A lot of publications like to compare Weis and Wanny aka The Stache because of their NFL pedigrees, their simultaneous start in CFB, and the fact that they played their first games against one another.

That’s about where the similarities end, at least in the world of the MM! It’s obvious who you want coaching you if you’re going by MM stats, and it’s not the guy nicknamed after nose hair.

(Why brown for Pitt’s line? That’s ‘Stache style folks. And ND already has blue locked in the MM.)

The Stache hasn’t ever really gotten things going at Pitt. In year 2 he looked to have things going in the right direction, and then things tanked. So he’s had a few short runs of wins, but more than that he’s had a few serious runs with multiple consecutive losses. It looks like Wanny’s squads either 1) hit tough schedule stretches or 2) get into funks that they just can’t get out of. It’s a little bit of both, but more the latter with his teams. You could probably call Pitt “MSU Lite” in honor of the El Smith years at MSU – they get hit with one unexpected loss, and they fall apart.

Here’s to hoping that last week’s loss to Rutgers signals, at the least, another Pitt L this week. Keep that streak going Stache!

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We moved recently into a much more family-oriented neighborhood than we’ve inhabited in the past. Since there are just a ton of young families in the area, there are also a ton of fully decorated homes for Halloween. Some of the homes are so well decorated, my Lou Holtz jack-o-lantern has pumpkin envy.

The Roundup:

• It’s not that #23 South Florida is now 1-3 in the Big East. It’s that South Florida was 1-2 in the freaking Big East and still #23. What. The. Hell? And if you watched the game last night, you know that it wasn’t even as close as the final score would indicate.
• A freaking TE taking 2nd string QB snaps. Wow. Wait. That’s vaguely familiar.
• Here’s a wild idea: The SEC is o-ver-ra-ted! Clap clap clap-clap-clap!
• I suppose there are some downfalls to playing in paradise.
• I think what this is saying is that Notre Dame could lose at the last second to anybody in the ACC
• And hey! Look at that! ND could lose to anybody in the ACC in a bowl game! (My prediction, just so we’re clear: ND will slaughter any ACC team they play in a bowl game)
• So weird. I keep reading pieces like this one, and never seem to read the name “Barwis” anymore.
• You know what’s funny about that, Pete, is that 47.6% conversion rate is much lower than it was before they played the Irish!
• Not only was there a question, but it was one that Ron Zook couldn’t answer.
• How sweet would it be to see “Puppy” go absolutely whacko on Pitt this weekend?
• Note to Husky fans: Careful what you wish for.
• “It’s not his actual home,” Leach said as fans surged in. “[Sherlock Holmes] wasn’t real, you know.”

And the Beer of the Week is Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale because A) it’s great and B) it was actually first produced for All Soul’s Day – November 1st 2nd. Oh, and you can buy it all over the place in 64oz growlers. Awesome.

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For a while, I’ve been planning to write a long diatribe about how conferences, particularly within the BCS system, have sucked the soul out of college football. I’ll probably still do it, with nifty spreadsheets, an allusion to 80s Glam Rock that nobody saw coming, and verbosity not seen since another fish was described in Kon-Tiki, but that’ll have to wait for the off-season. For now, just read this bit from a chat with Paul Zeise of the Pitt Post-Gazette:

SDWC: Paul, your opinion on whether Stull plays against ND?

Paul Zeise: They’ve been very tight-lipped about this all week. He is practicing, but I will say this — my gut is I’d be surprised if he plays. I know they want to play him, but I would hope that two things (1) the kids health and (2) the fact that this is a non-conference game prevail in the minds of the coaches. If there is any question at all about his health — it makes no sense to play him this week. yes, you’d like to beat notre dame and all that — but you have four conference games coming up after Notre Dame and if you win them, you get to a BCS game. So this game is pretty meaningless to be honest. We’ll see though, but again, my gut so far is that they are going to error on the side of caution if push comes to shove.

This coming from a guy who covers a team that acted like beating ND in South Bend a few years ago was like curing cancer. But I see his point, and I can actually imagine Wanny and the Panthers having the exact same attitude about this game, “Dude! It’s ND, but we’ve got to stay healthy and ready for Louisville, Cincinnati, West Virginia, and Connecticut!”

