Irish Musings
#7
October 23, 2003
Dear Irish Devotee,
What hath God wrought?
Do we blame Him for the two worst Irish performances in history against the Trojan horde?
One of our brand experts, Daryl Travis, President of Brandtrust, was a lucky companion of mine at the Washington State miracle. Daryl tell us that the key to nurturing a brand is keeping the brand promise. Are we doing that?
Of course not!
Consider this: did you think the Irish gave up? I did not, but I did think that the team lost intensity after Southern Cal went up 21 to 14! This was in the first quarter! The South Bend Tribune asked "Have the Irish lost their heart?" And Julius "wonders why the fire went out." What is going on here?
The defense of 2002 has never shown up this year, despite the fact that most of the players are back. The great Vontez Duff is just another player this year, having lost his edge and his intensity and maybe half a step. Or, is number 34 an imposter?
Here is how much all this hurts.
My mind goes back to a cloudy day in 1960 when an only slightly better than average Purdue team with a lefthanded quarterback named Bernie Allen, came into our House and inflicted an ignominious second quarter upon the Irish that will live in infamy. Six touchdowns!! Yes, that is correct! Until last Saturday, no visiting team had come close to scoring the number of points that the hated Spoilermakers inflicted upon us that day. But, now the Trojan horde comes within six points of the highest total ever accumulated against the once proud and competent Irish in the House that Rockne built!!
The awful truth is that I was there for the 51 hideous points inflicted by Purdue, 42 of them in the second quarter alone, and I was there for the 45 hideous points, inflicted by the awful horde from the West just last Saturday. Forty three years and we are back to square one!! Is this possible??
Never in the history of Notre Dame football has any team accumulated 240 yards in three drives in the first quarter----indeed in the first part of the first quarter. ACTUALLY, I CHALLENGE YOU TO FIND ANOTHER COLLEGE GAME WHERE THIS HAS HAPPENED. At this rate the greedy Trojans would have compiled over 1,000 yards for the game!!!
Talk about an empty feeling!!
I gotta tell ya, it was awful being there for this unnecessary sacrifice of the blood of the good and the just.
One of our avid readers, bless her heart, Kathleen Edelmuth, sent an email to me asking plaintively and clearly with pain in her heart, "What will you write about now? Anything?"
Well, let me tell you all out there, I am just now becoming passionately engaged. We have got to reverse the ten year pattern of awful disappointments and mediocrity. We must do something about it----unfortunately there is ample evidence that the new coaching staff is not capable of doing what must be done.
The great Tom Pagna wrote in Irish Today that we are making progress and that this is a rebuilding year, and so on and so on. He seems to think that Ty and his team have what it takes, but...
If you believe as I do that this situation is unacceptable, and reversible, then, you must do something about it. What is that? For the time, maybe nothing, as our French priests have never reacted swiftly, especially when there is a challenge to the established order. The time will come, however, at the end of the season if the team continues on this track for all of us to tell the black robes what the deal is!
The mood on campus is resignation. I must have talked to ten folks who think Ty is over his head to every one who defended him and the staff.
I found one defender at the University Club after the game, an intelligent young man who adamantly maintained that Ty Willingham is the answer. Asking him why he insists that this is the case, he asserts that it is based on faith.
Faith!!!
Well, okay. He asked me if I have met Ty. This is the second time someone has asked me this question. Sure I have. I have also met Bob Davie, Father Cavanaugh, Father Hesburgh, Gerry Faust, Frank O'Malley, Monk, Bill Beauchamp, Digger, Dick Rosenthal, Chuck Lennon, Father Sorin, Ted, Ned, Fr. Stanley Parry, Professor Bernard Norling, Bob Blakely, Dr. Walter Gray, Barry Goldwater and so on!!
What does any of this have to do with anything? Why do people ask me if I have met Ty? Of course he is a great person!! But so is or was Mother Theresa! So is Gerry Faust!
But I would not have suggested that Mother be the coach of our beloved Fighting Irish football team, so why do well meaning people ask me such manifestly stupid questions, as though character is a direct and singular qualification to be an excellent head football coach at the University of Notre Dame du Lac.
