M
Moostache
Guest
There was another typical "ND is dead" article on SI.com recently that was seeking to make much hay out of the comparative W/L records of Davie, Willingham and Weis due to this unhappy thought:
Should ND lose to UCLA tomorrow, the three men would bear identical 19-12 records after 31 games at the helm of Notre Dame Football. We are going to leave THAT particular comparison alone for a minute and trip down the road fantastic into a much more pleasent scenario...(man, I REALLY don't want to do any work today....
)
Now, ND has NOT already lost to UCLA, even though pretty much the entire sporting world, half of China and six bushwackers in the Australian outback have wagered large sums of money believing that will be the case. But what if?
What if ND upsets the Bruins on Saturday?
What if ND takes the momentum of the second half at Purdue and builds it into the season's first full game?
What if ND then translates that first taste of success into a home victory over a highly-(over)rated BC team the following week?
What if that in turn fuels one of the great "ND moments" of the last 25 years in a magnificent upset of USC?
What if ND somehow wins out - stop cackling and breathe....somehow finishing 7-5 and going to a bowl game? (Remember no one is capable of achieving more than their biggest dreams - if you cannot even think it or dream it, there is no way you can do it...yeeesh, now I sound like Tony Robbbins...)
What if ND ends the season with a bowl win and Weis ends with a personal 8-game winning streak?
Would that matter in the end? (Rhetorical question obviously, but for national media hacks I tend to believe such an occurrence would be a catastrophe and would go largely unreported unless large amounts of second guessing and veiled slams were worked into the anakysis)
What if Weis after 3 years is 27-11 instead of 23-14 or the unthinkable 19-18?
I know all of the rational answers for why this can't/won't/would never happen. I am not blind to the horribly uneven performance (ok, down right dreadful performance) of the team in this season to date....but still what if?
All programs attempting to regain past glories have a turning point, a game where the ship is righted and things start to go in a positive direction again. In my head, I am not sure ND is there yet (or will be before the dreaded 0-8 becomes a reality), but in my heart I want to believe that this group of young men reached rock bottom at the half against Purdue. They played a (largely) inspired half of football last week to crawl away from the abyss just a bit. UCLA is hardly unbeatable - ask Utah. Stranger things have happened...
That doesn't mean the rest of my rose colored glasses scenario is any more likely....beating BC and USC (sure to be ranked in the top-10 at gametime), back-to-back no less, would seem to be an achievement well beyond the grasp of the baby Irish this year...but what if?
It is those what if's that keep me glued to this team - even at a historically low point in program history. It is that glimmer of hope (or more precisely, ANY glimmer of hope) that insures I will be watching the game seated in front of a PC on ESPN360 on Saturday night -looking for signs that the incoming talent will be abkle to augment the existing talent and that Weis will lead them to many glorious victories in the future.
It is also that sense of hope, that longing for signs of the seemingly promised better days - and having legitimate reasons for such thoughts in the first place, not just the deluded fantasies of a typical fan - that so clearly differentiates the 31-game marks of both the Davie and Willingham eras from the Weis era.
Boob Davie at 19-12 was a clearly overwhelmed coach. He could recruit talent to ND, he just did not know what to do with it when he had it (exhibit A - David Givens)...he was also a horribly inept on-field coach with questionable decision making and WOEFUL clock management ability (exhibit B - losing games on consecutive weeks not by running out of downs, but by ruinning out of CLOCK - UM/PU).
The writing was on the wall even before he made his death-bed come-back season at 9-3 the following year. The fact was that Davie never suffered from a catacylsmic lack of talent (even if what he did have was slightly below par for a top-10 team), no, his biggest issue was that he could not really do too much with the talent he had on hand.
Willingham at 19-12 was clearly on the slope into oblivion by that time. His team had regressed horribly since the 10-1 start (really ever since the Kelley Green Abomination Game against BC) and the reasons why were becoming horrifyingly clear - Willingham did not recruit and he was not about to change that either. He also was not going to change assistants or offensive philosophy or implementation of that philosophy.