Think about that: Pitt can get to a BCS game (which, frankly, is meaningless unless it’s also the National Championship game) by losing to a 5-2 Irish squad and running that “gauntlet.” Unreal. It must absolutely suck to cheer for a conference-affiliated team. Half your games simply don’t matter in most seasons unless you’re worried about being in the running for a national championship. All that is wonderful about every week of the college football season for a Notre Dame fan is effectively cut in half for other fans. It’s like the self-pep-talk Michigan (sucks!) fans and players put on every time they lose to the Irish, “Our goal now is to win the Big Ten.” Wow! Your goal went from being the best team in the country to the best team out of 11 that can’t seem to figure out how to even hold a championship game! Yay for you! Do you hand out participation certificates at the end of every season too?

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The new, vastly amazing, complex-beyond-belief-in-its-simplicity, big and yet small, intellectual yet a hard worker, black and yet white and you’re green with envy….MomentumMeter!!!!!!!!!!

Tah Dahhhhhh…

cricket cricket.

Whatever!  You see Ty at ND there in the green, Charlie in the Blue, and Ty at UW in the purple.  It’s fantabumagoricaliscious!

Okay, so it’s not that exciting nor is it that fancy.  But the debut of the MomentumMeter tells the Story of Ty, in the context of the Story of C-Dub so well that I had to put it out there.  In the week that was the end of Ty, I figured it’s appropriate.   The chart isn’t all that fancy – you get a point for a win, you lose one for a loss.  (I know this doesn’t take into account quality of competition, or how ‘bad’ the loss was, so please don’t point these things out – that’s obvious.)  So this is net W’s, but it’s the trend and the momentum that I think is the interesting part.  Regardless of how you won or who you won/lost against, the story of this game is W’s baby, and this NEW AND AMAZING new tool shows us how consistently a coach can put things together.  And boy, do we see a nasty trend for Ty.  For Charlie, it’s clear the jury is still out, but it’s a heck of a lot better than Ty.

Here’s another view that pairs of Ty to C-Dub on a year-to-year basis, starting from their 1st years at ND.

The MomentumMeter rules!  Too bad I suck at converting powerpoint charts into pictures.  If anyone has recos on that – hit me up.

Anyway, the final chapter on Ty is that he’s not a good coach.  And the final chapter on why Charlie got more time than Ty is shown, AMAZINGLY AND BRILLIANTLY CLEARLY, in the MM(TM-don’t mess with my stuff) charts above.   Charlie built up a TON of goodwill in his first 2 seasons, taking his net wins to a level ~double of what Ty ever attained, at ND or UW.  DOUBLE.   That, plus his recruiting prowess, is what got Charlie more time at ND.  Had nothing to do with his being white, no matter how many times hacks like Zemek show up to make race part of the conversation (but an ND student that represents ALL OF ND sent me that exact quote wah wah wah!).  

Ty sucked.  Charlie doesn’t.  Charlie remains, Ty does not.

End of story.

It’s obvious that Charlie has had a rollercoaster at ND, but even after a total disaster of a season, we saw that Charlie’s Net never really got below Ty’s PEAK once he got above it.  Sure, he dipped down below it for a few games toward the end of last year, but it was a quick visit and a quick exit. 

Love the MM?  Hate it? 

If it’s love, I’m planning to run these numbers for a series of coaches – past ND coaches, RichRod (sucks!), recently bagged coaches, Phil Fulmer, and others.  If it’s hate?  Suck it, I’ll do it anyway.

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Last week, y’all guessed that Ty Willingham would mismanage his way to 2 Delay of Game penalties against the Irish. And you were wrong! I guess Ty is a better coach than you gave him credit for, eh?

This week, Notre Dame faces the best running back on the 2008 Schedule: LeSean McCoy. A man so talented, he can make Dave Wannstedt appear non-stupid on occasion (if and only if Dave remembers to just give LeSean the damn ball). A talent so great he gets 4, count ‘em, FOUR capital letters on his roster listing. A football player so awesome that he could well send this Irish defense, ranked in the top (ha!) 90 of rushing defense this week, plummeting to the 100s by Sunday.

So with that in mind, we ask…

How many yards will Pitt RB LeSean McCoy gain against the Irish?

