Notre Dame still arguably has a football team. And…..statistically speaking it is the worst football team in Division I at this point in the season. The comeuppance is that we have occasionally been the best in college football (observe numerous national championships), often great, routinely very good, and occasionally lousy but this year the most terrible in our history. The comeuppance is that it gives our many “haters” ample opportunity to gloat and they are milking it for every drop and will continue to for the rest of the season!
Personally, I have made the mistake of discovering college football fan blogs. They are very interesting and addictive. Some of my favorite recent ones are “The 800-Year Contract” (a parody on the questionable decision made by Notre Dame’s administration to extend Charlie’s contract midway in his first season to an unprecedented 10-year. The other one that caught my attention most recently is “Charlie Weis: The Worst Football Coach in the Universe” (according to any identifiable statistical index our football team is 119th out of the 119 teams in Division I). So – you get my drift – as a football team we suck at an unprecedented level.
But the interesting thing is that our Coach, some of our coaching staff, some of our fans still think this is just temporary and will soon be great.
The question I am now being asked constantly (other than “are you okay?”) is “what’s going to happen to Charlie and the Irish football program?” As I see it, there are three possible outcomes:
1. Things continue to go in the wrong direction or maybe even deteriorate and he does the right thing and resigns or the administration does the right thing and asks him to leave.*
2. This program starts to turn around and becomes mediocre or better than mediocre. Perhaps we win six to eight games a year and occasionally get to a BCS Bowl and that’s as good as it gets and he finishes out a couple more years before he gets asked to leave.
3. This is the one I’m secretly hoping for, by the way. Charlie figures out how to coach college kids, motivates them, mentors them (not abuses them), gets a personality transplant and turns things around with his highly acclaimed new recruiting classes. Then we go back to the old model where we win ten plus games per year, go to one of the better Bowls, remain in the top 25 most of the time and in the top ten from time to time and win the odd National Championship here and there.
The next two games and the next twelve months are going to be absolutely critical to decide which of the three happen.
*The asterisk above describes the dilemma in which the Notre Dame administration now finds itself. This situation becomes more than just a matter of losing games or our reputation being tarnished. This is a “business” problem with extraordinary ramifications. Think about:
· An NBC TV contract worth about $10 million a year.
· Contributions (“seat licenses”) mandatory for season ticket purchase – these are being levied in order to pay for the next $50 million stadium renovation.
· Licensing, merchandising and royalty revenues from the bookstore, Internet sales, etc., etc. for the number one brand in college football.
· Loss of contributions from our heavyweight benefactors.
· Loss of multi-million dollar Bowl game revenues.
· The unthinkable – ticket sales themselves. We haven’t had a game that wasn’t a sellout for more than 20 years, but it could happen one of these days (ugghhhh).
The point is that Charlie’s $5 million per year/seven-year remaining contract might start to seem cheap compared to all of the above. If you were the Notre Dame Board of Trustees what would you be doing one of these days? I’m willing to bet that the question is already being bantered about behind closed doors.
So you see, fellow fans, this has gone beyond good clean sports and fun for the alums to a deadly serious business with far-reaching implications.
Stay tuned……………………..
