(h/t to "The Simpsons," who described Jimmy Carter as such in the episode "Marge in Chains")

Wow.  1-9.  A couple weeks ago I said it was "at least possible" that we'd finish 3-9.  Oh, I was young then, full of bright hope for the future.  Now 3-9 has moved from "at least possible" to "mortal lock," and 2-10 is now "possible," with 1-11 being "at least possible" (personally, I don't see us losing to Duke, but the teams are looking evenly matched, the only difference being that we've been beaten by a generally higher class of opponent).

As I've prowled around the ND blogosphere, however, I'm noting an interesting trend.  It's by no means universal, but there are a lot of people who place the blame for this season solely and squarely on Tyrone Willingham.  That's right.  Almost three years after he coached his last game at ND, he's being blamed for our Worst Season Ever (geez, another "Simpsons" reference - will they never end?).

I mean, damn.  If the guy is so powerful he can cause a team to lose that long after he leaves, you'd think he'd be doing better in his new job.  He should be concentrating on winning games at Washington, not losing games at ND, but there you are.  Some people just have their priorities straighter than others, I guess.

In other news, rumor has it that the missing frames 208-211 of the Zapruder film clearly show a young Tyrone Willingham behind the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza with a high-powered rifle.  There's also talk that he provided the faulty intelligence on WMD's that led us into the war in Iraq.

Okay, enough of Facetiousness Theatre.  Seriously, though, I don't recall anyone blaming Bob Davie for Willingham's lackluster second and third seasons, any more than I recall anyone giving Willingham credit for recruiting Quinn and Samardzjia, the backbone of Weis's first two teams.  Yes, yes, I get it that Willingham's recruiting was not stellar, especially in his last season.  And if we were 7-5 or 6-6 or 5-7 I'd be more inclined to put more of the blame on the bare cupboard he left - hey, look what Weis had to rebuild with, we're lucky we won five or six games.  But 1-9?  No amount of bad recruiting alone can explain that.  Plus, remember, maybe half the players out there now were recruited by Willingham, and none of them is currently being coached by him.  So we can assign some of the blame to Tyrone Willingham, but certainly not all of it.

Why this vilification?  What did Tyrone Willingham do to any of us other than be a mediocre football coach and below-average recruiter?

Frankly, I think that for a variety of reasons Willingham was never really embraced by ND Nation.  To start with, he was always the second choice.  George O'Leary, a good Irishman, was hired to replace Bob Davie.  We all know what happened there.  So we went to Willingham, who took the job after being turned down once, but everyone knew he wasn't really the guy we wanted.  Whereas, while it was widely rumored that Jenkins wanted Urban Meyer to take over for Willingham, Meyer took himself out of the running before an offer could be extended, and so Charlie Weis came out as our first choice, even if he really wasn't.

Also, Willingham didn't fit the stereotype (you should excuse the expression) of an ND football coach or, indeed, a football coach.  Where Weis is big, beefy, crew-cut, tough-talking, New Jersey, Willingham was thin, soft-spoken, corporate, near-emotionless.  Looking at Willingham on the sideline, you'd almost never know how the game was going.  Not true of Weis (nor, I suspect, of O'Leary).  Plus, there's the alumni factor with Weis - he gets ND in a way one suspects Tyrone Willingham never did.  Also, Charlie has the charity for his challenged daughter, giving him that touch of tragic backstory that so stirs the Irish soul (see also, e.g., Ara Parseghian).  Finally, whether wittingly or unwittingly, Weis (or his agent, or both) has cultivated the image that he's wanted elsewhere, that he could walk out of ND and back to the NFL at any moment.  Nobody's as popular as someone else's date, right?

But let's face it, if you called Central Casting and asked them to send over a head college football coach, they'd send someone who looked like Charlie Weis or George O'Leary before they'd send you Tyrone Willingham.  Ask for a tax lawyer or a college English professor (and specify African-American) and you'd get Willingham.

Of course, none of this would've mattered if Willingham had won 11 games in each of his last two seasons.  But his personality was such that ND fans weren't inclined to rally behind him after two utterly mediocre campaigns.  In a way, this isn't fair - Willingham is who he is, and one shouldn't have expected him to change his personality to suit the fans.  Certainly, his demeanor off the field reflected nothing but credit on his employer (which is more than could be said for his predecessor, in my view).  One has to wonder if, had we kept George O'Leary and he had turned in the same record as Willingham, we'd have been as quick to fire him, or as quick to blame him in the current circumstances.

(And no, I'm not discounting the race factor here, although I don't think it was anything so overt and obvious as, "we don't like him `cause he's black."  But I think the overall consensus about Willingham was that he just wasn't one of us, and not being "one of us" has been code for racism for as long as there have been races.  Certainly, it'll be played that way in some quarters if/when Weis is not let go.  Again, though, had Willingham been more successful on the field, he would have been embraced whether he was black, green, or purple-and-orange plaid.  I'm just saying that in some subtle way, the fact that he had the restrained personality he had, coupled with the novelty of being the first black head coach at ND, probably didn't help people warm to him when times were tough.)

But really.  Can we at least stop beating up on the guy?  It was three years ago.  We have to move on.  We need to address the problems now, here, today, that Tyrone Willingham can't solve.  Moreover, we don't want to get into the habit of assigning blame to previous coaches, especially as his players continue to graduate.  We're going to lose that scapegoat soon enough.

Random stupid thought:

-    Is anyone as thoroughly sick of the Xerox "mute button" commercial as I am?  Gawd, is it bad.  It's not funny, it doesn't really promote the product.  I have no idea why they made this.  Okay, Beth Littleford is a babe and has been since her "Daily Show" days, but still.  Enough with that ad.

I did like the "numismatist" ad, though, although one can see that it'll be played to death.  But the "mute button" was a loser from the first airing.