Mission Impossible?  Returning Notre Dame to Prominence
by Andrew Krumme
9/17/07

Perhaps the only thing more wrong for Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis than his botched gastric bypass surgery several years ago is his Irish’s record so far this year. That’s right, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are 0-3…and I am loving every minute of it.
I hate the Irish. I hate their name, I hate their colors, I hate their “Play Like a Champion Today” motto, I hate Lou Holtz; his old catcher’s mitt of a face and his inability to put an understandable and coherent sentence together on national television. I hate their fans, especially the 90% who never went there but still root for them just because they have been on television every Saturday since Cain killed Abel. I hate how they have coasted through the last fifteen years in relative mediocrity (And please do not tell me that any of their teams other than MAYBE the 2005 Fiesta Bowl losing squad deserved the bowl bid they got) but based on their history, TV contract, refusal to join a major football conference because they think their better than everybody and the general mystique that still surrounds a piss poor program, they still get treated like one of the best.


However, while basking in the enjoyment of seeing Jimmy Clausen look absolutely horrendous in Saturday’s loss to Michigan…I could not help but wonder why. Why is this team so bad? Why can they no longer compete with the big boys? Why aren’t the top players in the land lining up to play in South Bend? Why, when I look at the rest of their schedule do I see only two winnable games (Duke and Navy)? Why has this storied football program not won a bowl game since 1994? 

My first thought was “Who cares…they are losing and I cannot get enough of it”. I then came to realize something about college football. The landscape has drastically changed.

To paraphrase legendary announcer Keith Jackson from an interview with Jim Rome several weeks ago, when Jackson was asked about Michigan’s shocking loss to Appalachian State he explained that nowadays, the difference between a program like Michigan and Appalachian State is maybe 10 quality players. Going to a high profile place like a Michigan, Florida or Notre Dame is no longer the deciding issue for high school football players. They want to go to a place where they have the best chance to play right away and with the amount of college football coverage out there today, just about any player, no matter what school you go to, is going to get recognized. The vast amount of football talent no longer solely resides among the power schools.

Toss in the issue of academics in South Bend. Notre Dame still maintains higher requirements for its student athletes. Who knows how many high profile prep players have been turned away from the possibility to play at Notre Dame because of its standards. The fact remains; this football program cannot expect to compete year in and year out with these standards. It was clear as day on Saturday; Michigan dominated Notre Dame at virtually every position. The Irish have not been able to recruit the athletes to physically compete with the top tier teams in the land, much less any team from the Mountain West or MAC. Bringing in one of the top prep quarterbacks every few years is not going to guarantee a berth into the BCS if ND does not have the gifted athletes to surround him.

So where does this leave the Irish? It is tough to say, with Weis now in the midst of his third year at the helm in South Bend, things are not looking quite as bright as many had hoped after his first two years as head coach. Some hope may be drawn from a similar school; Boston College. BC is another catholic based institution with tough academic standards for its student-athletes but has maintained arguably a more successful, consistent football program in recent years than Notre Dame. Through the first couple weeks in college football they have played like the team to beat in the ACC and could be a model for Notre Dame Football. Regardless, Weis and company are now seemingly faced with the challenge to reinvent Notre Dame Football in hopes to vault themselves back into contention as one of the top programs in the land.