To see the hacks in SI and ESPN actually say things like "Charlie Weis' early successes at ND show that Ty Willingham was a great recruiter" makes my blood boil. If Ty was such a great recruiter, and Weis could only win because of THAT, then this should be THE banner year for ND....the year that all of those GREAT Ty recruits were seniors....oh wait, there are only 7 true seniors on this team?
The bottom line in the difference between Ty and Charlie is that by the 19-12 mark, in one case you just falt out knew the ship was going to run a ground and no help was coming anytime soon! By the time the Ty death watch was in full effect, many people (myself shamefully among them) had tuned out of ND games early...
Weis at 19-12 (IF it happens) would not be remotely the same in facts or feelings. This year is a horrible disaster across the board. Weis has plenty of blame to shoulder for it being as bad as it is....even if some of the reasons do boil down to trying to pull off miracle wins instead of playing to develop the young team from the opening kick of the first game. Still. ND should NEVER lose by 30 to GT, 17 to MSU and 14 to PU, yet alone in the same season....BUT, despite the on-field woes and off-field defections, the hope for a better tomorrow is firmly rooted in three factiors:
1) Weis showed that with a veteran team, he CAN win at ND and can actually win quite a bit. 19 wins in the first 2 seasons showed that much - including back-to-back BCS bowls, no matter what happened in those games (and despite the popular wisdom that tOSU "blew out ND", that game was still in doubt on 3rd and long at 27-20 in the 4th quarter...compare that ending to the first year with Ty's blow-out loss, and not even remotely competitive 4th quarter against NC State). Sure, the Sugar Bowl second half was a gut punch last year, as was USC - but realistically, USC gets the last TD off of a returned onside kick to add points to their margin. In those cases, the blow-outs got worse because of a team that kept fighting, even when hopelessly behind because they felt that could come back. USC and LSU were not MSU and UCLA, but the fight was there in those teams - the heart and will to keep fighting. Willingham teams did things like whimper out to Syracuse 36-12...
2) Weis has shown a clearly superior ability (or willingness or BOTH) to recruit than either Willingham or Davie - even though some of Davie's classes were ranked near what Weis is doing. The numbers from the recruiting analysts would universally show this if the national media paid more than passing lip service to the numbers and quality involved - though some of this is actually slowing making its way into the mainstream and off the ND fan forums only (Farrell's article this week, some of the SBT stuff recently).
3) Weis has shown a clear ability to change course when things are not working - he refuses to be a stubborn mule and is willing to change just about anything and everything if he believes it will help him win games. Certain other coaches were wedded to a single 'philosophy' and would rather roast in hell than change it. Weis would just as soon throw the whole thing out if doing so would (or even could) lead to a win...now, to date this has not produced the kind of results that you would say are encouraging, but when the alternative is steadfast hold the course and crash anyway - trying something, anything is preferable to doing nothing....
But, again, if the comparison is now a three-way - Weis can coach better than Davie, winning more games with arguably less talent; and he can recruit far better than Willingham, the average rankings from across the board on the last 5 classes speak volumes about this point. It remains to be seen whether or not Charlie can take that final hurdle and go from attracting players and leading veterans to growing young men and developing talent beyond the QB's mechanics, but there are reasons to have hope still.
I don't know if Charlie Weis will ever succeed the way fans like me wish he would - with 3-4 MNC's and consistent 10 win seasons every year; maybe SI.com is right, and the playing field is stacked to prevent it any longer - although if it can happen at USC then its not impossible. I don't know if this year's team has enough guts and leadership to get up off the deck one more time and try to put it all together. But I am intrigued to find out.
I said it in another post eariler that if ND starts off 2008 at 0-5 that I would gladly lead the "Can Charlie" movement myself, and I stand by that statement now; but for this moment, and for one more week at least, I find myself really thinking about the What If's instead of the Who's Next (as in coaching change)....
