It was a weird sensation.  As I watched the Navy game, I just couldn't work up the usual enthusiasm/angst.  Ordinarily, I'm a basket case watching a close ND game.  Saturday, I achieved an almost Zen-like state.  Only seven steps more down the eightfold path and I'll be an ascended master, or something.

Seriously, though, I was glad when we scored and made good plays, but I wasn't devastated when we didn't.  I haven't felt this way since the 2001 season, the Bob Davie Farewell Tour:  when we won, great; when we lost, it was one more nail in the coffin of the man I consider to be the worst ND coach, on and off the field, of the last four decades (the reasons for this would be a whole `nother diary, so I'll pass on that for now).

But it's not like I bear any particular malice toward Charlie Weis.  Yeah, I've heard the rumors that he's mercurial and can be abusive to his players (and, gosh, that never happens in football), and his record this year speaks for itself, but he seems like an okay guy.  Lord knows I have no problem with the players; generally, I'm against being too harsh on guys who aren't being paid for their efforts, and who are probably doing the best jobs they can.  And I certainly feel for the students, especially the seniors, who seem to be taking this pretty hard.  CW and your classmates, and I say this with no trace of sarcasm or irony, I feel your pain.  Hell, my senior year was Gerry Faust's first season - a 5-6 campaign following a 9-2-1 year.  5-6, and we were # 1 in the polls for one week.  We thought it was a tragedy; I'm betting this year's seniors are thinking that sounds pretty good right about now.

No, as you may have gleaned from my previous diary, the reason I'm beyond caring how badly we do this season comes largely from my desire to watch Father John Jenkins and Patrick McCartan and the rest of the unholy cabal that put us in this position in the first place squirm, and spin, and try to justify their bad decisions.  More:  I want to see how they put this right, if they can.

Not that I have that kind of faith in those bozos.  I've been watching the circus sideshow that has been ND athletic hiring for the last decade or so (starting with the we-hired-him/no-we-didn't dance with Rick Majerus), and have been listening to the my-school-right-or-wrong apologists for the last three years, and I'm not impressed.  Basically, what seems to be happening is that football has become the be-all and end-all of every major decision by the University - at least, the ones that get national press coverage.  It's not just the money, the NBC contract, the crass inflation of the alumni donation minimums so we can get ticket applications to see a 1-8 team stumble around the field.  It's the fact that I've heard other alumni tell me how important the football is, how not just donations but applications to the school fall when we have a bad season.  How football is so all-fired important to Notre Dame on every level.

I'm not saying that's not true.  I'm saying it's pretty goddamn sad.

Ted Hesburgh would never, not in the million years or so that he was university president, have let the football tail wag the ND dog like it does now.  Ted Hesburgh's legacy - well, one of his many legacies - was to turn Notre Dame from a small parochial school with a great football team into a national university with a football team.  But ever since Jenkins's rumored grand-mal hissy fit following the 2004 USC loss, it seems that he has been trying to emulate one of two characters:  former University of Oklahoma president George Cross, who famously remarked that he wanted to build a university the football team can be proud of; or the fictional Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff, played by Groucho Marx in the movie Horsefeathers, who had the following exchange with two other professors:

''Where would this college be without football?  Have we got a stadium?''
''Yes.''
''Have we got a college?''
''Yes.''
''Well, we can't support both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.''

It's been said over and over that character is revealed during hard times.  Well, times are hard in the ND football program, and it'll be interesting to see what kind of character is revealed, especially at the university's upper echelons.  But I'm not concerned with this in an academic way; I'm not the Character Police over here.  How we handle this season, how we handle Coach Weis, will have a real impact on the future of ND football, if for no other reason than it will decide whom we can get to replace Weis, whether this year or down the road.

It's been speculated that one of the reasons Jenkins was so quick to pull the trigger on Tyrone Willingham was that he thought he could nab Urban Meyer as our next coach.  Meyer had coached at ND before, he was coming off great success at Utah, all the stars seemed aligned.  Yet he passed on us on his way to Florida.  It's not hard to see why.  If one reasons that, at both schools, you have at most three years to achieve a measure of success, you go to the school that gives you the best chance of doing that in that time frame.  I think the results speak for themselves.  Given the choice between two schools, one that's a proven football factory, one that wants to become one, choose the one with the track record.

Another rumor about Willingham's demise is that he wouldn't get rid of certain assistant coaches that the university administration wanted gone.  I don't know if it's true, but the rumor's out there, and it's again calculated to keep an experienced college head coach away from ND.  Nobody likes to be micromanaged, least of all a head football coach.  

Of course, there may be absolutely nothing to that rumor but, again, we broke tradition by firing Willingham after three years instead of the usual five.  There had to be some reason for it, and if the administration wasn't being upfront about the real reason, it had to lead to some speculation among potential job applicants.  What is undeniably true is that virtually no one with major college head coaching experience wanted the job.  And that, I think, is ultimately what we need.  We need the football equivalent of ND hockey coach Jeff Jackson:  somebody who's won a championship at the major college level, and who can do it without compromising ethical or academic standards.  Whether such a man exists is one thing.  Whether we can interest him in the job is another.  But it's never going to happen with the reek of desperation pouring out of the administration building.

And desperation is just not warranted.  Okay, we're having a bad year.  A disastrous, horrible, pig-fornicator of a year, yes, but a bad year.  News flash:  They happen.  A few years ago Penn State alumni were trying to move JoePa into a condo in Leisure World.  They got over it.  Nebraska is only ten years removed from its last national championship, and Kansas dropped 79 points on them last Saturday.  Bad streaks happen, too.  Many have bemoaned our six-game losing streak to USC.  Few recall that, from 1983-1996, USC couldn't buy a victory over us.  They were 0-12-1 against ND over a 13-year stretch.  They seem to have bounced back.

If we can all get off our high-four-horsemen for a minute, if we can leave our tradition at the door and assume that nobody's going to coach here just because We Are ND, we can still agree that Notre Dame has the basic ingredients of an elite football program.  We have state-of-the-art facilities and a national TV contract (for now, at least).  We can offer athletes who want it a 90+ percent chance to graduate with a diploma that's got to be worth more than one from Florida or Nebraska (no offense to my Gator-alumni friends).  Yes, we have parietals and academic standards and lousy weather, but despite those things we seem to be able to snag our fair share of blue-chip recruits.  What we need is university leadership that keeps this all in perspective, that announces to the college football world by its actions that it wants an experienced coach who can win while maintaining our standards, and will give that man the time to develop a program, and not go into crisis mode when we have a bad year.  Face it, any school can be a football factory.  Any school can promise you that you're only as good as your last season, and that alumni will scream for your head if it's a bad one.  Show a potential head coach that the administration will stand behind him, for a reasonable period at least, and you stand a better chance of hiring a good one.

I don't know if Charlie Weis is ultimately the answer.  As I said before, I'm willing to wait two more years to find out, even though we'll catch some merciless abuse for not firing him this year, thanks to the genius decisions of 2002 (see my previous diary).  But if it works out that Weis is not the Savior of ND Football, I'd like a chance to hire that man when the day comes, not just settle for some alumnus who coached some Division II ball, or some NFL assistant who's used to dealing with pro veterans as opposed to green kids out of high school.

Failing to win football games doesn't make you a loser.  Panicking like a bunch of mewling infants because you fail to win football games does.  Something I'd like the university administration to think about.