Over the past 5 seasons, I have been possibly the biggest Charlie Weis apologist in all of Notre Dame Nation. As a Jets fan who grew up in Patriots country, I saw firsthand how well he could develop quarterbacks and concoct effective game plans. He led the 1998 Vinny Testaverde Jets to the AFC title game before taking the reigns in New England and helping to develop Tom Brady while orchestrating 3 titles in 4 years as the offensive coordinator there. The Patriots haven’t won a title since he left.

After Lou Holtz was forced out as coach, and he was forced out, I had high hopes for Bob Davie. He had led the defense for 3 years and filled in a few times when Lou was sick or had surgery. He looked like a head coach. He acted like a head coach. He couldn’t coach a lick. He was a disaster. He was/is a good man, graduated 100% of his players one season and led the Irish to their first BCS game, which turned into a 41-9 trouncing at the hands of Oregon State. After the Irish started 0-3 in 2001, people started putting “For Sale” signs in his yard. Notre Dame is much like New York, the best place in the world when you’re winning, and Hell on earth when you’re not.

Enter Tyrone Willingham. The world made a huge deal when the Irish hired a black coach, I still don’t really understand why. Notre Dame previously had a black Heisman Trophy winner and a black quarterback had led them to a national title; oh, and the school is in Indiana, not Mississippi. Ty started out winning his first eight games, including a dismantling of 7th ranked Florida State in Tallahassee that I attended with 2 other Irish fans. What a great day. I have a very close friend that was on the staff of Holtz, Davie and Willingham and though he was excited about that victory and the 8-0 start, I could sense a feeling of impending doom when I met with him in the tunnel after the game. He knew they just weren’t that good and that Willingham wasn’t the answer. Sure enough, they lost the next week to Boston College, and then won a couple more before getting shellacked by USC. Phillip Rivers then embarrassed the Irish in the Gator Bowl. The reports I was receiving claimed Ty spent more time writing his pregame speech trying to inspire the team than he did actually preparing a game plan. I will say this for him, the guy could recruit. He loaded the cupboard with talent, and then was fired. Brady Quinn, Justin Tuck, Jeff Samardzija, Maurice Stovall, John Carlson, Anthony Fasano, and Darius Walker are all guys he convinced to come to South Bend. All guys that were handed to Charlie Weis.

When Weis arrived in 2005, he talked of bringing a “strategic advantage” with him to South Bend. Irish haters freaked. I loved it. Head coaches are an arrogant, paranoid, bunch of pricks. At least the good coaches are. Jimmy Johnson? Bill Belichick? Pete Carroll? Nick Saban? Urban Meyer? All douchebags. All winners. When the world is lining up to hate your coach’s guts, good things usually happen. And, good things did happen. The team scored over 30 points in every game but one, a 17-10 victory over Michigan. They went 9-2 and both loses came on the last play of the game, one in overtime to Michigan State, the other to top-ranked USC on the infamous Bush push. Under Weis, Brady Quinn jumped from meh to Heisman candidate and the team was back in the BCS. Although they lost to Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl, I was still thrilled with the season and the direction the Irish were headed.

2006 brought high expectations, Quinn was to make a serious run at the Heisman, the defense was to be improved, and the schedule was not that good. After victories over a bad Georgia Tech squad and a depleted Penn State, #11 Michigan came calling for a game that we were going to win, a game that was going to catapult us to the top ranking in the country, (we were #2 going in), a game that was going to make Charlie Weis the next Knute, a game that would make being an Irish fan something to be proud of again. And then it happened; they kicked our ass. Bad. They put up 47 points, the second-most EVER at Notre Dame Stadium. Quinn was a mess. The defense did nothing. The thing that stuck out the most however was that Lloyd Carr outcoached Weis. All. Day. Long. The defense got torched again the following week at Michigan State, and, if not for the boneheaded play of Drew Stanton and Brady Quinn willing a victory, the season would have been totally lost. The Irish entered the season-ending game against USC at 9-1, and were promptly destroyed by the Trojans. That embarrassment was followed by a complete dismantling in the Sugar Bowl at the hands of LSU and JaMarcus Russell, who has shown us since that he is not exactly the toughest guy to prepare for. After 2 seasons, Weis was 19-6 overall, 4-5 against ranked teams (after starting 3-0), 0-2 in bowls, and 2-4 against the big 3 rivals: Michigan, Michigan State, and USC. He also was about to lose most of Willingham’s players and would have to start winning with his own.

