As my first post on this esteeemed blog on Notre Dame, I will summarize the reasons why I thought that TW's firing was a mistake. I shared these reasons immediately after TW was shown the door, and these reasons do not include our scatterbrain attempts at hiring a new coach.
1--Given the hand that TW was given, he performed fairly well.
Imagine where this program was in December 2001 (that seems like a rose garden compared to now). I am as upset as everyone else at the dumbfounding defeats to BC and Pitt and our embarrassing thumping by USC three straight years (as well as the other 20-plus point losses). TW was not perfect, and he clearly made some big mistakes including ...
a) not playing Julius Jones all the time in '03 (witness his performance against SEA Monday night)
b) not moving Carlyle Holiday to WR immediately (he could have developed into that classic possession WR/run-after-the-catch weapon so important in the West Coast offense)
c) not playing Darius Walker vs. BYU.
To me, 6-5 with our schedule was a glass half-full or half-empty, and I saw it as half-full. Our wins against Michigan and Tennessee were building blocks for 2005; Auburn joins us as the only team to beat two Top 10 teams this year.
2--Accordingly, he should have been allowed to succeed or fail with his own recruits.
TW did not talk about a "talent deficit" like Holtz (late in his tenure) and Davie did. TW started a lot of kids, including QB Brady Quinn. How many games did teams win with a true freshman or sophomore at the helm in the last decade? Remember that Carson Palmer was very average his first three years, and then we all know what happened in his senior year. (A post is forthcoming on a comparison between Palmer and Quinner.)
Last year, we got three of the Top 100 (D. Walker was the top ranked at #63) and overall the Irish were ranked #21-#25 in the ESPN/Lemming list. The year before, we were ranked #4; that class included Quinn and a kid at TE (Olson) who transferred the first day of school and enrolled in Miami and really inflated our initial ranking. According to Rivals Inc on ESPNnews, we were looking at a class outside the Top 25, the first time ND was outside of it since yahoos like them kept track (the 1970s).
TW was apparently not the salesman that he needed to be, but is the problem the coach or the academic standards?
3--The biggest hurdle to Notre Dame's return to the Top 5 is academics.
Quinner and Walker are impact players, but I agree that we simply do not have enough of them. My guess is that of the Top 100 players, we can only recruit one-third of them. Currently all the successful football programs [Ohio State, Michigan, Texas, Florida, USC, Oklahoma, LSU) have zero restrictions on recruiting--period. All of them (save Miami and USC) are state schools, and they often put athletes in remedial courses OR in a series of easy intro courses to keep them eligible even if they are not making normal progress towards a degree. (A future post will discuss how the admission standards could be bent to admit talented players with suspect academic backgrounds while instituting creative ways to help those young men matriculate towards a degree.)
4--TW signed a five-year deal, and in recent memory, Gerry Faust and Bob Davie were given five years to sink or swim.
In my opinion, TW deserved the chance to coach the last two years of his contract. Years four and five would have been a true gauge of TW, not the first three years.
I do not think that race was a factor in his ouster. Personally I ran, however, this thought-experiment: if George O'Leary were the coach under exactly the same circumstances, would he have been given at least a fourth year? I say yes, because I think that the Board of Trustees would have had more patience in a guy that "looked right out of Central Casting to play the part of Notre Dame head football coach."
I believe that Notre Dame tossed a great deal of credibility and goodwill out the window, and sadly, I fear that negative impact will be big.
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In short, there is an unbelievable syndrome that many ND alumni have that "we are one coach away from greatness." That syndrome is what produced the crass opportunism of firing one coach (TW) to hire another (Urban Meyer) ... we hit the panic button and went for the favor of the day who in the end left us crying at the altar.
"Hitselberger and I were talking last night that the media frenzy over Ty-Gate seems to suggest there is 1 standard regarding coaching decisions that 116 Div 1A teams are held to, then the ND standard. Here's something that SHOULD be treated as outrageous but, of course, won't be. Found this buried in a brief blurb, page 4 of the Colo Spgs Gazette Sports Section: