A Chat with John Walters…

The Wizard of Odds passed along their podcast interview of NBC Sports' John Walters. Subject: His alma mater, Notre Dame, it's national presence, and it's football team.

(Warning, these files are very large).

1st half of interview is here.

2nd half here.

It's a pretty interesting interview so far. The first half isn't filled with anything too revolutionary, but Walters is an ND alum who also happens to cover Notre Dame Football for NBC sports, so it's interesting to hear how he answers questions about a school I presume he loves that also serves as his journalistic subject matter. I haven't finished listening to it because the files are huge and I've been busy working.

A few thoughts so far:

• John's made to defend ND's "national presence" and "special treatment" right away. He does pretty well. What he fails to bring up, with respect to the BCS situation, is that we're just playing within rules that the other BCS conferences agreed to. If they don't like it, they should have fought for more favorable rules.
• At about the 14:30 mark, suddenly the interview is cut off, and restarts, but on a new topic: The 2007 schedule. Weird.
• Makes a case that the offensive line was the weakest link in 2006, no the defensive secondary. I'd have to agree as far as the players are concerned. The DBs were made a liability by the coaches.
• Makes the point that pretty much every single position on offense is open to competition aside from John Carlson.
• The interviewer keeps harping on "what have you done lately?" It's a fair question, but then he asks, "can ND actually be considered the best college football program of all time?" That's a bit myopic, I think. John does a nice job of pointing out that all programs have "lulls."
• One of the hosts keeps bringing up "the fairness doctrine." Is this a doctrine that the BCS has adopted and didn't mention to me?

I'll update with more thoughts as I get to listen to the second half.

2nd Half Thoughts:

• One of the hosts is clearly annoyed that the ND is an independent, especially given their participation in the Big East. I do agree that the Big East is gonna fall apart eventually.
• The host is a Xavier grad. And I think it's hysterical that he's as big a homer of the Big East as any SEC fan I've ever met. It's pretty weird.
• John Walters hates "couples showers." John Walters is a good man.
• The other host seems to be really bothered by Charlie's gastric bypass legal issues. Why? If you feel like someone did you wrong, you're not going to try and get some justice? This reminds me of the guys that say an NFL player shouldn't argue over 1-2 million dollars in a contract because, "they're already rich."
• Now the main host is repeating the oft-repeated story about "some national recruit," whose coaches didn't like Charlie Weis. Yawn.
• They also want to know if Charlie will be on the hot seat if the 2007 ND Football Team has a "Ty Willingham" year. Walters comes back with the appropriate response: Look at who Ty lost to, and look at who Ty did/didn't recruit, and how much Ty was golfing.
• Continuing with the "Ty was cheated" theme, John does a nice job defending the ND position: Ty and Co. never seemed to have any idea what they were doing or any sort of plan.
• It's interesting to hear these guys ask John about ND's new "barnstorming" efforts. It doesn't sound like they realize it's part of ND's legacy (reservations about this new version aside).
• Talking about Charlie Weis' "prickly personality." Amazing how this seems to be killing us in recruiting, eh? Where are we stuck? 19 verbals before the season starts? Bummer.

That's about it.  Overall, a good listen for a slow workday afternoon.