Irish need to figure out their own identity

Yeah, show him the money. But don't cry for rich Charlie. Cry for (or laugh at) Notre Dame. Notre Dame is getting just what it deserves. It's ironic that money is one of the concerns that school officials must take into consideration before changing football coaches. More than any other school, this one touts its financial emphasis on football as part of the overall mission of the university. That is, all that football money (TV, bowls, stadium expansion, special BCS status), is shared with the school's general scholarship fund, etc. And so when Notre Dame gave Charlie Weis a six-year contract when it hired him in 2005, and then inexplicably turned it into a 10-year contract when he won a few games that first season, it was making its own bed ... and is sleeping in it. Now, it's going to have to break its side of the contract for the second time in a row, and this time it's going to cost a reported $18 million buyout. Following Saturday's loss to Connecticut, which followed a loss to Pittsburgh, which followed a second consecutive loss to Navy, ad nauseam ... Charlie accepted a question in his postgame press conference, and said his thoughts were with his 33 disappointed seniors. "I'll worry about me tomorrow." Fine. He certainly doesn't need us to worry about him. We do need to worry about the poor decision-makers at Notre Dame who are going to have to make a good decision about football for a change. In all honesty, the biggest problem is this university doesn't have any idea what to do with its football program. They want to pretend they are the best and the brightest, but they just aren't. And they haven't been for a long time. Should they recruit like Stanford? Or should they recruit like Alabama? Should they carry a high level of integrity? Or should they keep signing deals and changing their minds? If they are going to have the highest expectations for their football program, the powers that be need to offer consistency and stability, rather than the biggest contracts. Problem is, they don't have that kind of credibility anymore. They can't say to a coach, "come here and do it the right way to get it done over time," because the Irish are not just like everybody else now, they're worse, because they keep pretending they're better than everybody else. This is a hard job to do, and it's an even harder job to hire for. And when you think about it, Notre Dame really hasn't done it right since 51-year-old Ara Parseghian walked away from the relentless pressure in 1974 after 11 years and two national championships. 1975-1981: After Dan Devine was hired away from the Green Bay Packers, he was never quite embraced in South Bend, but he won a national championship in his third season. The next three years were "just" 25-9-1 (including three losses to USC) and all the "Dump Devine" pressure prompted him to move to Arizona. 1982-1986: To replace him, ND turned to a high school coach. Honest. Gerry Faust. At least they gave him the five years they signed him up for, and then let him go. 1987-1997: Then they brought in a guy who had gotten Minnesota and Arkansas in NCAA trouble, and led folks in the ND athletic department to be embarrassed that the university would make such a desperate hire ... Lou Holtz. That worked out well for them, as long as they were able to recruit the same guys that USC and Ohio State and Florida State could recruit, leading to the 1988 national championship. But soon after, ND's academic standards were adjusted to not bend as low as in Holtz's earlier years, and the Irish slumped ... and so they got tired of Holtz, whose program had too many seemingly light brushes with the NCAA. 1997-2001: When Holtz wore out his welcome after 11 years, he was unceremoniously shoved aside for defensive coordinator Bob Davie. And of course, Davie didn't last — first losing an age-discrimination suit for the school by firing longtime line coach Joe Moore — and then winning only a little more often than Faust did. 2002: They gave Davie his five years and wound up with egg on their face when they hired George O'Leary without even vetting his padded résumé. They had to dump him to make up for their own hasty mistake of not doing their own due diligence. 2002-2004: That led us to the saga of Tyrone Willingham, which we don't need to recap completely other than to say that they boldly hired their first African-American football coach ... only to make him the first coach they'd ever fired before reaching the length of his original contract. Willingham and his players did the university proud, according even to those who fired him, but he committed the sin of not winning any more often than Davie did. Willingham's firing seemed to be hastened by the apparent automatic appointment of former ND aide Urban Meyer, who would come a-running from his BCS-busting stint at Utah. Oops. By then, the Notre Dame job had fallen well off of the perch on which Golden Domers placed it. Then Jon Gruden said no thanks, Oregon's Mike Bellotti was not interested, and none of the other guys who made any sense came close to taking the job. 2005-2009: That left them with the guy who turned Tom Brady into a good player. Or something like that. A guy who had never been a head coach at any level, which means he was the third ND coach hired of the previous five who had never been a college head coach. It was a great match for a few games, and painful ever since. My guess is that it'll just be more of the same at Notre Dame. Considering the circumstances, maybe they'll pay even more for their next coach, and then fire him even sooner. What they need to do is hire a guy and give him a reasonable contract, and then live up to their end of the contract. Just like they should have with Willingham. And then not give the guy a ridiculous extension that puts undue economic pressure on the school. Just like they should have with Weis. What they really need is to come to grips with who and what they are, and who and what they want to be ... and react accordingly.