Should ND lose to UCLA tomorrow, the three men would bear identical 19-12 records after 31 games at the helm of Notre Dame Football. We are going to leave THAT particular comparison alone for a minute and trip down the road fantastic into a much more pleasent scenario...(man, I REALLY don't want to do any work today....
)Now, ND has NOT already lost to UCLA, even though pretty much the entire sporting world, half of China and six bushwackers in the Australian outback have wagered large sums of money believing that will be the case. But what if?
What if ND upsets the Bruins on Saturday?
What if ND takes the momentum of the second half at Purdue and builds it into the season's first full game?
What if ND then translates that first taste of success into a home victory over a highly-(over)rated BC team the following week?
What if that in turn fuels one of the great "ND moments" of the last 25 years in a magnificent upset of USC?
What if ND somehow wins out - stop cackling and breathe....somehow finishing 7-5 and going to a bowl game? (Remember no one is capable of achieving more than their biggest dreams - if you cannot even think it or dream it, there is no way you can do it...yeeesh, now I sound like Tony Robbbins...)
What if ND ends the season with a bowl win and Weis ends with a personal 8-game winning streak?
Would that matter in the end? (Rhetorical question obviously, but for national media hacks I tend to believe such an occurrence would be a catastrophe and would go largely unreported unless large amounts of second guessing and veiled slams were worked into the anakysis)
What if Weis after 3 years is 27-11 instead of 23-14 or the unthinkable 19-18?
I know all of the rational answers for why this can't/won't/would never happen. I am not blind to the horribly uneven performance (ok, down right dreadful performance) of the team in this season to date....but still what if?
All programs attempting to regain past glories have a turning point, a game where the ship is righted and things start to go in a positive direction again. In my head, I am not sure ND is there yet (or will be before the dreaded 0-8 becomes a reality), but in my heart I want to believe that this group of young men reached rock bottom at the half against Purdue. They played a (largely) inspired half of football last week to crawl away from the abyss just a bit. UCLA is hardly unbeatable - ask Utah. Stranger things have happened...
That doesn't mean the rest of my rose colored glasses scenario is any more likely....beating BC and USC (sure to be ranked in the top-10 at gametime), back-to-back no less, would seem to be an achievement well beyond the grasp of the baby Irish this year...but what if?
It is those what if's that keep me glued to this team - even at a historically low point in program history. It is that glimmer of hope (or more precisely, ANY glimmer of hope) that insures I will be watching the game seated in front of a PC on ESPN360 on Saturday night -looking for signs that the incoming talent will be abkle to augment the existing talent and that Weis will lead them to many glorious victories in the future.
It is also that sense of hope, that longing for signs of the seemingly promised better days - and having legitimate reasons for such thoughts in the first place, not just the deluded fantasies of a typical fan - that so clearly differentiates the 31-game marks of both the Davie and Willingham eras from the Weis era.
Boob Davie at 19-12 was a clearly overwhelmed coach. He could recruit talent to ND, he just did not know what to do with it when he had it (exhibit A - David Givens)...he was also a horribly inept on-field coach with questionable decision making and WOEFUL clock management ability (exhibit B - losing games on consecutive weeks not by running out of downs, but by ruinning out of CLOCK - UM/PU).
The writing was on the wall even before he made his death-bed come-back season at 9-3 the following year. The fact was that Davie never suffered from a catacylsmic lack of talent (even if what he did have was slightly below par for a top-10 team), no, his biggest issue was that he could not really do too much with the talent he had on hand.
Willingham at 19-12 was clearly on the slope into oblivion by that time. His team had regressed horribly since the 10-1 start (really ever since the Kelley Green Abomination Game against BC) and the reasons why were becoming horrifyingly clear - Willingham did not recruit and he was not about to change that either. He also was not going to change assistants or offensive philosophy or implementation of that philosophy.