• Between 100 and 150 yards in a Pitt Loss (69%, 145 Votes)
• Fewer than 100 yards in a Pitt Loss (13%, 28 Votes)
• More than 150 yards in a Pitt Loss (10%, 21 Votes)
• More than 150 yards in a Pitt Win (5%, 10 Votes)
• Between 100 and 150 yards in a Pitt Win (3%, 6 Votes)
• Fewer than 100 yards in a Pitt Win (0%, 0 Votes)

 Loading …

Remember to wrap up, damn you. WRAP UP!

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I wont link his latest work. Instead, I’ll link a post containing his work. But here’s the relevant quotation:

Notre Dame fans essentially said, after Willingham left their campus, that if having an African-American head coach means having to swallow a few losing seasons now and then, it’s not worth hiring another African-American coach at any point in the future, near or distant.

That, friends, appears to be a charge of racism. I’m no lawyer (though some of the Loyal Sons happen to be lawyers). What say you, fans of Notre Dame (particularly all you lawyers)? Can we sue?

Matt Zemek is an idiot we’ve ripped a number of times for writing dumb things poorly, but this time I think he’s crossed the line from dumb to defamatory.

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Seen here: Willingham with microphone
in down-position moments before
he moved it to up-position. Again.

Before this weekend, I’d watched at least the majority of 3 other Washington games. Not sure why. I wasn’t really looking to “scout” this team. I suppose I was relishing what could happen when Oklahoma took them on. I just sort of stumbled on a replay of their Stanford game. I watched last week’s game with OSU to get some sense of them and figure out what sort of stats I might want to investigate for the week’s “looking back” piece. And after those 3 viewings, I really thought I had an idea of how good or bad the Huskies are, but I suppose as a fan of a particular team in college football, you don’t really understand the aptitude of another team, or the lack thereof, until you see that team up against the one you know the best. We just saw the Irish bludgeon Washington, to the tune of 33-7, when ND played one of their rustier looking games. In other words: Oh my God. I had no idea they were that bad.

Yes, this was a 0-6 team. Yes, it was clear that Ty will be fired sometime between right this minute and not soon enough. But surely Washington can make the game look competitive for a half if the Irish weren’t sharp, right? Surely things will get interesting if the Irish lose the turnover battle or continue to stub their toes in the red-zone, no?

Well, actually, no.

Leading up to this game, I kept finding myself, be it in conversation or writing, insisting that those who do not follow Irish football had no idea just how bad Ty Willingham was as a coach, and thus could never understand the reality of his termination as HC of Notre Dame Football. But in truth, I also didn’t fully understand, because I had no idea it could get this bad. I didn’t really, truly understand just how bad “a 4th year of Ty” could be until last night. There were moments of ineptitude by UW’s players and staff so blatant and grandiose in their display of stupidity that an uninformed observer might think the Huskies were a caricature. Times when about-to-be-blocked Huskies had a look of “oh God, don’t hit me,” and about-to-be-fired coaches called absolutely bizarre plays like 5 yard TE drags on 4th and 18. There was the realization that the vaunted “massiveness” of the Husky line also came with a little-discussed body fat percentage hovering around 40. Moments when Husky defenders stopped giving chase because, from the looks of it, they were winded. There were 12 men on the field for the first Husky offensive play of the 2nd half and a failure to properly align in a max-protect punt situation (the mind boggles). And perhaps the saddest moment of all: A hammered-to-the-point-of-delerium Ron Fouch, QB of Washington, celebrating like he just scored a game winning TD after throwing up a prayer of a pass that barely, and I mean barely, missed the outreached defender’s hands – those of walk-on special-teams hero Mike Anello. Surely at some point, Knute Rockne must have said something about moral victories being for losers and the direct correlation between the celebration of such victories and the level of pathetic sadness involved.

Not really all that long ago, when HDTVs were still sort of a novel thing, particularly the flat-screen HDTVs, Best Buy hadn’t yet developed a chain-wide HDTV video demonstration. Instead, each store usually just showed off the TVs by showing off the area’s best HDTV channel. On one particular day back then, I walked into a Best Buy in Chicago. At the time, the best HD broadcast in Chicago was the local PBS station, and so about 100 large-screen, HDTVs were showing a documentary on northern oceanic wildlife. It was really quite a beautiful site. That area of the world, while rugged, came across remarkably well in high definition. The packs of seals, thousands of them across the shore, were just a sight to see. The baby seals, in particular, were quite entertaining.

