Oh - it ABSOLUTELY is. But we’re not measuring the overall success of a football program - we’re measuring the ability to get high school kids to enroll in your college. These are different things.
Maybe it would make more sense for you to describe the recruiting process. Where does it begin? Where does it end? What does it entail? Does playcalling come into it at all? What about practice? How about hiring assistant coaches? What about getting boosters to support the team? Is all that “recruiting” in your book?
You’re arguing that backward. You’re taking it as a given that Weis has done one part of his job exceptionally well, and looking for other reasons instead for his mediocre results.
Here’s a better phrasing: Do you think that being mediocre at the single success metric that matters does *not *reflect negatively on one’s performance at *all *the elements of the job that go into that single metric?
Taking it as a given? The preponderance of evidence supports that view as does the general consensus. If you’re going to claim it isn’t true you’ll have to back it up with something that is logically coherent, you can’t therefore you’re inventing definitions and creating strawmen.
This is contrived. There are many discrete aspects of coaching. Why conflate them except to serve your meaningless argument?
Notre Dame is pretty much irrelevant, but they are by choice. Their academic standards freeze out an awful lot of athletes that would be interested.
Also, I don’t think that the argument over "would you rather play in South Bend or in Los Angeles is paramount. If Notre Dame had a coaching staff that was clearly the best in the country, I think kids would go there regardless. All I know is that if it were me making that decision, personally, I’d go to [strikethrough]Los Angeles[/strikethrough] Ann Arbor.
The “evidence” you provide is simply compendia of some other people’s opinions. Your use of “general consensus” means as much as Munch’s “universally”.
Winning means a team is good. Good teams are mainly the result of having good players. Having good players is primarily the result of good recruiting. Mediocre or losing teams, OTOH, well, try following the chain yourself. It isn’t all that hard.
I don’t think it’s that much of a given. There’s immense talent on offense, and that talent has delivered on the field and on the scoreboard. Next spring, it will deliver during the NFL Draft. That success for those players reflects both an ability to recruit as well as develop talent - I just don’t think that Weis develops *enough *talent, and leaves too much untapped potential in the rest of the squad.
Fair enough. No - it reflects on the **sum **of the performance of all the elements. And the only element that can’t redeem all the rest is recruiting. Terrible play-calling, terrible player development, and terrible assistant coaches all have an immediate and direct affect on gameday. Once Saturday comes around, you’re no longer recruiting. A “decided schematic advantage” can win a game in the 4th quarter. An assistant coach in the booth seeing a sudden weakness develop in the secondary can win a game in the 4th quarter. Noticing your LB isn’t wrapping up as well as he was in practice and giving him instruction on the sideline can win a game.
But making a phone call and talking about the Golden Dome, the Grotto, Touchdown Jesus, Knute Rockne, 7 Heisman trophy winners, 11 National Championships and the leprechaun doesn’t gain you a single yard.
I don’t know that’s always the case. Recruits also take a look at the competition they have. Trying to get a five star QB recruited when Sophmore Tim Tebow has just won a Heisman is a bit tougher than offering the same athlete the starting job elsewhere.
Of course, I subscribe to the same blogosphere rumor-mill. To be fair, I’ve only heard Stoops, Kelly, Ferentz as potential replacements (in that order).
I want Stoops bad because he’s such a safe choice. ND has to get it right this time. The talent is there to win right away, and ND can recruit to keep on winning with the right Head Coach in place.
Of course it’s an opinion. Everything in this thread is opinion. Everything on every website and channel is opinion. The vast majority of these opinions agree on this subject that you seem to have an issue with. Considering no one here seems to hold that they are anything other than opinions I’m at a loss to see your point.
So no team has ever lost with good players? Hmm, maybe we should scrap this whole idea of playing the games all together.
Okay, but it still means Weis did only a halfway job of recruiting, right?
Huh? Good players can typically find a way to “out-ath-a-lete” the other team, as Bear Bryant would say. But you can coach the living hell out of guys you drafted from the chess club and they still won’t be able to beat Florida.
And the further that glory-years stuff recedes into the past, the less effective it is. It may be too late already.
