech $2,100,000 20 Butch Davis North Carolina $2.100,000 21 June Jones SMU $2,000,000 22 Al Groh Virginia $1,875,000 23 Gary Pinkel Missouri $1,875,000 24 Tommy Bowden Clemson $1,850,000 25 Jeff Tedford California $1,850,000
Sid and Terry thanks. Terry, it wasn't 17 out of 18 it was all of them. What I said about 17 or 18 is that I didn't remember just how many seniors there were. But you can bet that I am proud of that number either way. I'm not a Notre Dame fan, meaning in the sense you guys are, but what I do wonder is if as Corey says there is not some rush to judgment here. Weis worked wonders his first two years and is not getting better players. The next guy might not be as good a recruiter who knows. It doesn't matter to me, as I don't buy this Urban Meyer being a candidate, but I do wonder. And by the way, Zook was a good recruiter, but I think Weis is a better one than Zook. Zook had a tendency to recruit imbalanced classes and get guys who couldn't get in school. Meyer on the other hand has only lost one that I know of and that was one last season that is going to enroll this Jan. if things go as planned.
Weis is a great recruiter. Trouble is, he can't defeat any good teams And the further removed he is from New England, the less those Super Bowl rings matter to a kid. Whatever decision the university makes, they better make it soon and with absolute clarity. There's blood in the water and the sharks are circling the 2009 recruits. I know this for a fact.
Here's your titillating rumor of the day from the NFL Network.. The NFL network is reporting on College Football Now that it is 95% sure that CW is gone. They said that ND has the money for the buyout and will hire an A coach. Urban Meyer was the name that kept coming up with the 4 journalists that were speaking in a round table type discussion. They said that ND would make Urban Meyer the highest paid coach in college football. The NFL network also mentioned Brian Kelly stating it would be his dream job. I would not call Brian Kelly an A canidate for the ND job ------ In other news, Geg Schiano of Rutgers is power dialing my friend Carlo Calabrese this past week asking if Carlo Jr. wants to re-commit his pledge to ND. Tells him that they are in chaos. The answer : No. He told Carlo he'll keep checking back.
Corey, thanks for those links. I think that sometimes we can all step back and realize the people we are dealing with are human beings and in many cases decent human beings. I'm glad the round table of 4 people were discussing Urban Meyer. But here's a couple of observations from Gator Bill. First, Notre Dame wasn't willing to pay Meyer that much money 4 years ago, as a matter of fact if I remember right they weren't willing to pay him as much as the Gators did, right about 2 mill at that time. I can't imagine what the heck has changed so much in 4 years to make Notre Dame fans now think they could hire him away from the Gators. He has a recruiting machine going, is now playing with all players he recruited, he has changed the graduation rate at Florida by a lot, Gainesville is a very nice place to live. Add to that just how many Notre Dame fans on our little forum here claim they wouldn't want him as head coach. And the Gators certainly have the resources to go head to head with anyone as far as salary. Personally I'm with Corey tht CW's situation is far different that the one with Willingham. He has certainly shown his first two years at Notre Dame what he can do with decent talent. He is just getting to the point where he is playing with the talent he has recruited and he has recruited good talent. I don't have a dog in the hunt, but it seems to me to much howling for his scalp right now is hurting the program and not helping. I'll just go back to my Gator mode now.
We are a good OL away from being a scary good team. While that responsibility ultimately falls on the head coach, we also haven't seen if Weis is willing to pull the plug on Latina (who I clearly see as a problem). He may not be a bad coach, but he is having a problem getting his message across to the boys in the trenches. We knew coming in that we didn't have great depth. We lost our best cover corner before the season ever started. We then lost our top TE before the season started. We then lost the 2nd team TE before the season was 1/3rd over. We lost our best offensive playmaker for the year (Floyd) and the best OL we had coming off the bench who served us well in a plug and play type of role (Stewart). I'd say that the decline in the offense can be marked exactly with the lose of Stewart and Floyd. Tate is a nice deep threat who plays with heart underneath, but he isn't the freak-of-nature future NFL talent that Floyd is. Yes.. I know I know...injuries are a part of the game. I get that. My point is, when you started with a thin depth chart already, that injuries can play an even bigger role in your game planning. We are essentially, running the same offense out there this year as we did last year except that we have a true freshman at TE as opposed to an All-American senior.