You’re a college football coach.
Scratch that.
You’re a football coach.
You could be high school, college or pro.
The head coaching job at the University of Notre Dame opens up.
The Fighting Irish offer it to you.
You take it, right?
Right.
Who’d turn it down?
No coach in his right mind.
It’s the history, stupid.
Knute Rockne. The Gipper. The Four Horsemen. Touchdown Jesus. The most famous fight song in sports. Ara Parseghian. Rudy. All those national championships. All those Heisman Trophy winners.
The biggest fan base in the world.
General Motors. Standard Oil. The New York Yankees.
Sorry, I got carried away.
It’s just that when you think of The Fighting Irish, you think big.
Criminy, they’re part of American history.
I’m not Catholic or a Notre Dame fan, but when I went to South Bend to cover a game between the Irish and Washington several years ago, I could feel the ghosts of the past rise up.
It’s eerie.
I sat in the same pressbox where Grantland Rice wrote his famous ode to the Four Horsemen.
I actually looked to see if he carved his initials in the john.
I still get a lump in my throat when I hear the Notre Dame fight song.
So, probably, do Gerry Faust, Bob Davie and Ty Willingham.
“Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame…”
All coached the Irish. Faust resigned. Davie and Willingham got fired.
Faust jumped from the high school ranks to take the Irish job.
Davie went from an assistant at Notre Dame to the head man.
Willingham became the first African-American to lead the Irish, stepping up from Stanford after George O’Leary resigned five days after being hired.
O’Leary had the perfect name to coach the Irish, but not the perfect resume.
Lou Holtz didn’t have the perfect name, but he had an impressive resume and, apparently, a truthful one, which O’Leary didn’t have.
Holtz was also the last coach to lead the Irish to a national championship, in 1988, which is a big reason the Irish are looking for their third head coach in seven years after Willingham was fired Tuesday.
That and the fact that Davie (35-25) and Willingham (21-15) simply didn’t win enough games.
Willingham couldn’t even get the Irish into a bowl game a year ago. Yes, but he guided them to a 10-3 record the year before after they were 5-6 in Davie’s final year.
Doesn’t that count for something?
No.
It’s what have you done for us lately with Irish fans.
And lately, Willingham has been mediocre. This year the Irish are 6-5 with a bowl game still to be played. That means he was 11-12 in his last two years.
Good guy, but not a great coach.
(Can you imagine the celebrating that would have gone on had the Huskies matched the Irish’s record this season? Keith Gilbertson would still have a job.)
So is there a great coach out there who measures up to the standards that legends like Rockne, Frank Leahy and Paraseghian established so many years ago?
Bobby Bowden. But he’s taken.
Steve Spurrier. Ditto.
Lou Holtz. Been there. Done that.
The name Urban Meyer, who has done a wonderful job at Utah, came up on ESPN Radio, but don’t you establish greatness over a number of years rather than just a few?
Maybe there is no one fit to be the Irish coach if the ghosts of the past are what they’re being compared to.
The ghosts will never go away, though.
And that’s what every coach who takes the Fighting Irish job is up against.
That and the tradition.
And the expectations.
Win 9 or 10 games a year.
Go to a bowl game.
Challenge for a national championship.
Uphold the name that, next to the Yankees, is the most famous in sport.
“I can do it,” some coach out there is saying.
“I can restore the greatness that is Notre Dame.”
Maybe he’ll be the lucky one.
Or is it the unlucky one?
He’d be a fool not to take it.
And a fool to accept it.
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