Pat Forde, Your Credibilty is Deader than Bo Schembechler

I tried telling myself, at the start of the season, that if and when things got a little dicey for Notre Dame, and the vultures started lining up to feast on the resulting carcasses like so many past office-mates with the promise of birthday cake, I would not take umbrage. I would not react. But then Notre Dame went 0-2 and Washington, coached by Tyrone Willingham, went 2-0.

That last sentence just took me 4 minutes to type. I kept writing, “Notre Dame went 2-0 and Washington, coached by absolutely nobody, went 0-2.” Amazing what muscle memory will do.

Anyway, Pat “Gonzo” Forde of ESPN has taken a shot, and, well, I’m reacting. But why do I react? Is it because I want him to know the truth and the flaws in his column. No. I actually couldn’t care less about what he thinks. I write up what is to follow because the ND fanbase is so large, and so diverse, that, despite our heroic efforts here at HLS to spread truth and wisdom, there may still be some ND fans that don’t know the truth, and are thus unprepared to defend themselves against the inevitable onslaught of so many e-mails including links to Forde’s work with clever subject lines like, “Take That Notre Dame,” sent from coworkers and or “friends” that didn’t actually finish a degree at University of Wherever 65% of My High School Class Attended, but still cheer for them anyway.

With that said, you, as Notre Dame Fans, are to simply read this if you feel the inclination and then keep the knowledge and reasoning in your back pocket, ready to defend yourself when need be. As with Judo, the truth is a powerful thing, and using it simply to smite your friends for fun and profit is, well, fun and profitable, but also irresponsible. So do not, under any circumstances, read the source material of Forde’s column (from espn.com). Also do not e-mail him, trying to win some battle of the minds. You can’t win a battle in which he will not play. Simply read below, absorb, contribute any points of fact/knowledge/wisdom you possess that I miss in the comments, and then go about your day a little more prepared for the future.

Let’s begin. Bold is mine (Except in the case of his cute little name highlighting).

Domers, Your Credibility Is On The Clock

When Notre Dame (2) trap-doored Tyrone Willingham (3) after just three years on the job in 2004, it established a precedent for the next coach: You’ve got three years, pal. Have it up and running at full speed or else.

Actually, the message was, “Show us any semblance of competence, leadership, and work ethic, or else.” It wasn’t that Ty’s teams were bad. Ty’s teams were bad, and there was no evidence that Ty was trying to do anything to improve that. And to say ND “trap-doored” Ty is to say that his firing couldn’t have been seen coming. But just about anyone that can read could see it coming. (Maybe that’s why you’re having difficulty here, Pat. Who’s your ghost writer?)

To quote NDNation poster “Hickster” via The Rock Report…

TW signed only 33 players in the ‘04 & ’05 classes…of which only 22 are still left on the team. If you combine the 5th year players from the ’03 classes there are only 30 players over 3 years that are not sophomores or freshman…the 3 oldest classes make up only 35% of the allotted 85 scholarships…typically the critical classes for current year football team’s success.

When your team is simply being outclassed on a talent-basis by schools like USC and LSU (not to mention Michigan (sucks!)), there’s only one way to fix it. Loh and behold, Charlie Weis seems to have that figured out!

Coach Weis has recruited 43 recruits over 2 years (a 30% increase in recruits) and 42 that are still on the team (should be reduced due to transfers) …close to 60% of the recruited players are sophomores or freshman. For the 2008 class he has 19 recruits that have verbaled, and we should end up with anywhere form 21-23 recruits (hopefully, we do not have defections like last year). There were 7 recruits that either publicly or privately verballed to Coach Weis last year, that backed out. Therefore, Coach Weis will most likely recruit 65 players over a 3 year period.

Simply put, Notre Dame fans demand work ethic. With Charlie, we got a coach who has one. With Ty, we got work ethic on his golf game.

Or at least that should have been the established precedent, if Notre Dame was interested in treating its next coach the same way it treated the first African-American coach in the school’s history.