What about the feeling on the campus after the game?
DEAD!
I cannot remember such a numbing feeling that we all felt, not since the tie with Michigan in 1992
when none of us knew what to say or do. But this situation is different. Now we have emptiness and despair. We have a lot of people in the stands talking about how the good thing is that they can get away from the stadium fast because so many people have left early.
We have a lot of people leaving the Stadium long before the game is over, which almost never happens at our Stadium.
Lots of people, lots more leave games early almost everywhere, but this is not what we do----although now we too are doing it too!!!!
I wonder how many of the 35,000 Nebraska fans that showed up to shame us
Can we pay for the addition to the Stadium if people don't care anymore?
Hey!
I have been to nearly 75 games at the shrine and have never heard regulars say stuff like this. Actually, there were so many empty seats in the upper section by the fourth quarter, that it was embarrassing to me and even though I stayed until the last play, I wanted to get out of there so badly I could taste it, but I could not bring myself to violate the compact we have with the players, the team and the great tradition to leave early.
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I WANTED TO LEAVE!!!
Actually there is much to say, not all of which can be said here. The frightening thing is that we are so far away from being a competitor for the top twenty five that we are......................
What can we say?
I don't know because the situation is desperate.
It is so bad that neither the friendly Sun Times which usually covers us big time, nor the Tribune, which recently has spent much less time on us, gave us more than two inches on Monday, the usual day for a long essay of commentary.
Keep in mind, that in recent years there has always been lots of stuff about us in the Monday Chicago papers.
Until recently, this could not have happened!
We have become irrelevant on the college football scene.
All of which brings up an entirely new threat, which is Kevin White's promise on Chicago radio that he will have an announcement within two weeks about conference issues. Wow!
What does this mean?
The ACC rejected us because we wanted to play only four games a year and be pseudo- independent within the conference, and they took Boston College instead.
(Note, that this all means that we actually applied to the ACC and WERE REJECTED, YES THIS IS THE INFORMATION I BRING BACK FROM THE CAMPUS)
So, what will his announcement be about? If it is about a conference membership, then the University will have the biggest revolt that they have ever had on their hands. No one (IE, NONE OF US ALUMS) wants a conference membership, and if we go back to the big ten, which is the only way that we can seemingly go, what will happen to the special quality that we have that has made us so unique?
Where are we?
Does anyone know?
We have a lot of challenges trying to figure out how to run our wonderful university, named for and dedicated to Our Lady, without trying to deal with the orders and instructions that a conference will wind up dictating to us. For me, I would rather drop football than have a bunch of heathens like the folks at the big ten or the ACC tell us what to do as an institution.
For the moment, back to the game.
A few comments...
There are profound problems on this team and with this coaching staff that no one wants to address, not anywhere except on the web, which we will plug you into in a moment.
Looking at history, we can say that Ty Willingham is already finished. No coach at ND has ever become great or even near great by fielding such a team in his second year.
We will go into the details in the near future, because our analysis of the situation indicates that Ty is a very brittle person, who does not take feedback and criticism even from his own people and so the thought here is that as this thing goes badly and get worse, he will become dysfunctional.
Ok, yell at me and tell me I am being critical and I am fomenting a revolt against the coaches, as one of our alums out there has already said.
Fine, but go to the games and talk to the fans and take their temperature. In our history, when a coach has lost the confidence of the fans, he is dead! And never without reason, so we have real cause to worry, because my sense of the fans, at the Stadium and at the university club is that they believe that he does not have the stuff to do it.
So, am I supposed to hide my feelings and thoughts and am I supposed to pretend that this wonderful man will work miracles, when there is no evidence that he can and that the evidence points in the opposite direction, which is the direction of the old story of the emperor without clothes.
Now just in case you may wonder, I hope I am wrong and that I have rushed to judgment. We will see, and I have two more home games to see. If I am there for four losses in one season or even three, Ty's team of 2003 will have accomplished a first for me!
Charlie Kenny
Class of 1963
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