That being said, I’m also with you on where things stand right now. I can easily see us losing the next two, although I certainly hope we don’t. I see Weiss probably getting the heave-ho no matter what, but the one thing that might save him would be to win the next two weeks AND convincingly beat Stanford (I’m not sure close, last-minute victories will do the trick at this point, though they might).

Its almost impossible for me to imagine that happening. But although his overly aggressive play-calling in odd situations has annoyed me to no end in the past, I think at this point Charlie might as well throw caution to the wind and come out swinging the next two weeks (or at a minimum, against Stanford). If he’s going to go down, he might as well go down fighting, and if it pays off he might save his job yet.

Michael, I get where you’re coming from on this, but at the end of the day, I can’t help feeling he’s done a great job recruiting but can’t seem to put it together on the field, and I don’t think that’s going to change. I think like a lot of fans, I could probably get past our current record if I didn’t have the uneasy feeling that we could have lost 3 – 4 more games if things had gone differently. At the end of the day, this team is too talented to have been playing things this close all year; I have to lay the blame for that on the coaching, not the players, and the buck for that has to stop with Charlie.

Its true we’re much improved from 3 – 9 two years ago, but that just begs the question — how in the hell did we end up 3 – 9 to begin with? The lion’s share of the blame may belong to Willingham, but given that Charlie’s teams seem to consistently equal less than the sum of their parts, in retrospect I’m left thinking things were worse that year than they should have been.

He’s a good guy, but it just hasn’t worked out. If he gets one more year, I won’t be upset, and if he does, nothing would make me happier than if he came back and proved me wrong next year; but at this point, my preference would be that they let him go and we start over.

What happens (in your opinion) if we win out in typical close fashion then get blown out in the bowl game?

All that said I literally puked in my mouth when we lost to Navy and the loss to Michigan was bad play calling and clock management no doubt about it. I still do believe we win tomorrow night. Beating a top 15 team on their turf will do wonders for our street cred and put us into a nice position to run the table. I believe we will win out, go 9-3, play in a good bowl game, win more recruiting battles and stare into the face of a run for a national championship next year.

Maybe I am drinking the Kool-Aid but I really believe in Charlie and what he has been building. Remember what a shambles our program was in when he arrived and where we are today. The arrow is still pointing up Irish fans.

- perhaps you were away, but this team lost to Navy.

I’m physically upset by this losing. I hope the players/coaches are only focused on beating Pittsburgh.

Go Irish, beat Panthers.

P.S. I hate Dave Wannstache with the fire of 1,000 suns. I don’t even like the Bears or Dolphins, I just think he’s like Matt Millen. Every time I see him I think “Someone is still paying this guy.”