I’m intrigued by this chain concept. How does that phrase go? “A chain is only as strong as the very first link, regardless of how strong it is in comparison to the other links in that chain”? Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s how it goes.
There are plenty of Michigan, USC and other fans that have no soft spot for Notre Dame on these boards and in this thread. None of them have stepped forward to suggest that Weis was a bad recruiter, and some of them have defended that ability. No - this is just another out-of-your-ass link in your chain to yank ours. You don’t have, nor have you ever had, any intention of having an honest discussion about this the moment you were questioned on your claim.
As the OP, I’m going to ask that this hijack of a topic be abandoned and get back to the matter at hand - who will replace Charlie Weis?
These statements show such a profound ignorance of football, and sports in general, there seems little point in arguing anything on the matter.
Back to the OP, I think the earliest we’ll hear about a new coach will be Monday, and even then that’s unlikely. I don’t think it’s going to Stoops, he’s been so adamant about it (though of course he could be bullshiting like Saban) and he’s really the only big name who would announce before the weekend.
The big games are this weekend. After that people can announce without looking disloyal to their team. But even then, I think Swarbrick may want to take his time. ND can’t really afford to fuck this one up yet again.
Personally I think it will be Kelly. He’s got a lot of what ND needs and he has yet to flat out say he’s not taking it. Regardless of what people in Ohio think, it is a huge step up and he’ll be a frickin god if he turns things around - something he is pretty damn good at. As a Michigan fan I’m am worried - and wish we had the brains to get him ourselves.
I happen to be one (a Mich fan) who absolutely agrees that Weis was an excellent recruiter. Frankly, I don’t know how good he was recruiting on defense, but it’s clear he was terrible as a developing any sort of defense. Also I agree he was good on offense, but you sort of have to be if you give up an average of 26 ppg.
In fact, the real legacy of Weis, apart from being labelled a failure, will be his recruiting. The fact that he got some amazing offensive players who will now enter the draft and may go on to be excellent players has increased ND’s recruiting perception. Hell, if you can make it big in the NFL (Ok, Quinn is struggling, but still) and make it big while coming from a really crap team, then what are the possiblities if ND returns to greatness?
As I said, I’m a Michigan fan - and I really wish Weis had stuck around for awhile. I think Kelly is coming and he will turn things around pretty quickly, which sucks for my team that is having all sorts of woes.
Perhaps you can show me where I claimed - or even suggested - that Weis is a great recruiter. G’head, I’ll wait.
Oh, and it’s not just Weis anyway. Notre Dame also had top 15 recruiting classes in 2002 (13th) and 2003 (5th), under Ty Willingham. IMHO, if Weis had a recruiting advantage of any sort, it was that he runs a pro-style offense which theoretically makes players better NFL prospects. Of course, the facts coughBradyQuinncough don’t seem to bear that out so well.
Actually, I was just going back to their last national championship, under Lou Holtz in… '88 or so. I don’t follow college football that closely (and I didn’t even live in the US in '93).
I was born in the early seventies and recall the freezing cold winter days in the Big House with my dad. I know “3 yards and a cloud of dust”; I do not know Michigan sucking.
Tell you what, Munch - you can have all the best coaching talent on your team, if you’ll let me have all the best athletic talent on mine. I’d bet on my team in the Doper Bowl, wouldn’t you?
Weis probably just showed offensive recruits his Super Bowl rings and a picture of Tom Brady, a tactic that has to have gotten less effective with every year, and apparently just didn’t bother much with defensive recruits. But he was a great recruiter anyway, I keep hearing. Whatevs.
Who is ND talking to? Those who know don’t talk and those who talk don’t know, once again. But anyone who thinks Urban Meyer wants to go live in the Midwest again is kidding themselves - if he were, he’d have done it when he left Utah, and he wouldn’t have even gone out there in the first place. Besides, in Florida, he can show a recruit a couple of very new championship trophies, the players who won them and are still on campus, and point out the sunshine and the girls, and he’s good to go. He doesn’t even have to travel out of state. So he’d want to go to ND, well, why?
