It’s not that the helmets are some hallowed thing, not to be tinkered with. It’s not that experiments with what is “classic” wont help things from becoming “stale.” It’s that ideas are worthless. It’s that all that matters, in every facet of life in this day and age, when everyone has ideas, and nearly everyone can broadcast those ideas to the world, and everyone else can criticize the ideas as they see fit, is execution.
It doesn’t matter that someone decided to try to develop a novelty helmet for whatever reason. It wouldn’t matter if the novelty helmets featured gold silhouettes of Mary on a drab black shell, or a Comic Sans scribble of “Irish.” None of that would matter so long as the execution was excellent.
Those involved with the operations of the “Notre Dame Brand” on game day or not, on campus or off, are more than free to tinker – to seek to improve. By no means is how everything “was done” even close to “perfect” except in the minds of those who remember those things fondly, and particularly in the minds of those who remember something better than the last 15 years. But execution matters, no matter the opinion.
Execution isn’t obvious when it’s done well. On the field, great execution almost always gets credited to 1 or 2 players and probably the coach who made the call. Never mind the 9 or 10 other guys who had to do things just so on the field to execute things well. Forget the other coaches who had each of those players prepared. They might be brought up in passing, in an aggregation of kudos in some post-victory glow. In life, execution done well can be so transparent that an entire society can come to expect the same drink, purchased at any of thousands of outlets, to taste the same as it did the day they first came to love it.
Execution is obvious when it’s failed. Execution is clear when a student manager tweets a bad photo of a novelty helmet design before the official ND media pathways have a chance to deploy “the message.” Execution is blatant when nobody is exactly clear if the guy claiming to be the leprechaun on Twitter really is or ever was the leprechaun for Notre Dame, and whether or not he is a voice to be heard while he proclaims a “green out.” Execution is foolish when a giant green shamrock causes a spouse to ask why the helmets look “cartooney.” Execution is a terror when a design of anything involving a brand causes a massive portion of the fanbase to quip, “Hey! My Trapperkeeper from when I was 9!” Execution keeps bugging you with animated paper clips when you just want to format a table, or when you’re trying to complete a purchase for a gift for a friend and can’t navigate the 10 step process. Execution is everything – while it all falls apart – when it fails.
Notre Dame can get this right. Notre Dame should get this right. Notre Dame got it right recently – the new, regular helmets are a marvel. And they should get it right again for the same reasons we may no longer expect ND to win a national championship every year, but should absolutely refuse to accept that ND has any business doing anything but competing for national championships: Resources. No program truly has ND’s resources. But monetary resources are one thing. Resources of people are another. Microsoft had all the money in the world. Apple had Steve Jobs. They both constantly tinkered with successes. Only one of them kept making things everyone wanted. If Notre Dame lacks people resources who possess and can deploy an innate sense about people to tinker and execute the right way, then Notre Dame should use some of that other resource to go get them. If Notre Dame has those people, and they are being muted, then the people doing the muting need to shut up, sit down, and let the professionals take over. The time for treating the brand like some part-time hobby is over.
Notre Dame doesn’t have to get everything right, despite what the fans say. But Notre Dame needs to stop treating the general public like a pre-alpha test-bed, and the brand like a play-thing. Notre Dame needs to start looking like they know what they’re doing, even when they fail in execution.
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TheNDleprechaun
I was the Leprechaun from 2009-2010, as stated on my twitter profile @TheNDleprechaun… glad I could execute for ya by making that “absolutely clear.” GO IRISH!
The Biscuit
This should, literally, be my full time job. Somebody tell Jack to hire me. Believe it or not folks, this is something I am uniquely qualified for.
Justine
yes.
Brad
You know, I didn’t mind the helmet used earlier this year at UM. It was kinda fun, and interesting to see, and came out of a basis of an old, bygone model of helmet we used to use. But these don’t look nearly as good as the UM helmets.
I don’t have a big problem with doing something fun for a nightgame, and I don’t think ND needs to only wear blue at home and white on the road….we can throw some green in and have some fun with it. But these really don’t look so good.
Brad
I should also note that I “get” the kinda pressures that bring something like this to bear. Nike and UnderArmor have gotten a lot of attention for their new outifts (to be fair, a lot of it has been negative), and I would assume that Adidas, whose two big teams are ND and Michigan, has just been begging those teams to try new stuff out too. For Adidas, that means putting new things out in the market place, selling more specialty jerseys, free advertising, etc.
And I guess I am ok with at least the concept of the “Shamrock Series”, with the Irish wearing green on their barnstorming ‘neutral’ site games as just another way to get some more attention and what not.
But as said in this post, its the execution. The helmets for Michigan looked pretty great, and I heard a ton of comments of a positive nature from longtime fans, as well as people who weren’t fans. But these just look off.
Brad
….and stuff like this hurts.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Like-it-or-not-Notre-Dame-keeps-pushing-shamroc?urn=ncaaf-wp9418
The article starts out with a pic of the new helmet, and simply says:
“Why, Notre Dame, why?”
Matt Q. (DMQ)
Note which pic they used, too. Not the very nice photo taken by someone who knows what they’re doing, but the one taken by the equipment manager to post to twitter.
Pat
“Ideas are worthless.”
And down the rabbit hole we go!
Come on, Matt, take a few steps back from the edge.
Matt Q. (DMQ)
Ideas are absolutely worthless without execution. Unless you’re a patent troll.
OderName
You stole a saying I use all the time — “Great idea, terrible execution”.
I was really hoping they would bust out the green version of the UTL jerseys we wore against Michigan, with the new gold helmets with the shamrock on them.
I love the idea of doing something different with the uniforms during the one “home” game we play each year on field turf (probably) and under a jumbotron or two. And keep the games in Rock’s House more traditional (though I would have no problem with well-executed field turf there).
But I totally agree DMQ, these are only great ideas if they are executed well. And these helmets are not a result good execution. They look like a rush-job because the shamrock stickers wouldn’t stick to the gold paint on the new helmets. And the same’ole green jerseys we’ve used since 2005, just misses an opportunity.
Part of me is still hoping that they can ditch these helmets, and there are some green UTL jerseys just laying around in the equipment room. Use the same pants and shoes from the Michigan game. Please!
DJ
The jerseys may be slightly different — the text of the press release indicates that one of the helmets was sent to Adidas so that they could attempt to match the color of the jersey numbers to the helmet; we’ll see how that plays out. One would hope that they are trying to match the helmets with the pants for future seasons.
itstripp
I really can’t think of a better analogy than that of Microsoft and Apple. The problem is that the most vocal section of the fanbase would prefer to crucify an ND-Jobs than let him be innovative.
Josh
So, in the last week the longest post here is about helmets?
The Biscuit
Josh, not that length is a yardstick of any kind, but you do know that the posts below are longer than they appear – just click ‘continue reading’. Also, quit being critical for no reason. Thanks pal.
Picked_Off
I really only care about the product on the field. Wins and losses. The rest of this stuff is all irrelevant. There could be a big shamrock in the middle of the field or paint the end zones and I wouldn’t care as long as they win. Put a giant jumbotrons all around the stadium. I don’t care – just win. Just my opinion though….
Nate
We’ll still look 1000x better than Maryland.
Pat
BK said today that he doesn’t really give a damn what any of us think about the uniforms because the players liked them and he expected recruits to like them. “The kids like it,” he said. And I think he’s sick and tired of fighting over the small stuff.