Weis.
Charlie Weis failed to take Notre Dame to the glory it deserves but I will always respect him.
Weis gave us a thrilling five years of ups and down. He's one of the biggest reasons why I am such a huge Irish fan today. Three days after Weis was fired he called up Irish commit Daniel Smith and told him that he shouldn't think elsewhere just because he isn't the coach anymore (read full story here). He's the bizarro George Costanza. I couldn't respect him more, I wish him the best luck in his next job.
I was ten years old at the end of the Ty Losingham era. I would still watch the games during the Willingham era at times but it was never quite as exciting as things were during Weis' time in South Bend. By the seventh game into the Weis era i loved Notre Dame and hated USC more than anything in the world. Charlie Weis was in the process turning the Irish into an offensive machine. Quinn to Samardzija was becoming a saturday tradition. That was the season I became a devoted Fighting Irish fan; I watched every minute of every game and checked for news on a daily basis.
People can continue to hate Weis and say we (Notre Dame and its fans) are no better off than we were five years ago. We're a whole lot better than we were five years ago. Weis has consistently convinced great recruits to come to Notre Dame. He made Irish fans believe. He put Notre Dame back in the recruiting world. A great part about that is, he got alot of them to commit to the University not just him. For example to our knowledge only one commit from the upcoming recruiting class has decommited. That was DE Chris Martin, who was the top commit of the Irish class. Although he did decomitt today Notre Dame landed a top 100 recruit today DE Louis Nix. Weis has put the next head coach in a perfect position. The next coach will inherit at minimum a former five stat recruit Dayne Crist at QB and arguably the best reciever in the nation in Michael "The Cannon" Floyd. He will inherit a talented defense that with some coaching could reach a very high level. Stars on the defense will include sophomore Manti Te'o, junior Brian Smith, junior Ethan Johnson, junior Kapron Lewis Moore, etc. Notre Dame will probably lose only five starters from last year whom are Jimmy Clausen (NFL draft), Golden Tate (NFL draft), and seniors Eric Olson, Sam Young, and Kyle McCarthy.
While Charlie Weis has teed up this job for the next person to take over, he's also set a new precedent and a dangerous standard. He's proven that you can recruit to this frigid blue collar town, even when you're six games below .500. He's shown there's no reason Notre Dame cannot be an elite program
With a good coach next year don't be surprised to see the Irish in the middle of the BCS picture. I'm looking forward to it.
New York for heisman ceremony and Notre Dame ends up playing in the Gator Bowl. Some might think that we've done well to improve over last year but that's really not important. We're Notre Dame and our expectations should always be BCS win or bust..jpg)
ootball coach. Pete Carol-esque?. If we were to bring in Gruden we would keep most of our defensive and offensive recruits like Martin and potentially more recruits that we might get this week. The recruits would look at Gruden's defenses with the Bucs and would come right to Notre Dame. I know it was Monte Kiffin coaching defense with those Bucs teams but Gruden would bring in that tough defensive attitude and possible some NFL assistants with him.