by Steven Falls
Sports Editor
Notre Dame football. Come on all you USC faithfuls, you have to admit that Notre Dame football has been the envy of all major universities around the country for the past 40-some-odd years. That is until recently.
On Tuesday, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame fired head coach Ty Willingham after three seasons at the helm of one of the most storied football programs in our country.
When looking at this event, I can think of two major reasons why this issue has become such a controversy over the past few days.
Number one, Coach Willingham was fired after leading the Irish to a 21-15 record over this three-year span. By some schools’ standards, a winning percentage of nearly 60 percent would not warrant a dismissal for a head coach when three years ago they gave him the keys and told him to rebuild the program, rebuild it’s credibility and it’s legend back to the level that it once was.
Granted, after Willingham began his first campaign at an impressive 10-1 record, he dropped 14 of the next 25 and failed to lead the Irish to bowl victory in any of the three years.
My beef is with the timetable given to Willingham in turning the program around. I am not only talking about Willingham, I am talking about most sports. These days, it is win now or let’s move on. What I do not get is the philosophy behind these decisions.
How on Earth do they expect a man to build a football program that was in shambles after the 2001 season? They did not even give him a chance to see his first recruiting class go through the program.
The man was a prime example of class on and off the field. He loved his players and his players loved him. I could understand the move after three losing seasons but that just was not the case.
Number two, was firing Willingham race related?
Honestly, it’s hard to think that it wasn’t. I feel that if this were a white coach, say George O’Leary, he would still be the head coach of the Irish given he had achieved the same success as Willingham.
The past two coaches were each given five years to revive the program and each were sent packing after the five- year contract expired. In fact, Willingham is the first coach in Notre Dame history to be dismissed before his contract expired. The previous two coaches did nothing more than his time around, except lose.
Being in the stands at the Notre Dame and USC game last Saturday gave me a live perspective of the Irish. Being a sports fan my whole life, I could just tell the team really was not all that great. They played well and were coached well but were simply steamrolled by a team significantly superior to them.
Maybe the Irish’s time is up. Blue chip recruits are choosing trendier schools with more recent success. Notre Dame is stagnant and not as appealing to the potential recruits as it used to be. The board of trustees felt that a change was so desperately needed because the team simply was not winning. So they axed the man they hired a few years ago to do the things in which he successfully completed for the most part.
They fired a man who brought integrity to a program that desperately needed it, all in the name of “winning” which he was doing also, just not enough. Is winning really that important?
Steven Falls, a senior communications major, is sports editor for the Campus Times. He can be reached by e-mail at sfalls21@msn.com.