While I'm as frustrated as anyone else over these losses, this is a silly assessment. Can you imagine if every 5th year coach was held to this standard?
"Basically, Coach, if we're not in a BCS bowl, you're outta here." With only 10 teams in the BCS, there would be a lot of heads rolling off the chopping block. That's not realistic. And I don't want to hear "But we're ND! We should be held to a higher standard!" Every team feels they should be held to a higher standard. No one says, "We shouldn't be held to that high of a standard!"
If the Irish win out (and I'm not saying they will... but IF they do), with a bowl game win, that makes the team 10-3. How can you fire a 10 win coach? That's ridiculous. No potential coach would come into that situation. "Yeah, it's been a dream of mine to coach at Notre Dame... but they just fired a guy who won 10 games. I'd have no job security."