Here are two text messages I’ve received within the hour from people associated with the Notre Dame football program.
“the weis era is over”
“He’s done.”
While that is far from an official decree from anyone officially connected with Charlie Weis‘ fate, it is a pretty fair indicator — along with the copious media reports heading into this weekend — that the current head coach is well on his way to becoming the ex-Irish coach.
The official stance from athletic director Jack Swarbrick was that no decision would be made on Weis’ future until after the regular season. After today’s embarrassing home loss to UConn in double overtime, that official stance is going to be very hard to continue in the face of a firestorm of criticism that will envelope the program in the coming week.
Charlie Weis is, by most accounts, a very good man. He’s also, by most accounts, a dead coach walking.
The humane thing for Swarbrick to do would be to officially announce Weis’ fate this week.
The program needs to do the humane — and inevitable — thing and cut their ties with Weis sooner rather than later.
He at least deserves that much respect.
Somebody has to coach them against Stanford.
Isn’t there a contract issue–as in they’ll still have to pay him about $18 million? That’s a lot of money to pay a “dead” coach.
no, unless they get disgusted and leave notre dame, charlie and his staff, along with jimmy and golden and others who have the nfl option will be back at notre dame next season and for the forseeable future.
it is now the future of notre dame ad jack swarbrick that is the real issue.
the problems with notre dame football have been at the administration level and jack swarbrick has made those problems worse, not better.
notre dame requires an ad who knows notre dame football and who has the guts to protect charlie and his staff and their familes and notre dame’s student athletes who also play football from those vicious media attacks and take on the current corrupt officiating, rules enforcement, and rankings systems which have turned college football into the extremely profitable con operation that it has become.
I think they should just strip his offensive calling abilities, and bring in an advisor… maybe Jim Zorn.
Disagree completely.
You accomplish nothing by firing your head coach with one week left in the season. Nor does it really accomplish anything productive if the AD comes out on Monday and says, “We’re going to fire our coach at the end of the season.” EVEN IF YOU’VE MADE THAT DECISION (and it’s quite likely they have, at least informally if not formally), it makes utterly no sense to announce it to the public this week. Respect the players enough to let the season finish itself out. Then, if you want, fire him after the season ends and appoint someone else interim head coach for the bowl game while you do a full-blown coach search for next year.
Some of us have it on pretty good authority that Weis personally is one of the most arrogant dickheads in the NCAA. No tears here….
No reason to cut the cord this week. Season’s shot already, and no one expects them to pull it out against Stanford, so why give the team a distraction by firing Coach Front-Butt this week. Let them put the final nail in the coffin next week, then cut him loose. (After all, if it’s gonna cost you $18M to cut the cord, might as well make him work the entire season.)
To : Notre Dame Nation -
The call may be rid ND tourself of your coach?
Been there done that.
The defense is the probelem and all know it.
So waste $18 million (of Charlies butout contract) to start-up a new program (with who knows what as an end result) or fix the problem.
The ND Ad needs to step in and find a solid defenensive coach who can establich a program to shaddow the offense.
Charlie, your reputation is inovative offense. Now we need inovative coaching and learship (not coaching loyalty).
sorry,john taylor, your and cft’s contractual arrangements with msnbc and ndc sports are over.
we warned you and you have kept on using msnbc and ncs sports to promote a personal agenda and to suppress all comments which disagree with your agenda.
we do not think that you are a nice fellow and you will see us in the civil courts and can haul your website of dubious reputation right back into the virtual obscurity in which you operated before you made your contractual arrangements
with msnbc and nbc sports.
you and cft and pft are disgraces to sportswriting.
This saddened me, mostly because i am confident if Charlie stays that ND is only a 6-6 or 7-5 team. I just hope the team replaces him with another bad coach,
Go UA Wildcats
I think they should continue to hold a footlong sub sandwich just out of reach in front of Weis for another few weeks, then pull it away…..
I think anyone who plays ND next year would agree that the smartest thing would be to keep Weis and staff on board.
Or fire them and hire robertg.
I’m tired of Notre Dame and their phony mystique. Their best days are 30 years in the rear view mirror. UConn was the better team, as much as the refs tried to swing the game in ND’s favor with a couple of chickensh#t calls at the end. Weis is an arrogant blowhard who owes Tom Brady and Belichick for even being considered for this job in the first place, but he was screwed froom the get-go.
Who in their right mind would want this job?
Heres the job description -
Must be a Catholic, but its not necessary if you win. You’ll just have to say you are.
Must buy into the program’s history of being relevant, and convince future 5 star recruits to sign with us. Just show them a picture of Montana. And when the kid asks, “whos he?” Show them a picture of Brady Quinn… Actually, just skip this step.
Must like to sing songs and hold hands at the end of games, win or lose.
Must like having a creepy priest looking over your shoulder and going over game plans with you. Remember, God is a football fan!
And finally, don’t get too comfortable…
// Charlie Weis is, by most accounts, a very good man. //
He’s an arrogant ass and a known cheater.
RobertG or should I say Charlie W.
You’ve lost your mind. You showed a glimmer of sense in the past, but it’s clear now you have no clue. Charlie will not be back and Swarbrick is in no trouble. Your gonna fire the AD when all the terrible decisions with a capital T lay with some joke in Arizona right now. Lets see, White hired Davie, Ty, O’Leary, Weis…….plus 10 ye. extension? No wonder that putz slipped out under cover of darkness. If anyone has screwed this program over, it’s Kevin freakin White. Possibly the worst AD to ever grace a college.
Go Irish!
robertg,
Huh??? Are you a gun owner? Just curious.
of all the excuses that are offered by domers for why they suck my favorite is the lack of talent excuse. this of coarse comes from a school that gets every 5 star recuit they want. so please domers do not toss that 1 out there.I for 1 will miss fatboy on the sidelines because that means they might get a coach who knows what he is doing and start winning again.guess it was hard to win when you don’t know what plays the other team is running like in n.e. eh genius?
Notre Dame deserves every single penny they have to pay Jabba the Weis to run him out of town. The huge amount of arrogance (and ignorance) they showed in extending his contract after only 6 games is just astounding. They have a big tab at the table to pay before they hire the next coach in line
Well, I’m amazed at some of the people who continue to make excuses for Weis. The guy had 5 years of recruiting, 5 years of coaching and his winning percentage is worse than the two previous coaches and he had his best winning seasons with the so-called inferior talent of O’Leary and Willingham. His biggest supporters whine about the failures of recruiting by Willingham but he’s had FIVE YEARS to get his recruits to South Bend so that’s baloney. Pete Carroll’s program took off after TWO years and after five years, it was still going strong. Bob Stoops program took off after TWO years and after 5 years, he program was still going strong. Urban Meyer’s program took off after TWO years and after five years, it’s still going strong. There guys had various problems that they had to overcome when they took over the job and YET, they made their programs into relevant NAITIONAL programs, who beat RANKED opponents. Weis was given the keys to the car and he’s been the bully on the block and while he can beat the down-and-out teams, he can’t do anything about the teams that would bring his program relevance.
Poor ‘Fat Charlie’, lumbering up and down the sidelines like a sad, lost soul. I’ve no doubt he is a ‘good man’ as was Ty Willingham. He is obviously way out of his league calling the shots. Of Bellechicks corps of underlings, given big bucks by other teams in the hope that they would bring with them a ‘secret elixer’, only Josh McDaniels seems to have had a clue about running a team. And as for that over-hyped golden boy QB Claussen? You know, the one who had private QB lessons when he was 10? The word that springs to mind is ‘Ordinary’.