And then the men with the clubs showed up.

And that’s when the screaming from the small children, and some grown adults, in the store began. The men on the 100 high definition televisions had shown up to poach the seals. And the preferred method of such poaching, apparently, and all kidding aside, was to club them to death. It was dramatic. It was gruesome. It was one of the saddest sights I’d ever seen.

Despite my abundant joy at the demise of Ty Willingham last night, I still got the same pit-in-my stomach feeling from that game as I got from that documentary. The Washington Huskies, in the 4th year of the Ty Willingham era, are dramatically awe-ful (sic). They are stunningly pathetic. And the poor kids in that program, who I am sure are by-and-large good people, deserve a coaching staff with at least 100 times the aptitude as the one they have. Perhaps they could interview Bob Davie.

Tricks and Treats:

• I’m not too worried about Clausen: That was a pretty mediocre performance by the Notre Dame passing game last night. I read and heard a lot about how Jimmy looked rusty, and at first I was thinking the same thing, but really I think Jimmy looked sort of greedy and the receivers looked rusty. Right around the time the 3rd offensive play by the Irish resulted in a 51 yard touchdown pass, I think Jimmy stopped respecting the Washington defense. He probably saw the same thing we all saw. Sure, Sam Young made a nice block to help spring Floyd on that play, but he made a nice block on a guy who clearly looked more concerned about not getting hurt by the blocker than about avoiding the block and making a play. I think right about then, Clausen decided to go into play-lot mode and see if he could just launch balls within the vicinity of his obviously superior receivers to get up by 28 points in the first quarter. As we saw with Clausen in the UNC game, he looked quite confident – maybe a little too confident. And instead of being up 30 at the half, as the Irish probably should have been, ND was up only 17 (and yet the game was pretty clearly over even then). I think the stat line will give Weis a lot of coaching material for Clausen this week, and I expect to see the more disciplined Clausen we’ve seen quite a bit already show up against Pitt.
• If the Irish want to stop stubbing their toes, they should stop kicking themselves: I don’t have data to back this up, but it’s certainly starting to feel like a relatively sound way of defending the Irish is to let them drive down the field into the red-zone and then implode. Part of that is the same greed you see Clausen display as discussed above. As soon as the Irish are 20-30 yards out from the end zone, you can see him trying to figure out which of his receivers wont get defensive consideration from the safety. Part of that is also some odd play-calling. That second end-around to Tate that resulted in a loss of ten yards was about as ugly as Tate’s TD end-around was pretty. And part of it seems to be a loss of concentration. How many times has a penalty stalled an Irish drive between 20 and 30 yards out?
• Woo hoo Jonas Gray!: No doubt every Irish fan perked up a bit when the 2nd string offense took the field and running back Jonas Gray showed that he’s got a ton of potential – aside from catching kickoffs. The kid can flat out play, and he runs in that style that makes defenders not want to tackle him. It’s very exciting, but what’s more exciting is what I’d guess he’d doing for the rest of the Irish rushing attack. It sure seems like Armando Allen and James Aldridge are “running with abandon” a lot more ever since Jonas started to get a lot of “good press” during Weis’ press conferences.
• And I thought the baby seals had it bad: Consider this: It’s almost certain that the Irish scout team regularly produced more on offense, imitating Washington, than the Huskies themselves put up on Saturday. Between the 459 yards the Irish gained and the 124 they allowed – and I use the term “allowed” in the strictest sense ever used within the context of a football game – the Huskies were left with a net yardage deficit of 335 yards. As we pointed out earlier in the week, the Huskies had actually dramatically improved their net yardage deficit with Fouch as the QB over Locker up to this week. This week, at the hands of the Irish, the Huskies suffered their worst net yardage deficit of the season by a full 80 yards. (Oklahoma beat them by 255 yards.) Sure, the Huskies have been out-scored by more this season, but they’ve not been beaten in the way the Irish beat them, and beat them, and beat them…
• It’s over: This marks the end of the Ty Willingham hate. We can’t imagine how we’d ever find the Irish facing Willingham again. Sure, his recruiting laziness might still come back and bite us again (anyone hear how Olsen is doing today?), but we’re done hating him. He’s now been moved under the mock-and-laugh category of public figures. He’s made more money than we ever will doing far less than we ever will, but hating him just for that would require hating a lot of people, and we don’t have time for it. This… this feels good.

