Notre Dame Football?

Question: Do you think Notre Dame would have been better off keeping Ty Willingham as coach?

Answer: Oh, good heavens, no... Tyrone Willingham was a TERRIBLE recruiter. The reason Notre Dame is presently so lacking in talented upperclassmen is a direct result of Willingham's poor effort at landing top recruits three years ago. His first recruiting class (in 2003) was decent enough. It was ranked #12 by Rivals and included Quinn, Abiamiri, Carlson and Zbikowski. Of course, most of these players were initially contacted by Bob Davie and were already in the loop. When Notre Dame started out 8-0 in Willingham's first year, securing commitments from these guys was a cakewalk. But then in 2004, Willingham made no effort whatsoever to bring in young talent. The only Parade All-American high school prospect he landed was Darius Walker. This class was ranked #32 by Rivals, which was the lowest ranking EVER by a Notre Dame freshman class. The administration actually had a sit-down chat with TW following that fiasco, explaining that he had to do a better job of recruiting or our future was going to be in doubt. Did he listen? Hell, no. The 2005 class ended up ranked even lower (#40 on Rivals), had zero All-Americans, and worst of all had no top prospects for offensive or defensive line. Want to know why ND's offensive line sucks so bad this year? THIS is the reason why! So anyway, all that, plus the fact that TW ended his career at ND on a 12-15 run (which is the WORST stretch by any coach since Joe Kuharich in the early 1960s) led directly to his ouster. Of course, idiots everywhere played the race card, not paying any attention to the facts of how much damage was being done to the program. Never mind the fact that today Notre Dame is currently the only 1A football program to have an offensive AND defensive coordinator who are both African-American. Now, with Charlie Weis on the recruiting trail, we landed EIGHT Parade All-Americans in 2006, we got the #1 recruited QB in 2007, and this year we're on pace to have the top recruiting class in the entire nation. And in the meantime, we've been to two BCS bowls in a row, mostly on the strengths of that 2003 class... which, unfortunately now is gone, except for the returning 5th-year guys. So now we're trying to piece together a team with ZERO true seniors starting on offense. The offensive line is a mess, and while I admit that there are some coaching issues there (I think John Latina, the OL coach, should be shown the door immediately), there just isn't enough talent and experience to run the kind of offense that CW wants to run. Next year will be better. And by 2009, this team will be so frickin' talented, with a hard-working, intelligent coach, that no one in their right might would ever be pining for the Willingham years again.

Related Questions

Related Items