2006 begat 2007. Quinn: gone. Samardziga: gone. Walker: gone. Talent: gone. Jimmy Clausen had arrived on campus to much fanfare, though. The offensive line was the worst in the country, and the Irish lost the first 5 out of the gate, prompting talk of a winless season. Michigan and Sparty humiliated us. After a win on the road at UCLA, things really got bad. A 27-14 loss to BC. A 38-0 home loss to USC in which Pete Carroll took his foot off the gas half way through the 3rd quarter. What’s worse? Getting killed by your arch rival every year or getting killed and having them take MERCY on your sorry ass? And just when you think it can’t get any worse, Navy came into Notre Dame Stadium and halted the longest losing streak to one team in the history of history, something like 784 games. Navy beat Notre Dame. And it isn’t 1936. Since we were in the spirit of helping our country during war time, we allowed the Air Force to come in the following week and thump us as well. Thank God for Duke and Stanford. To finish the season, we beat the 2 teams that are the only schools with smarter (ie: worse) players than us.

2008 started promisingly enough with a victory over cupcake San Diego State, followed by a beat down of Michigan (we would soon learn how bad the Wolverines were). Then came the annual loss to Michigan State. They would win 3 of the next 4 to get to 5-2 with 4 winnable games coming up. Pittsburgh: loss. BC: shut out. Managed to beat that powerhouse Navy this year, by a whopping 6 points. Then, on Senior Day, which at Notre Dame is more of a guaranteed victory than the homecoming matchup, the Irish gacked up a 13 point lead in the final 3 minutes to lose to………….Syracuse. We had the ball 4 times in the red zone in the second half and scored 3 points. Not on each trip, 3 points total. How’s that for a strategic advantage? We actually scored against USC this year, only losing 38-3. We did win our first bowl game in a decade and a half, of course we had to play a 4th place WAC team to accomplish that.

I stuck by Charlie through all of this; the team had lost a ton of talent and was very young, starting a freshman quarterback with an offensive line that couldn’t block Joe from Family Guy. I figured he would develop Clausen into the next Brady, (Tom, not Quinn), and we would win a National Title. The defensive players he was bringing in, not to mention the coaches, would make them a solid unit. Rivals and the other recruiting services kept telling us the talent coming in was excellent. Top 10. Four and five star kids. I live in high school football heaven. Miami has more players in the NFL than any other city. Ft. Lauderdale is 5th on that list, with more players than Dallas, Chicago, Jacksonville, and Los Angeles. Palm Beach County is loaded with talent. There is a reason Miami, Florida, and Free Shoes have won 10 of the last 25 national titles. They all come and recruit South Florida talent. Notre Dame does not. The top ranked high school in the country right now is Saint Thomas Aquinas in Ft. Lauderdale. Yup, a Catholic high school filled with bright kids that can play, and yet, not one of them is committed to the Irish. We actually have 2 starting lineman from there, and yet, they haven’t or aren’t willing to get kids to follow them. When Lane Kiffin took the Tennessee job, one of the first things he did was head on down to Pahokee and steal the fastest kid in the county away from the Gator’s. Why? Because, he saw that Meyer had built a dynasty grabbing the fastest players he could find down here. Teach them to play once they get there; you can’t teach speed. Yet, the Irish still look as if they are running in quicksand on defense. The major reason the SEC is the best conference in the country is they have the fastest defensive lines in the country. Notre Dame has no team speed and hasn’t since Weis took over.

