The Firing Line: Weis Hanging on at ND - Barely

“The Firing Line” at Football Rumor Mill focuses on coaches around the country who are in serious jeopardy. The latest edition centers on Notre Dame Coach Charlie Weis…

After he began his Notre Dame career 19-6 with back-to-back BCS bowl berths, the media dubbed Weis an offensive genius, and the administration signed him to a 10-year contract reportedly worth $3.5 million to $4.2 million annually. The past two seasons of Weis’ tenure have yielded a 9-13 record littered with damning marks. Last season’s team was the first nine-loss squad in the history of a program that boasts 11 national titles and dates to 1887. The Irish have lost seven in a row against ranked teams. And Saturday’s victory was just the fourth in their past 17 games against teams with winning records. Such futility against strong competition is reason enough to jettison Weis at season’s end for many Irish fans. But last week, Swarbrick pointed to the team’s offensive improvement and Weis’ continued recruiting success, giving his coach a vote of confidence. One thing is certain: Weis is a changed man. Two seasons of stress in South Bend have done far more to dull his ego than his near-death experience following botched gastric bypass surgery in 2002. – Washington Times

And the truth is, Weis does deserve to be fired, at least based on the precedent Notre Dame set when it fired Tyrone Willingham in 2004. Willingham had followed up a promising 10-3 season with back-to-back records of 5-7 and 6-6. With that, he was gone. Weis followed up a 10-3 season of his own in 2006 with these back-to-back seasons of 3-9 and now 5-4. But Weis signed a 10-year contract extension in October of 2005 that guaranteed him between $30 and $40 million. And that means to buy Weis out of his contract now, Notre Dame would have to pay him more than $20 million. The Tribune quotes a source with Notre Dame ties saying a buyout “would play no role in whether the school keeps him,” but that can’t possibly be true. The truth is, Weis’s contract is the millstone around Notre Dame’s neck that will force them to bear the burden of keeping this arrogant, unsuccessful coach around. But while that might cause some to conclude that Notre Dame was stupid to give Weis the contract, the reality is that the Notre Dame administration didn’t have much of a choice. In 2005, Weis appeared to have Notre Dame on its way back to the top of the college football world, and the quotes about him in the newspapers weren’t talking about how high school coaches found him arrogant, they were talking about how NFL owners found him irresistible. In addition to getting off to a good start at Notre Dame, Weis had been one of the NFL’s most respected assistants, winning three Super Bowl rings as the New England Patriots’ offensive coordinator. If Notre Dame hadn’t offered him a huge new contract, an NFL owner surely would have — and then the quotes in the newspapers all would have been about how the clueless Notre Dame administration let football’s latest coaching genius get away. Less than a year after signing his first contract as Notre Dame’s head coach, Weis had all the leverage in negotiating his second contract. In hindsight, it’s easy to say Notre Dame should have let Weis walk. But no one said that at the time. – NBC San Diego

I think of that scene every time I hear Charlie Weis must be replaced – pronto.
Each time I try to reply calmly with, “Okay, fine…now how do you bring in?” You either get silence, stammering, or illogical names such as Bill Cowher, Mike Shanahan, Bob Stoops…and I’ve even heard Ron Zook, because he can recruit. Some still fantasize about Jon Gruden, who supposedly was near the Irish threshold in 2001. He’s this decade’s NFL fantasy coach to Irish fans, much like Don Shula was in the 1970s, Dick Vermeil in the 1980s, or Bill Walsh in the 1990s. Others mention a “central casting” figure, the Cincinnati Bearcats’ Brian Kelly. With all due respect, such a hire sounds right now more like a nice single to the opposite field than a grand slam. Then there are always the flavors of the month, including South Florida’s Jim Leavitt last year, or Skip Holtz this past September. Look, my faith in the staff has been shaken as much as anybody’s, but I’ve maintained since the beginning of the season that Weis would still receive a fifth season as a reward for his first two years, which featured two major bowls, and for the last two, which at least earned national plaudits for landing reinforcements amid difficult circumstances… The question is what constitutes “getting it done” in 2009? Not long ago, Weis made it known to everyone that “9-3 Isn’t Good Enough” after his first year. Will it be acceptable in Year 5? Or is the bar subtly lowered because of the maladies from the past 15 years, and where anything looks better than 3-9? – Blue and Gold