November 9th, 2005
Categorized under: Commentary, Sports

Why I Dislike Notre Dame

If you don’t follow college football at all let me give you a little back story. It has always seemed to me that, our great nation, loves Notre Dame. Except, I have never, in my lifetime, seen a good reason for it. They are, at times, a good football team. But I haven’t known them to be great. I haven’t seen any reason to fawn over them. They are just another team except – they aren’t. They live in a special place in college football. This odd Catholic University isn’t in a conference like all the other “big” schools and they don’t have to play by any conference rules to earn their way into a bowl game. They just have to win. And, if memory serves, they only have to win 8 games to have an automatic birth into a BCS game (big money $$$).

Rumors have abounded for years that Notre Dame would join the Big East (why?) but after the defection of Miami, Virginia Tech (VT), and Boston College (BC) I think it is safe to assume Notre Dame will never join the Big East. In fact there is no real motivation for them to join a conference. If they did they would have to share that bowl money that gets handed to them with their less fortunate conference members and they would have to do a bit more to even earn a big Bowl Game invite.

Notre Dame is loved though. They have tons of fans from all walks of life from all across the country. It is this rabid, and seemingly inexplicable following that garners them their own TV contract with NBC so the whole nation gets to see every Notre Dame game. Heck, I hardly get to see any USC games and they are the #1 team in the land and haven’t lost a game in over 2 seasons!

A few years ago Notre Dame looked good, real good. They had just hired the coach from Stanford, Tyrone Willingham, and he went 8-0 to start his career there (I don’t know how that year ended). When I first saw it I though, well maybe there is something to this Notre Dame mystique. However, since then Notre Dame has been pretty average. And then, after 3 years of his 5 year contract Willingham was fired this past off-season and Notre Dame went to the Super Bowl champs and hired a ND alum Charlie Weiss (the Patriots Offensive coordinator at the time).

I was a little shocked by the firing of Willingham. Heck Notre Dame hadn’t seen success like he brought them in as long as I could remember – what did the Notre Dame leaders want? He seems they just wanted another Coach. This year Weiss started off admirably winning his first five games I think. Then, something strange happened. Notre Dame gave Weiss a ten year extension worth 30 million dollars. What gives? Willingham had a better start, against better competition but Notre Dame showed some restraint and left his contract alone, presumably to see how he did in the long run. But they didn’t do that with Weiss. Why not? And what college football coach really deserves a $30 million contract? That is absurd. Have Notre Dame’s TV ratings been so phenomenal since Weiss took over that somehow this was justified?

One of my favorite sports columnists, Jason Whitlock, recently wrote an article about this odd Coach contract hypocrisy at Notre Dame. He pulls the racist card out but not because of the firing of Willinghame, something he dubs as “shortsighted and unfair”. However, he does think the contract extension was. It’s a thought provoking read.

By the way there are only a few teams I always root against; Notre Dame, Florida State, and the opponents of Marshall and North Carolina State.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

  • My friend Ryan wrote a song about the current Notre Dame:

    http://rawlinson.us/blog/articles/the-end-of-no...
  • Good luck getting even 3 this year the way they are playing.

    I figured Weiss had accidently taken the Beta-Max equipment with him when he left NE and that was the problem.
  • Jim
    Maybe he just needs to get Belichick's cameras installed in the stadiums : ) Hey, if you can't laugh, you might cry.....I was thinking...The seniors are Tyrone's, the juniors are 70/30, as Tyron had started recruiting, Charlie didn't resume until after the superbowl. So the Frosh/Sophs are his. If in 2 years we don't see a substantial change, I might be thinking differently about things...I'd sign up for 3-4 wins this year, it is definitley going to be UGLY..
  • I'm not sure he can't recruit - supposedly he had one of the best recruiting classes in the country last year. I'm just not sure he is as good a head coach as people thought he would be.

    Boy I can't imagine Marshall winning more than 2 games this year and both of those will be if they are lucky. However, I think Marshall has a better shot at winning first. They play an equally bad Rice team on Oct 27 while ND has to wait until Mid Nov to face Duke.
  • Jim
    Ah Bill,
    I figured it was coming. I've been watching and waiting.....That's OK. No, I don't want him fired. The man has proven he can coach, I just don't think he can recruit. Too much time in the pros, where only $$$ recruits. Of course that happens at some D1 schools as well, but not ND. I believe this will go down as the worst year in ND football. But he can still coach. He has NO tools at his disposal. The O-line is high school caliber at best. At a school like ND, recruiting is even more difficult due to the high standards missing from the LSU/Florida/USC's off the world. He needs to get himself a top notch recruiter! Think Tyrone is interested? = : ). Probably not.

    That's OK, I'm not abandoning ship. We've had our ups and downs, but if the south can rise again, so can the IRISH! Besides, with my raiders at 2-2 at least I have something to root for! Side bet on who gets their first win (Marshal or ND?)

    Jim
blog comments powered by Disqus
RSSSubscribe to my feed now.