When Irish Eyes Are Blinded
I've been a die-hard Notre Dame fan my whole life. The year of my birth (1966), the Fighting Irish won the National Championship, followed by one 11 years later (1977) and 11 years after that (1988). There haven't been any since, and other than the 1994 robbery by the pollsters and the phantom clip vs. Colorado a few years prior, they haven't even been close.
Charlie Weis was supposed to change all that, bringing a Super Bowl pedigree that immediately turned what had been a mediocre underclass QB into a two-time Heisman candidate destined for the 1st round of the NFL draft. But unlike his first Brady, this one would prove ill-equipped to handle the glare of the big game spotlight.
So, here we sit after Charlie's first two years at the helm of ND, and they are no better today than the day he first waddled onto campus. In fact, they're even more of a national laughingstock now than they ever were -- even in the Gerry Faust era -- because this team actually fooled people (even the media) into thinking they were a legitimate Top 10 and even National Championship contender.
The truth is much, much bleaker than that. Most of the post-mortems today, following yet another big game loss exceeding 20 points (that's four straight against Top 10 teams, for those scoring at home), point to the fact that they simply need more talent. Once last year's and this year's crop of recruits mature, WATCH OUT!
Well, I'm here to tell you that's just not gonna happen. There are a myriad of reasons why ND can't pull it off anymore -- stringent academic requirements, lack of a major conference membership -- but the truth is they've simply lost their mystique. And once it's gone, it can't be recaptured, because you're talking about decades upon decades of tradition and heroic exploits actually worthy of legend.
The only thing Weis is going to accomplish will be to increase the number of ND players drafted by the NFL in the first 2-3 rounds each year by a player or two. Well, whoop-de-freakin'-doo! I guess the only hope I have for a return to the glory days would be for ND to drop to I-AA, where they belong. But short of that, there are dozens more BCS blowouts in their future.
Nice work, Charlie!
posted by Bob Bland at 1/04/2007 05:39:00 PM
1 Comments:
The solution is not a self-imposed demotion to I-AA (that is actually Divion I; the former I-A is now the "Football Bowl Division", with the one-time I-AA dropping each alphabetic modifier to become just I). & I say that not just with reference to the near-term -- which should be interpreted as the duration of ND's current broadcast contract with NBC -- but long-term. Given the history of Notre Dame, they can't drop a division -- everything done before was against the backdrop of playing the other powers -- state schools (Michigan, Penn State), monied privates (USC), the service-academies -- so future success, to have the same heft & validity, has to be established against same. If not, ND just becomes a papist Mount Union -- bully in the regular season, capable (& liable) to run up the score, but then humbled (sometimes) in the post-season.
So, if you want ND's future to stack up against its past, it has to stay where it is. Largely. The idea to join a conference, in football, should not only be considered, but done. The Irish already play the Big East in every other men's sport & all women's sports, so the starting block is there. Become an associate member of the BE in football, agreeing to play six games intraconference (locking in Rutgers, Louisville (natural geographic rival), & West Virginia, with the others rotating on & off the schedule), & fill the rest of the schedule with two rivalry games (SC, Michigan), two service academies (one drops off every third one, to reappear the next), & two "wildcard" games (BYU & Georgia one year, Purdue & Arizona the next, etc.). This way, any appearance in a marquee bowl results from the "conference test" -- ND would have to boast a better BE winning percentage than any other school to get the conference's BCS spot), so there would be no taint on the game before it's even played.
(Additionally, this would allow another non-BCS school a chance to play "spoiler", so we could have had Boise State & BYU in the BCS this year. Alternately, Rutgers could have gotten an at-large, as runner-up in the Big East.)
Do this, & the championship cycle of which you spoke should re-initiate. They won't win it every year, or even every eight, but they won't be a show-pony, either.
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