All of this leads us to today, the Irish stand at 4-2 after losing to Michigan and USC………again. They may very well go on a nice run and finish 10-2 and go to a BCS game. Where they will get killed. Again. Notre Dame is not getting better. They are not getting where they need to go. Does Charlie even know where that is? If I was the AD and could ask him one question it would be this: What is the goal of the program? If the immediate response was not “win a national championship THIS YEAR”, then he would be fired.

I am done apologizing. I should have jumped off the Weis bandwagon after the Navy loss. I had another opportunity when they blew the Senior Day game against Syracuse and good kids like Maurice Crumb Jr. and James Aldridge, who played their guts out for 5 years and stuck around after Chuck arrived, had to leave the field in tears because their coach couldn’t figure out how to score from inside the 20 four times against the WORST defense in America.

I’m serious as a heart attack when I say I can’t take it any more. After 5 years, the collective record against our three biggest rivals is 4-11. Michigan has been down for 3 of those years and Sparty hasn’t really been much for, oh, about 40 years. Playing USC “close” twice while getting embarrassed the other 3 times is your claim to fame? Really? Guess what Chuck? Guess what Notre Dame fans? IT IS UNACCEPTABLE. We are Notre FREAKING Dame and it is high time someone starts to act like it. We are not just another football team. It has gotten to the point that it doesn’t even feel like a “program” any more. Texas: program. Florida: program. USC: professionals program. Notre Dame: very good school that plays football on Saturdays.

I don’t want to hear that we haven’t been relevant in a decade. Recruit better. The Notre Dame campus on a Saturday in October is an amazing place. There are plenty of talented kids with good grades and God-fearing parents to pursue. If the talented recruits are already there, as so the story goes, then get someone that can coach. An established college coach. Brian Kelly at Cincinnati would be a good place to start. He won back to back national titles in Division II at Grand Valley State. He took perennial doormat Central Michigan and turned them into winners in 3 seasons, winning the conference in his 3rd year. On he went to Cincinnati, where in 3 years he won ten games, then the conference title and a BCS berth, and in case you aren’t paying attention, is currently 6-0 and 5th in the BCS right now. The guy is an established winner and knows how to build a program. He also is well-connected in Cincinnati which just happens to have several very good Catholic High School teams in it. Boston College has been taking most of those kids for the last 10 years. Boston College has then taken those kids and beaten Notre Dame 6 times in a row. Kelly also preaches defense. The Bearcats graduated 10 players off their top notch defense from a year ago, and when the coordinator refused to run the 3-4 Kelly prefers, Kelly fired his ass. The DC promptly was hired at South Florida, who Cincy hung 34 on last Thursday. Why? Because unlike Weis, Kelly did his homework, made halftime adjustments, and coached like he fully expected to win the game. Oh yeah, he did it with his back-up quarterback.

If the Irish can’t get Kelly, (and all they have to do is offer the job and they will get him), then go get one of the best. Meyer. Stoops. Gulp…….Saban. Whoever. Most of these guys are whores and would sell their children into slavery for enough money (not really……….ok, maybe Saban would); the point is, Notre Dame has peaked under Weis. They aren’t getting better. The play calling isn’t getting better. That 3rd down Hail Mary on the final drive against USC was atrocious. The Michigan game? Good God, I really believe the staff at Sparty and Friends would have won that game given the same circumstances with 3 minutes remaining. The running game is horrible. The defense is still a step slow. The pass rush hasn’t existed in years. It’s hard to believe Justin Tuck has had more success rushing the quarterback on the pro level than he did on the college level.

Fire Charlie Weis. Do it now, do it after the season…either way, do it. The entire staff goes (looking at you Ron Powlus) with him except the graduate assistants, because those dudes work hard and know the players better than any of the coaches. Jimmy Clausen should go pro. I would think watching video of Sam Bradford probably has him leaning that way. Dayne Crist is already there and the kid has a cannon, plus his name…..hello! Bring in a guy that understands that defensive speed wins college football games. Bring in a guy that will accept nothing but winning. Bring in a guy that doesn’t give politically correct sound bites after loses. Please, for the love of God, bring me a guy that wins.

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