SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Under a damp, gray December sky, Notre Dame football awoke Friday morning and got rocked by a résumé that lied, an athletic director that didn't check and a coach who blew his dream job in one of the most bone-headed mistakes of all-sporting-time.

Notre Dame AD Kevin White will now have to find another new coach.(AP)

They always say Notre Dame is a special place and Friday, as snow and freezing rain made it impossible for the Golden Dome to shimmer, this was at least an especially ridiculous place.

If you were looking for emotions on campus, all you got was the same as the precipitation falling all day, mixed and accumulating. There was humiliation, but hope -- puzzlement, but promise.

About the only real source of embarrassment was the realization the rest of the country must find George O'Leary's resignation for having false information on his résumé a thoroughly enjoyable event -- "I'm sure they are just hooting about this in Alabama, or somewhere like that," said Steve MacLain, a CPA and ND fan as he sipped a beer at Corby's in town.

Other than that, people were just embarrassed because O'Leary hardly seemed worth all the embarrassment.

The Georgia Tech coach had managed to do something in five days that took Bob Davie five seasons -- earn a collective shrug and a lot of good riddance.

"I didn't think he was the guy," said Cole Heathman, as he shopped at a Mobil station near campus. "And I'm not just saying that now. I've been saying it all along."

If athletic director Kevin White didn't have buyer's remorse after he handed O'Leary the keys to the big program on this small campus, then almost everyone else did. In fact, most people believe it was the backlash -- from the stories about O'Leary's ethics, his questionable practice drills and his inability to win without Ralph Friedgen calling the plays -- that led to this resignation.

"Do you think if there was a slip-up on Jon Gruden's résumé, he would have resigned?" Heathman said smiling.

No one does.

"That's why I don't think this is the whole story," said Mike Lund, a freshman from Cincinnati. "There has got to be something else. Maybe we can get a better coach."

If you were expecting a down and out fan base, what you found here in this working class Northern Indiana town was a reaffirmation that Irish fans believe everything will work out, no matter the odds, great or small. Just watch as people dust off their suddenly relevant again "All I want for X-Mass is Jon Gruden" signs.

Gruden, the son of a former ND assistant who spent time as a youth in South Bend, isn't really coming and deep down everyone knows it. But the tantalizing promise is still there.

In truth, the thing people were most angry about was the timing of the whole deal. Why, in the name of Irish luck, could O'Leary's lies not have been discovered in say a month, or five weeks or whenever happens to be about 24 hours after the Oakland Raiders finish their season?

"That would have worked out nice," said Ben Ferguson, a Notre Dame freshman.

"That probably would have been the best-case scenario," said Eric Morin, another freshman.

It is likely White would deny the sentiment on the street, but he wasn't talking Friday. He issued a statement calling O'Leary's actions "a breach of trust," and other than that, he was said to be "immersed in the process" of finding a new coach.

The rest of the athletic department offices were a ghost town, everyone bailing out early in an effort to avoid all the television cameras. As for a 3 p.m. meeting between associate athletic director Bernard Muir and the players inside Notre Dame Stadium, it ended fairly quickly and with instructions to the kids not to speak to the media.

Not that the players would have had any more answers or opinions on who should be the next coach of the Fightin' Irish than Will at the toll booth ("the guy at Stanford"), Jane serving coffee downtown ("can't we get Mariucci?") to the kids at the LaFortune Student Center -- where the Burger King has pictures of football coaches on the wall.

So just whom was White immersing himself with?

While the people's choice remains Gruden -- 78 percent favored him in a recent South Bend Tribune poll -- the new short list appears to include the Stanford guy, Ty Willingham, who would have to swallow some pride and turn his back on a reported $2.5 million annuity in Palo Alto.

There is also Jacksonville Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin, who is supposedly ready to crawl here for the job. But he also has the kind of personality that is as endearing as an itch.

Louisiana State's Nick Saban is suddenly as hot as Baton Rouge in August, but he too comes from the Coughlin School of Charm and might not work on the all-important alumni rubber-chicken circuit.

More personally acceptable are straight-laced Tom O'Brien at Boston College and Tim Murphy of Harvard. But have the Eagles ever beaten anyone (not counting the, ahem, Irish), that's any good? And seriously, Harvard?

A source close to Alabama coach Dennis Franchione says he wants a crack at the job, if only because there is a belief in Tuscaloosa that the NCAA is going to drill the Tide for its third major infraction in recent years, but who knows if he'll get a call?

White kept the last coaching hunt pretty quiet; so don't expect a lot of leaks this time either -- although hiring an outside vetting service prior to the final decision might be recommended.

What troubled people around town though was the realization that what was thought to be a simple process hasn't been.

When viewed in the context of a week where three football players at Kentucky were charged with arson and a recruiting party at Colorado is being investigated for gang rape, the shenanigans in South Bend aren't much.

But people expect perfection from Notre Dame, both on the field and off of it. And they don't take kindly to the thought of Alabama, or whomever, laughing at their misfortune.

"That's what bothers me," said Tyler Freburg, an attorney sitting at Corby's. "This is Notre Dame. This shouldn't be difficult."

Or maybe this entire, preposterous, unpredictable debacle is the final proof Notre Dame isn't anything different than anywhere else. If the losing seasons, if the Independence Bowl, if the age-discrimination suit, if the NCAA violations, if the five consecutive defeats to Michigan State didn't do it, perhaps this will.

Perhaps George O'Leary will, indeed, have a legacy here after all.