Hey Pat, do me a favor, since you brought the subject up: How many D1 programs have had African-American Head Coaches in their school’s history? Oh, and one more thing, Ty wasn’t “the first African-American coach in the school’s history.” He was the first African-American head football coach in ND history.

Oh, and while we’re at it, how many D-1 programs employ an African-American Offensive Coordinator and Defensive Coordinator, Pat? African-American Head Coaches come from Coordinator Positions, Pat. Unless of course the HC is named Ty Willingham. Here, I’ll start you off with a D-1 Program: Notre Dame.

But Charlie Weis (4) probably can go 2-10 in this, his third year, and still be back in 2008. Why? The simple answer is fairness — the majority of coaches should get a fourth season, no matter how the third one turned out. But since fairness didn’t factor in with Willingham (6-5 in year three, 21-15 overall), The Dash will offer another reason. Weis (0-2 in year three, 19-8 overall) was awarded a 10-year, $30 million-plus contract during his first season — something that would make a firing very costly.

You’ve made an assumption that there’s no buy-out clause in the contract, Pat. You’re basing your entire point on an assumption.

He got the contract largely on the strength of a close loss to a great USC team and some interest from the NFL — although Weis said at his introductory news conference in December 2004, “I don’t come here to leave and take a job in the NFL in three years. This is not a stepping stone. This is an end-all for our family. When we come to Notre Dame, we come here with the intent of retiring here.” So either Notre Dame hysterically overbid to keep an unproven coach who had no intention of going anywhere, or else Weis’ loyalty pledge turned weak enough that the school felt compelled to overpay to keep him.

Actually, the contract was the result of Charlie, having an appreciation for recruiting that almost rivals Willingham’s appreciation for golf, wanting to be able to combat rumors of his impending leap to the pros that were making their way to the ears of top recruits nationally. If there’s one thing every other school in the country can agree upon, it’s doing their darndest to make sure they don’t need to compete with ND and Weis in the recruiting game. The rumors were rampant and getting worse every day. Something had to be done, or his recruiting results may have looked positively Willingham-esque.

Either way, Charlie and the Irish would appear joined at the hip — even while the Notre Dame of Weis’ third season is starting to bear strong resemblance to the Notre Dame of Ty Willingham’s intolerable third season. Actually, it’s worse. Far worse. That doesn’t mean it can’t turn around, but the current product is dreadful. Dating back to last season, the Irish have lost four consecutive games by at least 20 points. Last time Notre Dame lost four straight by 20 or more? How does never sound? But then again, they’ve only been playing football in South Bend since 1887. (One of the big knocks on Willingham, by the way, was too many blowout losses.)

Yes. One of the many big knocks was too many blowout losses. There was also his lack of recruiting (something Charlie does better than just about every other coach in the country), the abundance of golfing (which he tried to hide from University Administrators by refusing to sign the university golf course’s guest log), the refusal to ditch inadequate assistant coaches (total assistants fired by Ty at ND: 0, total assistants fired by Charlie at ND: 2), the inability to teach an offensive system to players in 3 years (Charlie did it in one off-season and then went about breaking just about every Notre Dame offensive record in the books over the course of 2 years while winning a program-record 19 games in his first 2 years).

It could turn out that the teams that ripped the Irish this year, Georgia Tech (5) and Penn State (6), are the best teams in the ACC and Big Ten, respectively. But that would only continue Weis’ trend of beating the bad teams and losing to the good ones. He’s 4-6 against ranked opponents (including four straight lopsided losses) and 15-2 against the unranked. Average end-of-season Sagarin rating for the 19 teams Weis has beaten: 62nd. Average end-of-season Sagarin rating for the 21 teams Willingham beat from 2002-04: 55th.

That’s hysterical. Pat tries to bring up average Sagarin ratings without any consideration of sampling size. Hmm. Charlie’s sample size of wins, which he accumulated in just 2 years, is 19! Ty only has 2 more wins, but an entire 3rd season of games played. Pat, call me when Weis only wins 2 games this year. C’mon man. We looked bad in the last 2 games against excellent defenses. Guess what, aside from Southern Cal, just about every other defense we’ll face this year can’t even compare to Penn State and Georgia Tech.