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I’ll be in and out all day. May not even be around tonight. I have a tough call between watching ND annihilate Ty at home on HDTV, or sitting in the best beer bar in Chicago for a bachelor party and a brisket sandwich the size of a football helmet. Still trying to figure out if they have TVs. I don’t think they do, but if they do, I’ll be out.

Anyway, enjoy your Saturday. Drop by, say hello, let us know what you’re drinking and what you’re seeing out there in the footballscape.

If you’re looking for a more “hosted” experience, Subway Domer is doing a live-blog today.

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Before the 2008 season began, if I told you that the Washington Huskies would effectively lose Jake Locker, a man with so much talent that he could win a football game for Ty Willingham, for 3/4ths of the season, would you ever believe that the Huskies would be better off for it? Me neither, but the stats, at least, are telling us that’s exactly what has happened.

Here are the relevant stats:

Locker’s season ended during the Oklahoma game. And while the rushing stats for the team dropped slightly in total yardage, the passing stats jumped by 15% with Fouch at QB. In total, the Washington offensive production average is about 30 yards per game better with Fouch than it was with Locker.

Now here’s the really strange part: In the 3 games with Locker, the Washington defense was giving up an average of 520 yards per game. Since Locker was knocked out, Washington is giving up an average of 445. In sum, Locker’s games saw Washington facing an average 215 yard deficit in each game, but the games without Locker have resulted in an average deficit of just 100 yards. By no means has this been enough to win a game for Washington, but it’s certainly a statistical improvement.

And I emphasize “statistical” in that last line because there’s one important caveat I’m not chasing too much: It’s arguable that the first 3 games featured much stiffer competition in Oregon, Oklahoma, and BYU than the last 3 games in Stanford, Arizona, and OSU. But I find the improvement in passing yards interesting. The numbers are by no means “impressive,” but the “improvement” comes against teams with an average pass yards defense rank of 46th, including Arizona at 6 and OSU at 24th. Notre Dame ranks in at 87th and is easily one of the lowest ranked pass yard defenses UW will have faced this season. It’s also interesting that the Huskies, ranked 11th in the nation in 3rd down conversion percentage, actually improved their conversion rate with Fouch on the field, from 50% to 54%. How do you perform so well in 3rd downs and still suck? Ranking almost dead last in turnover margin can do that to ya.

Notre Dame will, ultimately, win this game tomorrow, and probably in convincing fashion. But the Irish wont necessarily be benefitting from the fact that Jake Locker is sitting on the sidelines.

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You may have noticed, during this week, we’ve thrown out a lot of hate towards Ty Willingham’s way. Some people, particularly non-ND fans who stumble upon this site, may not really get why we vilify Willingham while we simply mock Davie and maybe poke a little fun at Faust. Here’s why.

Willingham would be a speck in most ND fans’ rear view mirrors had he not allowed the Saunders accusation of racism stand during his interview before our game in 2005. He didn’t have the gumption to confirm the accusation if he believed it, and he didn’t have the integrity to put an end to it if he didn’t believe it cost him his job at Notre Dame. We ND fans might make fun of him once in a while, and we surely would have lamented his poor recruiting; but most of us would treat him like a garden variety former coach had he shown a little class and integrity when he had the chance. 11-12 in his last 23 games isn’t why most of us hold a grudge. The grudge stems from the baseless accusation about the core of our collective character that he allowed to stand.

When you read, sometime soon, about how honorably Willingham handles his ouster from Washington, remember this, and remember he’s a fraud.

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Yep.

