The popular defense of Weis, the perhaps the only defense of Weis, is that he is good with sick kids and fund raising. These are admirable qualities to be sure. Maybe we can hire Jerry Lewis as the new head coach. I don't mean to be crass but I don't remember any of you trumpeting Weis' hiring with platitudes about his work with autism awareness. Maybe I misunderstood; was he actually hired at $4 mil per to be the Dean of Community relations? I think he was hired to be head football coach and by any objective measurement he was a miserable failure. I don't understand why we are supposed to feel bad. He's walking away with a King's ransom. Notre Dame held up its end of the deal.
You have a few omissions George... He recruited as well as anyone. That is also part of the reason he is being fired. He brought in great, not good, players to ND. He brought in marquis skill position people that we were told ND could no longer land. Not only that, he brought them in bulk. Unlike Davie and Willingham, Charlie's teams did not quit. In his 3rd year, they were flat out beat down and overmatched. Some of that blame lies with the previous staff for vacationing while pretending to be ND football coaches. The rest of that blame lies with Weis because, due to his lack of HC experience, he didn't realize that he just can't 'out scheme' the competition. Year 3 was the year that should have been the most sobering to him. However, after that season... win or lose, his team didn't quit. Even in a blowout loss to USC last season, we had guys fighting (literally) on the field out of pride. He made bad hires, he made bad choices as an HC... but he did a whole lot more than just work with the handicap and fund raise.. To even suggest that the situation at ND now is anywhere near as dire as the one he inherited is unmitigated ********. You can not succeed and not be an outright failure. Charlie was in over his head... but he went down swinging and he did do several things right.
Corey, I'm not buying his recruiting accomplishments either. If he was the crackerjack recruiter you think he was, then he was a worse coach than I thought he was because these teams could not block and tackle. And if he did stink like dead fish as a coach we will know soon enough when the new guy takes the field with Charlie's players.
I think we will. As stated before, I think he hired some bad assistants. Blocking and tackling are teaching/coaching issues.. not talent issues. Our guys were always all over the ball, we couldn't just tackle or block them.
Need your help <t>I know one of you bums has the ND fighting irishman wearing a Santa hat in your .jpeg collection. If you do, can you post it? Thanks.<br/> <br/> Serious responses only..... that leaves you out, Huskerman!</t>
I own both these books. I hope the next guy doesn't write a book till he retires after 10 years and 2 or 3 Nat'l Championships! Funny thing is that Davie never wrote a book, yet overall he was more successful than either Weis or Willingham in terms of wins and losses.
Lets ... <r>Take as look at the defense we trotted out Sat night and eyeball this eleven. IMO and believe me I'm far from alone on this with the exception of Manti, Fleming and Filer there is not another player on that defense I would want and that includes McCarthy as he gets beat like a drum often. He is gone anyway.<br/> Charlie and the staff have recruited no down linemen worth a flip and that is why you line up a Kapron Lewis, Williams and Johnson game after game and they are on either on their backs or run themselves right out of play after play. Sadly all are back next year. Linebackers, name me one you would want besides Te'o? Brian Smith, Yikes !! Not one freshman made any impact at all and the secondary is so bad I won't waste time talking about them.<br/> This is why we all want to hurl each Saturday watching them get pushed all over the field and I'm sorry but in year five we look like this???? It is no surprise Charlie is gone.<br/> IMO it will take Brian Kelly or whoever gets the job three full years of recruiting to build a respectable defense here again and did I mention Manti may go on his mission. That will be nice won't it.<br/> Florida, Bama and Texas play great defense and until we start landing quality players on defense and then Lord help us actually do a great job of coaching them we are what we are. As a 47 year Irish fan it pains me to see this. <E>:cry:</E></r>
Spurrier never forgot that Cheerios joke that Holtz made at his expense.... ....looks like he got even...
I guess one way to figure out what coach is on ND's radar is to track the flight of the university's jet. Cinncinatti? Norman? http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N42ND
You have no idea what you are talking about. Against the background of Florida complaining about having to play a "lesser" Notre Dame, a waiter in a restaurant asked Holtz if he knew the difference between Notre Dame and a bowl of Cheerios. The answer: The Cheerios belonged in a bowl. Holtz then asked if the waiter knew the difference between a football coach and a golf pro. The answer: A golf pro gives tips. Whether or not it actually happened, it became part of Lou's repertoire. It had nothing to do with Spurrier or Florida. Lou and Spurrier are friends.
Suprising announcement tonight. Louis Nix a DT who was previously committed to Miami verbaled to Notre Dame tonight. He was rumored for quite awhile to favor ND over Miami. But I would think that maybe he'd wait until after the Irish got a new coach. Of course on the other side, Chris Martin offically dumped the Irish and now is favoring UF, OU and a few others.
For some reason, I think that the Martin official decomit and Nix's commit are connected. Looks like Charlie is still recruiting from the grave.
Bobda, It's no conspiracy, sometimes **** happens. I think Jappy came with some high praise, but when you take a closer examination, the guys praising him may well have been the coaches that were the very reason he had 'success' at other stops. (Cutcliff and Spurrier). Few people seem to remember that Charlie's original staff plan was to have Cutcliff has his OC/QB coach and Al Golden as DC. Golden wound up landing a head job. Few people took notice of that at the time, but I certainly did. I was incredibly high on Golden as a hire. If anyone remembers, Groh wasn't always a loser at Virginia. In fact, they were doing well and recruiting well. They played good defense and seemed on the right track. The downward spiral for Groh started with the departure of Al Golden. With Golden gone, and Charlie pressed for time, he took a recommendation from Lou Holtz and hired Rick Minter. Minter turned out to be not much of a hire and I didn't think much of him during his go round with ND the first time.. My point being is that Charlie made some hires on the fly to get started based largely on the recommendations of respected people in the game rather than having his own men ready to go and having his own assessment of each ready to go.. This didn't hurt so much the first 2 years, because the offense was able to mask so much... but in year 3 when we had a freshman and sophomore filled roster, we really needed some strong coaches who emphasized fundamental football... we badly lacked that. As to Larry and our defensive squad this year... I believe there is a serious internal struggle that has gone on under Weis between Brown and Tenuta. (for the record, I liked Brown and the direction he was heading in). In yet another glaring example of Weis' lack of HC experience... in his make or break year as ND HC, he took Tenuta's recommendation to take all of the 3-4 personnel that we'd spent 2 years recruiting and switched them to a 4-3 defense that Tenuta was more comfortable with... It seemed odd at the time and in hindsight, it was clearly a disaster. We don't have a true 4-3 MLB. The DLinemen we recruited are 3-4 Dlinemen (NTs and DEs)... It was just a bad, bad move.. All of these are reflections on his lack of HC experience and ultimately cost himself his job. There's no conspiracy, it's just what happened. As Larry himself pointed out, quite often our games ran themselves out of the play... again, that isn't talent, that is coaching.
re: Brown and Tenuta I've heard that they have barely spoken to one another for almost six weeks. Tenuta is history. Brown was Charlie's guy.... he's probably history as well. New HC= new staff. I think we have two true MLBs... Teo and Calabrese. Charlie did not assign the same importance to defense that he did to offense.