The one thing Weis was supposed to deliver was a state-of-the-art offense capable of carving up any defense. He did that — when Willingham’s players were there. The 2007 Irish have not scored an offensive touchdown, even though Weis told his players his first season they would have a “decided schematic advantage” in every game. Some advantage: They’ve scored 13 points on the season — fewest through the first two games of the year since 1942. They’re last in the nation in rushing offense and total offense.

Yeah. Go watch some replays, Penose. Anyone that’s taken any time to do so has seen that Weis has, schematically, put his players in a position to beat the opponent. The young guys are just taking some time to learn the system and adapt to the speed of the college game.

The easy fall guy for Domers protective of Weis is the same fall guy they pounded in 2003 and ‘04: Willingham. They’ll tell you his lackluster recruiting left the cupboard bare, setting the stage for this difficult season. They like to talk about the rankings of recruiting classes. The Dash likes to talk about productivity. For instance: Of the 856 points Notre Dame has scored with Weis as head coach, 19 of them have been scored by players who originally committed to and signed with him. That includes the defensive touchdown, the extra point and two field goals that constitute this season’s scoring. A Weis recruit has scored exactly one offensive touchdown in 27 games: George West (7) on an 11-yard run last season against Purdue, one of three times West touched the ball from scrimmage in 2006.

Mind numbing. Pat’s making Carl Lewis-like leaps of logic here. Let’s talk about productivity for a moment. Ty Willingham’s offenses produced 22.3, 20.3, and 24.1 points per game in his 3 years. So in his first 2 years, Ty average 21.3 points per game. Charlie has averaged 33.85 points per game in his first 2 years. Almost 2 touchdowns better per game. And Ty wasn’t hamstrung with an empty talent pool from Bob Davie like Charlie was from Ty. If Charlie’s offense were to produce 0, ZERO, points for the entirety of the 2007 season, his scoring average would be 22. That would be just .23 points worse than Ty’s 3 year scoring average.

It’s true that Weis coached many of Willingham’s players better than Willingham ever did. It’s also true that Weis owes Willingham a large debt for at least getting the likes of Brady Quinn, Jeff Samardzija and Darius Walker on campus.

Actually, Charlie owes the Ndukwe family for Quinn. Ty had less to do with Quinn’s recruitment than I did. (And if you don’t know that story, there’s no helping you. You aren’t paying enough attention to ND football to consider yourself a fan.) Samardzija was a lightly recruited kid who lived just down the road from ND. He was Ty’s dream recruit – The Notre Dame Brand recruited Jeff. And Darius, as much as we love him here at HLS, wasn’t even being recruited by Georgia, despite being from Georgia. Safe to say the ND Brand had more to do with his recruiting than Ty ever did as well.

Meanwhile, Washington (8) is 2-0 in its third season under Willingham, having won by 30 points on the road to open the season and then ending the nation’s longest winning streak in a two-touchdown upset of Boise State (9). Willingham is in a place that suits him better than Notre Dame ever did. He might never have won truly big in South Bend, and might never have been truly happy. But the criticism of Willingham was as excessive as the praise (and compensation) accorded Weis. That’s the double standard Notre Dame has set in place, and the double standard it must live with.

The double standard has been entirely manufactured by right-lobe deficients like yourself, Pat. Your inability to look at the larger picture because you’re a slave to your editors who just want crap columns like yours to rile up enough readers to sell advertising space has possibly made you entirely blind to the truth here. Or, worse, you don’t actually believe what you’ve written, but, again, you’re a slave to the all-mighty ad revenue, and thus turned out a piece that was easy to write, without much thought or research, because it enabled you to make that early-afternoon tee-time. Say hi to Ty if you see him. Talk about a credibility check.

UPDATE: Yeah, what Bonger said.