The Roundup:

• Well, if you had told me an under-achieving Auburn would be playing an inept-looking West Virginia, this isn’t the result I’d have expected. I guess the trick is, Auburn couldn’t keep doing what they were doing or keep WVU from doing what they were doing.
• Sometimes, when a fella retires, you worry he was leaving before he accomplished all he could accomplish. That’s not the case with Joe Tiller.
• Chances are, you are someone who reads Notre Dame football blogs. And chances are, you’ve seen this, but just in case you’re the person who hasn’t seen it, see it.
• Army/Navy will get to be the feature game of the weekend for years to come.
• I’m sure people will argue “history,” but would any coach really see Syracuse as a step up from UConn?
• Maybe Weis picked the wrong year to go visit Frank Beamer for advice on coaching special teams.
• I’m not sure if this is a commentary on Ty Willingham or the game of golf.
• This can’t be good for the Trojans’ karmic health.
• Calling for MSU to “probably still lose to Michigan” (sucks!). Ouch.
• The Auburn Chamber of Commerce should use this. After Auburn fires Tuberville first, of course. Otherwise it might just be awkward.

Real life impedes. We’ll get to a BOTW post later.

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The following is a list of Ty Willingham quotations that we found needed only slight alterations to sound as though they’re from a discussion over a break-up. And we didn’t have to edit some of these…

“What I always try to do is take Tyrone Willingham out of things. It’s not about me.”

“First thing is, as you know baby, this is a very difficult afternoon for me, just a very difficult afternoon.. To say I am disappointed, I think that very much misses the mark, but at the same time, I understand that I didn’t meet your expectations or standards, and when I don’t meet your expectations, it’s time to go.
Today I am no longer your man, and it doesn’t mean that life is over — life will go forward.
My goals have always been to inspire you to be the best you could be. I believe that I have been true to that in my time with you and appreciative of the opportunity and appreciative of what we have done and I am disappointed with what I didn’t do more than anything else.”

“When I think about how I work 8:00 in the morning until 11:30 at night for a stretch that probably runs from August to February, I think it’s not just commitment on my part.”

“No, I’ve never had a bad day. I’ve had bad moments, and sometimes those bad moments will run into another day that you’ll have hurt, pain, et cetera, but it’s still a day. There are so many blessings that Tyrone Willingham has that it’s amazing.”

“Let them see what we can do and what we have done successfully and then give you cures for what we have done incorrectly.”

“I’m not discouraged, but disappointed. … As a matter of fact, there is still a lot of light at the end of the tunnel. We just have to find a way to get to it.”

“I’ve done this before, … But it’s meaningful because there will be many others that will make something of it.”

“Everything gets more difficult. It adds another dimension to our lives.”

“…I didn’t think we lived up to our end of it.”

“How difficult has the year been for me? It would take me too long to tell you.”

“The first thing is, it’s exciting that people care. You never minimize that point in life. But hopefully there and here, I’ve done the right things.”

“We just haven’t made the things happen that we need to have happen. At the wrong times, we’ve made mistakes. We’ve had some wonderful efforts along the way, but effort is not what it’s about. It’s about finishing the task. That’s what we’ve got to do.”

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Yeah.

HT: irishgreg6

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My boy Ruffer is going where I almost went.  To walk-on-land as a kicker.  Luckily for Ruffer, Charlie isn’t a moron with blinders on (coughcoughDaviecough) and our kickers are so bad they NEED to find a different answer.  But I’m happy for the kid.  Not jealous.  Not. At. All.

It’s great to see that Charlie is willing to look anywhere for a solution here, and sometimes that means inter-hall WRs that used to golf.  I actually think the golf thing is what will give Ruffer a shot here.  The point in the article is a good one, and very similar to the one I made a few weeks ago about muscle memory and repetition in kicking.  (I also made the point that Malibu Most Wanted rules, and Bad Kermit can suck it.)  Golf is the same way.   Get the swing down, repeat.  Over and over and over.  The club changes, you don’t (of course, with a few exceptions).  Anyway, I think his golf experience should serve him well in the mechanics, and even the mental aspect.

