The Hiring of a Coach, and the Unfathomable Stupidity of Notre Dame Fans

It's not often I'm embarrassed to be a fan of Notre Dame Football due to the program itself. When the Irish went 3-9 in 2007, I was embarrassed by the performance of the team, and I was embarrassed by the record, but I wasn't embarassed to be considered an Irish football fan. When the Irish lost to Syracuse this season, despite Syracuse's coach already being fired, and the Orange being a miserable squad, I was embarrassed by the result, but not to be a fan of the Irish. No. Few things the Irish as a football team do on or off the field ever embarrasses me to be a fan of Notre Dame. But it seems like I'm embarassed on a pretty consistent basis to be a Notre Dame Football fan because of the associations it draws with legions of really stupid people, and today, with the hiring of new Offensive Line Coach Frank Verducci, I find myself embarrassed yet again.

See, the hiring of Frank Verducci is big news, and with big news comes big opinions from every corner of the Notre Dame Fan Universe, and by and large, those opinions are poorly informed, stupid, and, most embarrassingly of all, loud. The official press release about the hiring hadn't even been released by the university before people were popping up on the internet to let us know that they were underwhelmed. After all, they're so well informed that they know that the Browns, Verducci's previous employer, sucked in 2008, so this must be a poor hire. It's the sort of analytical and critical thinking that caused Ray Kroc to forbid special requests at McDonalds for decades, for fear that it would harm a franchise's quality and efficiency because his employees just couldn't handle such radical ideas.

The worst offenders, predictably, began to hem and haw over the "lack of a wow factor," as though that matters one bit in a guy's ability to be a position coach. I suppose these mental giants wanted to get a "sure thing" type hire, like a re-animated Joe Moore, so that they could sleep at night without worrying over the Notre Dame running game for 2009. These are, of course, the same people who check the obituaries every day to reassure themselves that they aren't dead (minus a morbid sense of humor, of course).

It's fine to have an opinion on the hire, but it's not fine to be unwilling to admit that we, the entire population of the planet Earth, have absolutely no idea how this hire will turn out in terms of on-field performance of the Notre Dame offensive line. As Biscuit pointed out in his post about the hiring, there are some positives and negative in Coach Verducci's past. See? You can actually look at this issue (and many other issues, too!) with some balance. Though even Biscuit's negatives seem more like guesses. It's tough to actually know the man's negatives without doing a full career analysis, and even then, it would require real knowledge of every circumstance with direct influence on his production as a coach. For instance, that seemingly obvious negative that he was a coach with the Browns organization in 2008 certainly ignores the fact that the Browns were down to their 3rd and 4th string QBs for much of the season - talents that would make a defensive backfield fear passing-game competence about as much as my own. What I do know is that Verducci was on the Iowa staff for 10 years, and his boss back then never really struck me as the sort of guy to keep someone on staff "just for friendsies" or because he knew the kid's dad. I also know that if the ND offense stinks in 2009 like it did so often in 2008, then we'll probably get a new OL coach right along with a new Head Coach, so even if the new OL coach really was a re-animated Joe Moore, I wouldn't feel any more or less optimistic about 2009 or beyond than I do today.

Though, admittedly, that would be a sight to see.

I just don't get the semi-primates who voice their opinions so strongly in the negative without even a modicum of respect for the power of their poorly written words. This is an absolutely vital time in the recruiting cycle, and I'm sure these words of disdain do little to help the efforts of the ND coaching staff. They may not result in someone deciding that ND isn't for them, but they sure as hell don't help. And before you try to retort that belief by insisting that "recruits aren't stupid," let me remind you that they're 17 and 18 year old kids. Of course they're stupid. No offense to them. I was a total idiot right up through my twenties. Now, I'm proud to say, I'm only partially idiotic. So please, if you've got nothing nice to say, and you've really not thought it through, how about keeping your thoughts to yourself and off a medium that reaches every corner of the globe and is easily accessed, indexed, and searched by anyone who's even heard the term "world wide web."

So welcome, Coach Verducci. I hope you have great success at ND. I hope the rumors are true and that I'll see you really laying into the OL the moment they look anything less than sharp on the football field. And I hope that in 2010 we'll be worrying about whether or not you'll get hired away to some offensive coordinator position at a school on our near-future schedule. You've got a big challenge and a huge opportunity ahead of you. Good luck.