Irish Musings February 12, 2005

When I read this column by Ben Smith, I wrote to him. See below for my letter and his response.

Posted on Sun, Jan. 30, 2005

Weis

Weis might raise Irish from dead

By Ben Smith

The [Fort Wayne] Journal Gazette

Heresy crept in on little cat feet.

“Maybe, …” I whispered, watching the New England Patriots strap 41 points on the best defense in the NFL.

“Possibly, …” I muttered, listening to the gurus say Notre Dame would salvage a halfway decent recruiting class after all.

“Y’know, …” I began.

But I can’t finish that sentence, can I?

I can’t say, after all my steadfast devotion to the Church of Notre Dame Can’t Win Anymore, that Charlie Weis might not fail after all. That he might, in fact, have a slight inkling of what he’s up against, and how to wrestle it to the ground and make it cry uncle.

Skepticism isn’t supposed to croak that easily, is it?

Where Notre Dame football is concerned it’s supposed to have more lives than Jason the Hockey Mask Guy, and be every bit as devoted to bloodshed and dismemberment. Knocking down Rockne and doing a sack dance over him, that’s the national sport now for us media types. After five .500-or-below seasons in the past eight for America’s Team, we’ve all got the Here-Lies-Notre-Dame-Football thing down cold.

So what do we do now?

What do we do with Charlie Weis, who so far has done exactly what he said he would do? What do we do with all our eulogies, now that it occurs that Notre Dame might actually have gotten the right man for the job?

Everything he’s said so far has struck the proper chord – speed and some big-time nasty are what Notre Dame needs, he said immediately, and that was exactly right – and if we all smirked a little when he said juggling two full-time jobs would simply be a matter of lost sleep, that was our failing, not his. After years of hearing delusion and naivete from behind the football pulpit, this sounded like more of the same.

Of course, that was before Weis’s offense scored 11 more points on the Steelers than anyone had all season.

It was before Weis began making what recruiting analyst Tom Lemming estimates are 500 recruiting calls, laying the groundwork for a base that will extend well into the future.

It was before he and his staff began mending the fences blasted to kindling by Willingham’s sudden and bruising dismissal, and the recruits began to commit – enough talent that most analysts figure Notre Dame’s class will come in between 20th in the nation and 35th.

“They have averted disaster,” Lemming told the Chicago Tribune last week. “And almost all the credit goes to Weis. It seems like he’s called every guy in the country. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Neither have a lot of us. Which leaves us in the uncomfortable position of accepting one of two distinct new theologies:

Theology One is that Charlie Weis has cloned himself and thus is able to appear magically in two places at the same time.

Theology Two is that this guy actually knows what the heck he’s doing.

If we go with the first, we sound like some raving “X-Files” goof. If we go with the second, we have to shoot our old buddy skepticism and bury it in a shallow grave.

Oh, Charlie. See what you’ve reduced us to?

“I’ll tell you how I’ve done it,” he said this month. “What I’ve basically done is worked my day, gotten to the point where my assistant coaches on offense all have the material they need to work on for that night, and then, … I could do the recruiting phone calls for the next three hours. And then those three hours that I would have been doing my football stuff, I pick it up then.”

He made it sound easy.

He made it sound logical.

He made it sound – good heavens – like he was absolutely up to the task before him.

Oh, Charlie. Now you’ve spoiled everything.

Ben Smith has been covering sports in Fort Wayne for 18 years. His columns appear four times a week. He can be reached by e-mail at bensmith@jg.net; phone, 461-8736; or fax 461-8648 or at the "Ben Smith" topic of "The Board" at www.journalgazette.net.

Your column appears to be a watershed in the course of recent Notre Dame events. Congratulations on the self analysis and honesty. It inspired me to write the following:

In the late 1920s after a season of only five and four, they said the "old" Notre Dame Coach was over the hill, that the game was passing him by and that he maybe ought to go to Columbia or some such school after all, because he had out worn his welcome at ND.

Three years later the Irish had risen up and won all their games over two years, winning two national championships, one year without playing even one home game!!!!

Ten years later, after a decade of mediocrity and a few flashes of brilliance, but no championships and no undefeated seasons, the Irish were forgotten among the dominance of Bernie Bierman's Minnesota teams, Tennessee and others.

During this time, the Irish pulled off what is still the biggest upset/comeback in college football history, defeating in the last minute while tens of thousands of Buckeye fans prematurely celebrated their national championship in downtown Columbus.

Then, just three years into the next decade a young disciple of the "old" Notre Dame Coach came back to his alma mater to DOMINATE an entire decade with four national championships and three Heisman trophies.

Just one year later, the world turned upside down and during a five hundred season in 1950 they said that the young disciple was now the "old" coach and that he had gone over the hill and had lost his touch, that the game was changing and that he would not be able to win with college age kids.

