:: Notre Dame Football ::
Charlie Weis's job description (Update 1)
Leprechaun Express: Notre Dame Football Intel Update, Nov. 20, 2009
"You know what it takes to win. Just look at my fist. When I make a fist, it's strong and you can't tear it apart. As long as there's unity, there's strength. We must become so close with the bonds of loyalty and sacrifice, so deep with the conviction of the sole purpose, that no one, no group, no thing, can ever tear us apart." — Ara Parseghian, first team meeting as Notre Dame Head Football Coach, Golden Dome auditorium, 1964
Charlie Weis was not hired simply to run Notre Dame Football — he was hired to rebuild it.
Rebuild it he has, after inheriting a Notre Dame Football program arguably at its weakest point in a century.
Effective this year, 2009, for the first time in nearly a decade and a half, Notre Dame Football has a fully restocked, top-flight roster rebuilt across four full class years and counting, with respect to talent-level, training and development, well-schooled in technique, much of the time playing very hard and trying to make plays, well-developed in terms of strength and conditioning, and building size. Most importantly, the program is running on all cylinders academically and with respect to the overall development of student athletes in and out of the classroom. And Weis has run a clean program, doing things the right way.
At the same time, by rebuilding strong foundations, and with early success cobbling together a skeleton crew into two BCS bowl berths, Weis has raised expectations.
As a result, from roughly this point forward, Weis can be measured against, for example, Lou Holtz, since due to Weis's efforts Notre Dame Football now has foundations similar to those Holtz had to work with when Holtz went 5-6, then 8-4, then 12-0 with a string of major bowls.
Unlike his predecessor Tyrone Willingham, Weis has held up his end of the bargain with respect to rebuilding. After inheriting a program arguably with its weakest foundations in more than a century, anybody who was honest knew it would take five or six years to restore the program's foundations, regardless of early success cobbling together the skeleton crew already there.
This is why it is so unrealistic to compare records between Weis, Lou Holtz, Bob Davie, and Tyrone Willingham.
Lou Holtz inherited a program in much better shape than what Weis had to work with. Only five years earlier, under Dan Devine, Notre Dame had a close Sugar Bowl game against that year's national champions, and Notre Dame itself had won the national championship only eight years earlier. Gerry Faust had Notre Dame in and out of the rankings, and won a bowl game over a Boston College team led by Doug Flutier. Faust was also an outstanding recruiter, who left the cupboard fairly full for Holtz. Holtz had restore and rebuild aspects of the program, but he had a lot more than Weis.
Davie, in turn, inherited a program from Holtz that won one or more national titles and went to a major bowl nearly every season. Davie had no rebuilding to do at all. He was given a team that had a close Sugar Bowl loss two years earlier, and missed another major bowl the previous year by a missed extra point and overtime loss at Southern Cal. Davie immediately had the program struggling to stay above .500 and losing the Independence Bowl, losing a rematch to the one good team they had managed to beat in the regular season.
Willingham, at two major programs that previously had competed for national titles, implicitly agreed to be a Lou Holtz-type figure and rebuild them. Instead, he struggled to sustain the status quo.
At Notre Dame, Willingham was hired to rebuild the program and run it, and with respect to personnel alone, the program was on the verge of collapse when he was let go. While there was talk of Weis winning with Willingham players, the natural response would be, where? Where were they? During his tenure, Willingham had roughly one-half of a good recruiting class, some of whom Weis turned into NFL prospects.
After multiple blowout losses, including a blowout loss to a team with a losing record, when Willingham was finally fired while struggling to stay at .500, he had something like ten or so recruits in place heading into December, from that year's high school senior class. Perhaps one or two were blue chips.
Weis has rebuilt the program and has taken in to three bowls in four seasons, two BCS bowls in four seasons, winning a minor bowl. He is on the verge of leading the program to four bowls in five seasons and hopefully back-to-back bowl wins.
If the Irish can secure a Gator Bowl bid, that is a tremendous Jan. 1 bowl game, and a tremendous step forward. In 1976, Notre Dame's first Gator Bowl, a win over Penn State served as a springboard for Notre Dame's national title run that following season.
At the same time, in the process, Weis has raised expectations, renewed expectations, and now will be judged by whether he can do what Holtz did.
When did Weis get the program on a footing similar to what it had when Holtz took over? It would not be unreasonable to suggest that this finally occurred by last year, in 2008.
Adjusting for the several-years rebuilding period, the Weis program truthfully now is on a par with what it was like the first year or two under Holtz. After the long, up-and-down rebuilding curve, including the Davie-Willingham balloon payment in the third year, Weis is getting slightly better results than Holtz did during Holtz's first season, and is similar to where Holtz was at in Holtz's second season.
Holtz was 5-6 and then 8-4, with a blowout loss in the Cotton Bowl. In Weis's first two seasons with a restored program, he went 7-6, with a win in the Hawai'i Bowl, and is now 6-4. Time will tell if he can pull out 8 or 9 wins in the next three games.
Of course, in Holtz's third season, Notre Dame went 12-0 and won the last consummate national championship in college football, beating essentially the entire top-6.
So where now for Weis and Notre Dame? One thing is certain, an upset loss to a 7-3 team is not the litmus test, even if that team is the United States Naval Academy, or perhaps especially if that team is the hard-playing, talented United States Naval Academy. Nor is the litmus test a close loss to a top-10 opponent on the road, a game never really allowed to play itself out, when what everybody watching the game undoubtedly expected to be a Notre Dame scoring drive was snuffed out by one of the worst replay calls in a season pockmarked by baffling calls.
The Fighting Irish have one of the nation's best offenses, multiple Heisman candidates, multiple NFL draft picks, some All-Americans, and a hard-playing talented defense that will not quit.
What comes next?
Keywords: Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Lou Holtz, Tyrone Willingham, Bob Davie, Gerry Faust
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