Notre Dame Losing Its Luster

By: Chicago Sports Review

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Touchdown Jesus, we know, does not preach compassion. The Notre Dame football program, outside of NBC, garners a similarly fading respect. Tyrone Willingham is a victim of both.

Tuesday, the football program dumped a widely respected coach, perhaps gracefully making him one of the two most sought after coaches in America. If the other is Urban Meyer of undefeated Utah, the Flighty Irish will now surely throw NBC’s money at him, and entrust him with re-resurrecting a now clearly mediocre program.

Athletic Director Kevin White somberly addressed the media and underscored the hypocritical nature of college football more succinctly than any critic could have hoped.

“We simply have not made the progress on the field that we need to make,” White told reporters.

“From Sunday through Friday our football program has exceeded all expectations, in every way, but on Saturday, we’ve struggled. We’ve been up and down and sideways a little bit.”

This is college football. Integrity? Grades? Class? Umm…no.

Saturday. This is the KNH program. (Keep NBC Happy)

First of all, White points out what we all know. College football is a profession. It employs athletes to perform on Saturday’s, so universities can make money. This we know. Notre Dame employees - coaches paid in millions, student-athletes worth those millions instead paid in scholarships, and administrators, also paid well - are all familiar with the system.

The Irish, who’ve attempted the lofty goal of actually graduating a fair number of their “employees” and have done well, are finding a dissatisfaction trying to maintain a balance.

There’s a shocker. This just in: The memo line on the check from NBC does not say “good grades”.

So Cervantes is right, to achieve the impossible, one must attempt the absurd. The absurd for The Golden Domers had always been the public willingness to sell-out. In this case, the Irish may just have to admit it. Winning is everything. Let the golden helmets and the religious fixtures try to maintain a sense of class and academia.

The fact is, this is a program that does not recruit like it once did, is no longer even a mention for the title scene, and is thankfully absent from any decent conference. The Big East is now perhaps the only so-called “power” or BCS conference in which it could plausibly compete.

This Irish are more confused than a country relying on exit polls, more lost than the Democratic party.

They are searching for a soul, grasping for relevance as it floats away with the ghosts of tradition. The wails of those old phantoms keep growing fainter even as the national TV broadcasts continue to buy into such a paranormal existence.

“As a player, you think it’s our fault. We didn’t get the job done,” senior tight end Jared Clark told the press. “I think coach Willingham was a great coach and I enjoyed playing under him.”

A new team will next year.

Certainly Washington and Stanford will both be placing calls. Others will as well. Tyrone Willingham is not a great African-American head coach. He is a great coach, period.

The game needs more of both. Notre Dame clearly craves only wins, lined pockets, and any semblance of the respect it used to have. This does not make them distinct from any other program. Unfortunately, the Irish keep trying to convince us that they are, in fact, different. Don’t listen.

They were respected for having Willingham at their helm.

Now they don’t even have that.

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