Over the next three years Notre Dame defeated more top ranked teams than in any three year period and produced one of its finest teams ever, undefeated in 1953.

Three years later the naysayers were back in 1956 as the next young coach had a disastrous two win season, once the cupboard his predecessor left him went bare. They said it was over and that Notre Dame would never return to national prominence. Notre Dame had deemphasized and the black robes would not let ND do what was needed to compete.

Even so, during this time the Irish defeated an Oklahoma team declared to be invincible!!!

The young coach was replaced by a much older NFL coach who was even less successful and led the Irish to four years of losing. After four years he was replaced by an interim coach. The interim coach managed just a 2 and 7 season, resulting in a 19 and 30 record over five years!!!

Nevertheless, there were some great victories, including a win over a great Syracuse team after time had expired, changing the basic rules of football.

By this time no sane person was left who believed the Irish could be roused from the dead until his successor, an Armenian Leprechaun, showed up on the cover of Time magazine THE FOLLOWING YEAR!!!

Nine years later after an embarrassing ignominious loss to one of the greatest college teams ever in the Orange Bowl, the critics said that the Armenian had lost his touch, that Notre Dame was no longer competitive, the backs were too slow, the Irish lacked team speed and they weren't nasty enough.

The next year the Irish came back from the Dead and won the national championship against one of the Bear's greatest teams, and followed that season with another bowl win over Alabama, destroying the theology of millions of SEC fans and followers of Southern football.

As the see-saw history of Notre Dame Football continued, the Irish saw some more ups and downs. In between greatness and mediocrity, no one said hegemony was a thing of the past, but no one seemed to think that the Irish would match past glory, even while winning a surprising national championship despite a painfully slow start in their first three games, with a Hall of Famer (pro) sitting on the bench.

As the interregnum continued, the Irish turned to a charismatic man of great character who seemed to prove the critics right again as he led them to a depressing 30 and 26 record over five years.

In the middle of the five year horror, the Irish found another short moment of immortality by defeating a number one ranked Pittsburgh team, led by a quarterback named Dan Marino.

Once again during these five years of darkness we heard the same things. They said: The Irish don't get the talent, they don't develop the talent, the game has passed their coaches by, the school's emphasis on excellence in the classroom does not and cannot carry over into the class room and they are too slow and so on and so on ad nauseum.

Three years late a new savior led the Irish to an undefeated season and the glory of a national championship. Over an eight year period the Irish were in the hunt for it all six times!!! Truth is, they actually had one stolen by a referee in the Orange Bowl and another by a life time achievement award for a slick talking good ole Southern Boy!!!

Whether this new savior was driven away or whether he simply drove away, we may never know for sure. But at this juncture, Notre Dame lost its savior again and then sought another, hoping to break the curse of never having had two great coaches back to back.

The fifties early sixties pattern then returned as two consecutive coaches failed miserably.

Even in this dark hour, there were great upsets that will live as burnished memories anchoring the Faithful and giving them hope for the Future---------Southern Cal, Michigan, and Florida State!!

But the failures outnumbered the few moments of glory and as these failures mounted, the skeptics became even more vociferous. Their shrill mantra was heard and still is heard far and wide.

Sadly, this time even members of the Notre Dame family have been seduced by the siren song of failure. Three coaches were hired (one for just five days) without careful analysis of coaching and personal ability. The heresy of conference membership was discussed and actually voted on!!

The skeptics were and are heard far and wide: No speed. No talent. No competitiveness. No big city. Nothing to do. No good weather. No good facilities. No social life. No breaks for the players----------why they have to go to class and get decent grades!!!!! Poor boys!!!!!

No wonder Notre Dame has never been a factor on the national scene: why no one could expect the best players to go there!!!!

As the Irish sought a way out of the Valley of Death, the writers reached new depths of hate and spewed forth venom, as they hypocritically wrote about what they in their pomposity think Notre Dame ought to do rather than learning about what is actually going on and then writing about it.

They wrote that Notre Dame had so sullied itself that not one coach worth his salt would want the job. One coach after another took his name off the table. Of course, hardly any of these writers ever asked if their names, one by one, had ever been on Notre Dame's table!!

They also wrote that the Notre Dame job was no longer the big job it had once been in the college ranks. None of them seemed to realize that their repetitious compulsion to write about how horrible the Irish have become and how low the coaching jobs there had sunk was compelling evidence that their claims were empty.

But then something magical seemed to happen. An unknown, unknown except to football experts, stepped out of the shadow of anonymity into the floodlights of the national stage.

What will happen?? Will history repeat itself? After all, the pattern is overwhelmingly compelling, is it not??

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