The dying embers of the Chas. Weis Era at Notre Dame flared one last time Saturday, in a supernova of the game that ended, as all supernovas do, with a black hole and a galaxy that isn't there anymore.
|
|
| If Charlie Weis' tenure as head coach at Notre Dame is over, he doesn't go out a winner. (Getty Images) |
"His last win was over Washington State in San Antonio on Halloween." The metaphors run four coats thick right there.
Weis, who has been college football's piñata for weeks now, is expected to get the hook either Sunday or Monday for not advancing the Irish beyond the Tyrone Willingham standard, for talking the walk and no more, for doing too little to expand the fading brand of Notre Dame.
Indeed, as football has been replaced in the last decade as the school's biggest sport at Notre Dame by "Name The Next Football Coach," Weis' time has now expired, and he can now see the world as Willingham saw it at the end, and Bob Davie before him. In fact, he is even less popular as he departs than George O'Leary, whose job resume gaps prevented him from earning the enmity and derision that was Weis' constant companion in South Bend.
Indeed, the best thing to happen to Weis this weekend was the Tiger Woods news, the perfect all-weather dome that deflected prying eyes from any other story this weekend. I mean, coaches come and go, at Notre Dame more swiftly than most places, but there's no story quite like an Eldrick's World In Shards epic, especially with so many holes in the story that the Internet can fill in so many creative/weird/scurrilous/probably true ways.
Weis? He got to watch Theo Riddick fumble on the first play of Notre Dame's first possession of his last game. You know, just in case he had any lingering hopes that this whole episode would end well.
But of course it wouldn't. Even after five more Jimmy Clausen touchdown passes, the Irish fell short as they did all year, with a 6-6 record that was one loss greater than the record Weis said wouldn't cut it at Notre Dame.
He knew he was tagged and bagged, and chose not to even address the media afterward, reserving what few remarks he wanted to give on everything but the only subject on the table to the Irish radio network. To sum:
• It was a crazy game.
• He decided to let Stanford's Toby Gerhart score the go-ahead TD with 59 seconds left because he thought his chances were better down seven with the ball for a minute than down seven with the ball for 45 seconds.
• Clausen and Golden Tate were awesome.
• He felt bad for the outgoing players, who felt as miserable as he did.
Which is fine. Weis never cozied to the media hearth, and he went out as you would expect him to, given that he had become the school's latest sacrifice to bygone days and as such had become a national punch line. The glare of an unforgiving public did not flatter Weis, and he would return no niceties in response.
So now comes the required pantomime of his release/resignation, after a brief negotiation over the size of his buyout, which we presume he will insist come close to if not actually meet the full terms of his contract. Notre Dame overpaid to get him, over-overpaid to extend him, and can be expected to pay full retail for its zeal.
Athletic director Jack Swarbrick forcefully denied one report Saturday that he had already begun the search process and would be interviewing candidates as soon as Sunday, but that story was wrong only in its time element. The Stanford game was merely a duty dance -- a spectacularly entertaining one, but a duty dance nonetheless.
It was a game played too late in the year to make much difference to anyone -- a good game to pad stats and avoid being injured, but not one to save a job, or to get a new one.
A couple of weeks ago, this game might have been Harbaugh's chance to throw his visor surreptitiously in the ring because of his team's wins over Oregon and USC, but Swarbrick is not yet shopping in his aisle. He is apparently positioning himself for bigger, more nationally vibrant stock (Bob Stoops? Urban Meyer? Brian Kelly?), and Harbaugh would be at best an extreme fallback position.
But that will be Monday's news. The search is on for the next man who thinks the Ottoman Empire can be rebuilt, and whoever it is will have the same ridiculously set bar to clear that the last four Notre Dame coaches have had. Charlie Weis learned face-first how the system works at South Bend, and if he comes away from it with a potful of money and his choice of NFL assistant coaching offers, these are still five years he will remember as cruel and largely joyless ones. You may judge for yourself whether the money was worth that.
Bizz-Ness 
