Thursday, Dec 2, 2004
Wow Stupidity abound this week at Notre Dame this week. I mean seriously Ty Willingham is a very good football coach who was doing as good as could have been expected when he was hired. They finished ahead of their preseason expectations this year and won some tough games against Michigan, and Tennessee most notably. Yeah he did loose some tough ones too as Notre Dame is playing an inane schedule anymore.
One thing that's definitely hurting their program, and generally I applaud them for this, but they need to consider it if they expect to go 10-1 every year is they don't lower their academic expectations for football players. Every other big time school does and it's hard to recruit trying to be Harvard during the week and Oklahoma on Saturdays. It's actually a policy i prefer as I think Universities should be about education first and last and football just as a diversion but it's a factor you need to take into account when judging head coaches success and failures.
The one thing I can't dismiss, and I'd like to be able to dismiss is the nagging question of would Ty still have a job if he were a white coach. I mean Notre Dame has never fired someone after less than 5 years even if by all categories they'd done worse than Willingham. Bob Davie got 5 years despite the fact that he inherited a much healtier program and made less progress bringing than Willingham had at making serious changes to the nature of the system. They were progressing well from Davie's option attack to Ty's West cost style offense. Willinham was the only black head coach at Notre Dame, note i didn't say only black head football coach i said only head coach which is a bit disturbing. I'm actually not making the acusation that they are but I certainly can't dismiss it as a possible factor. It may not have even been the main one but all reasonable expectations should have had them about where they should be by now.
One thing that's definitely hurting their program, and generally I applaud them for this, but they need to consider it if they expect to go 10-1 every year is they don't lower their academic expectations for football players. Every other big time school does and it's hard to recruit trying to be Harvard during the week and Oklahoma on Saturdays. It's actually a policy i prefer as I think Universities should be about education first and last and football just as a diversion but it's a factor you need to take into account when judging head coaches success and failures.
The one thing I can't dismiss, and I'd like to be able to dismiss is the nagging question of would Ty still have a job if he were a white coach. I mean Notre Dame has never fired someone after less than 5 years even if by all categories they'd done worse than Willingham. Bob Davie got 5 years despite the fact that he inherited a much healtier program and made less progress bringing than Willingham had at making serious changes to the nature of the system. They were progressing well from Davie's option attack to Ty's West cost style offense. Willinham was the only black head coach at Notre Dame, note i didn't say only black head football coach i said only head coach which is a bit disturbing. I'm actually not making the acusation that they are but I certainly can't dismiss it as a possible factor. It may not have even been the main one but all reasonable expectations should have had them about where they should be by now.
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