Where things get different?  Well, 2 big things.  The first is pads.  There is a world of difference between this…

(and no, have no clue who this kid is, it’s just to make a point)

And this…

People underestimate what pads do to you compared to kicking in a t-shirt and shorts.  They get in the way, they feel weird, all of a sudden that helmet is clunking around on your head.  This will be the first adjustment that The Ruffian (I’ve trademarked that, sniznatches) needs to make.  If he can get past that, then he needs to figure out how to deal with this:

See, some people talk about the crowds and the noise.  But that’s not all that big of a deal.  You see the ball get snapped, you start your motion.  The noise almost goes away.  But somehow being okay with, comfortable with, the idea that a 320 pound dude a few yards away wants to KILL you?  And you’re sub-6 feet and sub 190 and an ex-golfer/soccer player that just walked on last week?  Well, now, that’s a more difficult adjustment.

IF The Ruffian can handle these two shifts and still kick well (assuming he’s kicking well given that they brought him onto the squad), he may have a chance to succeed.

Here’s to you Ruffian.  Give ‘em hell. (and 3 points please!)

(yes, this is The Ruffian’s new symbol.  bite me.)

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This week’s Gathering is brought to you by Bad Trade.

Let’s jump right in:

1. You’re having some beers and brats outside Notre Dame Stadium, just chilling with friends. If you could have one Notre Dame player or coach drop by to share a drink, a brat and some stories with you, who would it be? I’d have to go with Knute. It would be awesome. We could all stand around and listen intently to his stories of how things once were at Notre Dame and witness him marvel at modern miracles like the ubiquity of helicopters overhead, portable high definition home theaters televising every game that’s already being played that day, homogenized milk, and the cut of modern-day womens’ shorts. Can you imagine? And we could tell him all about how ND’s got a head coach that embraces the forward pass that Knute revolutionized so much that it makes “old” alums long for the “good old days of smash-mouth ND football.”
2. What was your best experience ever with a tailgate party? Every Loyal Son, even those who don’t post much these days, was always welcomed as family to a particular tailgate. I wont name names, but they know who they are and we know who they are and we all know that it was the greatest tailgate ever. On any given game day, you might get sloppy joes, Capri Suns, chocolate chip cookies, and an explanation of how best to use a mitre saw. The conversations we all had there were things we’ll remember forever.
3. There are lots of great tailgate experiences around the country – what school’s tailgate tradition do you most want to experience? I’d really like to attend The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party someday, even though both Georgia and Florida’s administrations have tried to suck the fun out of it. It’s an intense rivalry, and I’ve heard plenty of great stories of incredible tailgate spreads, unbelievable crowds, amazing people-watching, etc…
4. Indiana decides that their drinking laws are far too un-draconian (I’m from Wisconsin. I don’t understand these things like “kids aren’t allowed in bars,” “your parents can’t give you liquor if they are supervising” and “no alcohol purchases on Sunday”), and drinking is now forbidden on Saturdays. The Excise Police stop by your tailgate, and proceed to dump out the liquor you were attempting to hide from them. What do they pour out? Bottles and bottles of beer. Really good beer. I don’t get to host a tailgate party much any more, but the next time I do, my goal is to essentially buy a sampling of every domestic micro-brew my local beer store sells and serve it at that party. Naturally, I’d attempt to have every HLS Beer of the Week available. I never understood liquor at tailgates, but my aim at tailgates has never been to get wasted. My aim was to “soak it all in.” What better way to do that than with great beer and good food with excellent company?
5. OK, I couldn’t leave it alone completely. How do you feel about the impending end of the Coach Willingham era at Washington? It’s like the denouement of an epic story where the good guy (ND) triumphs, and we don’t quite yet know what exactly will happen with the rest of his life, but we know things are really looking up while we get a much clearer picture of what ultimately happens to the bad guy. It’s as if we’re seeing the bad guy get pushed into a police cruiser, and we know he’s eventually going to be cellmates with a guy the other inmates jokingly call “Tiny.” Granted, it’s not as satisfying as, say, seeing the bad guy fall off an incredibly high cliff with a 2 ton boulder following him on his way down, but it’s still pretty good.*

Thanks for the questions, Sarah.

You can catch other answers to the same questions at:
Charlie’s Nasties
OC Domer
Brawling Hibernian
Subway Domer

I’ll link more responses as I run across them.

*Yeah. We know. Ty’s going to “retire” with more money than we’ll probably ever see in our lifetime and spend the rest of his days trying to improve his short-game so he can make the senior tour. Don’t kill our buzz.

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