(Editor's note: Bumped from the FanPosts because I liked it a lot.  We aren't going to be offering Urban Meyer 15 million a year, but it's an interesting perspective.)

I'm a BC alum so naturally I follow Notre Dame since the Irish are the closest thing to a rival we have in football (It's a rivalry. Whether we admit it or not, we measure ourselves next to Notre Dame, and whether you admit it or not, losing to us drives you up the wall). I might be able to offer more of a detached perspective as to what the rest of the college football landscape might be thinking.

Originally I thought Notre Dame would be crazy to fire Weis. This had less to do with results than perception. Look it at from the perspective of an outsider. Willingham gets canned after three years. Weis goes to a BCS game in half of his tenure and still gets let go after four years. This seems like a situation where a guy is set up to fail, regardless of the obvious flaws the two coaches I mentioned may have. Throw in the program's mediocre performance in the past decade and a half under numerous coaches, and a hot coach might not think there are as many tools to succeed there as in another big job like Tennessee. It appears the academic standards were a sticking point in Urban Meyer's decision to go to Florida. The point is that Notre Dame is a tough sell to a guy with choices, and the fourth coaching change this decade (including O'Leary) would probably make it even more difficult to find a new guy.

My mind has changed with the utter lack of progress and development this team made. I thought your offense actually looked worse in this year's BC game than it did in last year's. It was certainly no better at the end of 2008 than at the end of 2007. It reminds me of my grade school basketball days. One of the parents coached the team. He was a brilliant X's and O's guy. He understood all of the intricacies of the Triangle Offense and the Princeton Offense. He tried to install both offenses, but sixth graders with little playing experience can't comprehend something so involved. It takes years of learning the basics before any of the nuiances of such complicated systems make sense. You can't expect a first grader to understand algebra without first gaining a grounding in basic math. It seems to me that a similar concept may be at play with Notre Dame. Weis is a brilliant X's and O's guy. He regularly outschemed his NFL counterparts. However, the talented youngsters he has now likely do not have the basic football understanding to fully grasp his system. This might explain why Weis was so successful with the veteran clubs he inheirited in his first two years. He did not have to teach as much. If this theory is correct, I don't think Weis is likely to improve, and it would probably be best to cut ties now. It could begin the rebuilding process and salvage something from the careers of his talented classes.

What should Notre Dame do then? The Irish are in a unique position. They have so many wealthy fans that their football boosters have an unprecedted significance in the school's operation. Purists may deride it, but I'm not here to argue morals. That is the way things are. If I was the athletic director, I would gather the power players together and ask for two things. The first would be for them to collect $15 million per year to get Urban Meyer. Ideally it wouldn't take that much, but there are enough interested Notre Dame backers that it probably would not be a problem. It could take an astronomical amount to win a bidding war with Florida, but Notre Dame has enough financial might to pay the price for anybody they want. The second thing I would do is tell the same power brokers to schedule a meeting with the president of the university. They would tell him that if he did not lower the academic standards for football players, the school would see a sharp decline in donations, but if they did, they would make sure there was enough after the football money to build a new library, science center, or whatever pet project for the school he might envision. You'll take a definite PR hit from the purists and media types for focusing so much on football, but the fact of the matter is that college football is a big time business where results matter. That's why being an upstanding man was not enough for Ty Willingham to hang onto his job. Notre Dame has a massive financial advantage over any other team in college football. It would be foolish not to use it.

Failing Meyer, Brian Kelly would definitely be a guy to look at. Like Meyer four years ago, he has an impressive resume. Whereever he has gone, he has won and won big.