To see the hacks in SI and ESPN actually say things like "Charlie Weis' early successes at ND show that Ty Willingham was a great recruiter" makes my blood boil. If Ty was such a great recruiter, and Weis could only win because of THAT, then this should be THE banner year for ND....the year that all of those GREAT Ty recruits were seniors....oh wait, there are only 7 true seniors on this team?
The bottom line in the difference between Ty and Charlie is that by the 19-12 mark, in one case you just falt out knew the ship was going to run a ground and no help was coming anytime soon! By the time the Ty death watch was in full effect, many people (myself shamefully among them) had tuned out of ND games early...
Weis at 19-12 (IF it happens) would not be remotely the same in facts or feelings. This year is a horrible disaster across the board. Weis has plenty of blame to shoulder for it being as bad as it is....even if some of the reasons do boil down to trying to pull off miracle wins instead of playing to develop the young team from the opening kick of the first game. Still. ND should NEVER lose by 30 to GT, 17 to MSU and 14 to PU, yet alone in the same season....BUT, despite the on-field woes and off-field defections, the hope for a better tomorrow is firmly rooted in three factiors:
1) Weis showed that with a veteran team, he CAN win at ND and can actually win quite a bit. 19 wins in the first 2 seasons showed that much - including back-to-back BCS bowls, no matter what happened in those games (and despite the popular wisdom that tOSU "blew out ND", that game was still in doubt on 3rd and long at 27-20 in the 4th quarter...compare that ending to the first year with Ty's blow-out loss, and not even remotely competitive 4th quarter against NC State). Sure, the Sugar Bowl second half was a gut punch last year, as was USC - but realistically, USC gets the last TD off of a returned onside kick to add points to their margin. In those cases, the blow-outs got worse because of a team that kept fighting, even when hopelessly behind because they felt that could come back. USC and LSU were not MSU and UCLA, but the fight was there in those teams - the heart and will to keep fighting. Willingham teams did things like whimper out to Syracuse 36-12...
2) Weis has shown a clearly superior ability (or willingness or BOTH) to recruit than either Willingham or Davie - even though some of Davie's classes were ranked near what Weis is doing. The numbers from the recruiting analysts would universally show this if the national media paid more than passing lip service to the numbers and quality involved - though some of this is actually slowing making its way into the mainstream and off the ND fan forums only (Farrell's article this week, some of the SBT stuff recently).
3) Weis has shown a clear ability to change course when things are not working - he refuses to be a stubborn mule and is willing to change just about anything and everything if he believes it will help him win games. Certain other coaches were wedded to a single 'philosophy' and would rather roast in hell than change it. Weis would just as soon throw the whole thing out if doing so would (or even could) lead to a win...now, to date this has not produced the kind of results that you would say are encouraging, but when the alternative is steadfast hold the course and crash anyway - trying something, anything is preferable to doing nothing....
But, again, if the comparison is now a three-way - Weis can coach better than Davie, winning more games with arguably less talent; and he can recruit far better than Willingham, the average rankings from across the board on the last 5 classes speak volumes about this point. It remains to be seen whether or not Charlie can take that final hurdle and go from attracting players and leading veterans to growing young men and developing talent beyond the QB's mechanics, but there are reasons to have hope still.
I don't know if Charlie Weis will ever succeed the way fans like me wish he would - with 3-4 MNC's and consistent 10 win seasons every year; maybe SI.com is right, and the playing field is stacked to prevent it any longer - although if it can happen at USC then its not impossible. I don't know if this year's team has enough guts and leadership to get up off the deck one more time and try to put it all together. But I am intrigued to find out.
I said it in another post eariler that if ND starts off 2008 at 0-5 that I would gladly lead the "Can Charlie" movement myself, and I stand by that statement now; but for this moment, and for one more week at least, I find myself really thinking about the What If's instead of the Who's Next (as in coaching change)....
