What IF... Urban Meyer Had Gone to Notre Dame?

The Game Room
1

This is a subject I’ve discussed with other college football fans, and we have widely differing opinions.

Notre Dame fired Ty Willingham largely because they assumed (wrongly) that Urban Meyer was dying to coach in South Bend. Meyer decided that the Florida job was much more attractive, and has won two national championships there.

Now, all of us in the discussion agree that Meyer is a superb coach, possibly the best in the country. The point of contention is, could/would he have worked similar magic at Notre Dame?

The sides are split pretty evenly on this. Here are the arguments in essence.

  1. Urban Meyer is a fantastic coach. He’d have made the existing players much better, and would have made ND a potent force in nationwide recruiting again. Within a few years, he’d have made the Irish a title contender again. Even now, the Irish could be a football powerhouse again if they just hired the right coach.
  2. Notre Dame’s problems are deep and long-standing. Charlie Weis may deserve to be fired, but Ty Willingham didn’t do any better, and neither did Bob Davie. Even the last few years of the Lou Holtz era were nothing special. Notre Dame hasn’t been an elite program in a very long time, and the kids they need to recruit don’t care about the traditions that mean so much to Irish fans (a 17 year old running back in Dallas doesn’t remember Dan Devine and Joe Montana, let alone Knute Rockne and the Gipper). Notre Dame will always be a tough sell to elite athletes; why would a stellar linebacker or running back go to Notre Dame if USC or Florida came knocking? Urban Meyer’s a great coach, but if he’d taken the ND job, he’d have a career 35-30 record, and fans would be calling for HIS head right now.
    My question: which of these arguments resonates with you? Would Urban Meyer have turned things around, or would Notre Dame’s long term problems have swallowed HIM up, too?

Or, more generally, do you think Notre Dame is still a sleeping giant, waiting to make a triumphant return under the right coach? Or should Irish fans just get used to the idea that their team will probably NEVER be among the elite on a regular basis again?

2

It’s truly a mix between the two options. People have declared since Holtz that “you can’t recruit the elite player at ND” because of the academic requirements, etc. Holtz went a ways to disprove that (though he did coax the admissions department into being a bit more relaxed when it came to athletes), and ND still manages to recruit excellent players.

I don’t have any doubt that Urban would have been able to do just as good of a job recruiting that Charlie has done. I think he would have been able to pull a Holtz - demand a longer leash, and be able to go into the community colleges and bit further down the SAT scores to pull players. People discount how fantastic Weis has done recruiting - it’s his player development that’s questionable, and his “decided schematic advantage” is overrated and leads to a ridiculous level of self-confidence that blows up in his face at least once a month.

Ask Manti Te’o.

But your point still has a lot of truth to it - at USC they don’t rebuild, they reload. There are 4-5 star recruits up and down their depth chart. ND hopes to have 4-5 stars across the starting lineup, and has holes to fill at all times. That’s been the case since Devine, but coaching has always elevated the play on the field. I don’t think that Weis is capable of that - it seems that Urban Meyer is. In that regard, he’d be an improvement, and would put ND in the Top 10 consistently every year.

Notre Dame has never really been among the elite on regular basis for a very long time. We’re up and we’re down as we rebuild every 3-4 years. We’re also in a BCS game every 3-4 years - which is why I don’t think that the whole “ND’s long standing problems” is as severe as many make it out to be.

3

As much as I hate Notre Dame I have to admit they do have a serious hurdle to being great. They do actually have high academic standards. In the old days when nearly everybody wanted to go to ND, it wasn’t that much of an issue, the could still pick from among good students, and still have a team of elite athletes. But now when there are so many top schools, the number who dream of going to ND more than anything else is lower. So they have less of a pool to choose from, who also want to go there. Plus if you are only going to college to showcase yourself for the pros do you want to go a fairly conservative school with crappy weather, or Florida or California where you have your pick of slutty beach bikini babes every night?

They are still good recruiting, and have good athletes, but they don’t have three deep in all-americans at every position anymore.

4

I would posit that Cal (and possibly Stanford) have higher academic standards and better football teams. We’ll find out when ND & Stanford face off later this year.

Also: don’t sell your own (IIRC) school short. Michigan has a better academic reputation than ND.

5

Hehe I considered comparing to Michigan, But I know it probably gets annoying, the way I always go to UM.

But since you asked. :slight_smile:

I’m trying to do some research.
The best I have found is this

Michigan and Cal are very favorable comparable to the rest.(with Mich a bit ahead on athletes woohoo, tied for second of those reported, Damn you GT) Unfortunately Stanford and Notre Dame arn’t included. Everybody shows the expected much lower than all school average for football players.

Interestingly UCLA has the biggest gap.

Still looking for ND and Stanford numbers, although I would be astonished if Stanford isn’t substantially better, but they really havn’t been competitive in years.

6

Are you referring to the Stanford team that has lost to Notre Dame 7 straight times in their annual clash? The Stanford that last beat ND in 2001? That Stanford? They have a better football team than Notre Dame, you say, even though during one of the lousiest periods in Notre Dame’s football history they have been one of the few teams the Irish have consistently beaten? While the last 5 years’ games have all been close, the Irish have won each of them so I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say Stanford has a better football team than ND.

As for UC-Berkeley, a quick check of the current Sagarin ratings has Cal 16th with 81.12 points with the Irish in 17th place, right behind with 81.07 points. Cal has finished higher in the final Sagarin ratings 4 out of the last 5 years though. (I didn’t feel like digging any further than that.)

As for academic ratings between schools, those are all subjective nonsense IMHO YMMV. Stanford, Cal, Michigan and ND each have excellent academic reputations. Differentiating between them is a how many angels can dance on the head of a pin type argument.

7

Well, I did say possibly.

And, btw, the 5 terrible years for ND have also been terrible years for Stanford. And like I said…we’ll see, when they play. I expect it’ll be quite a good game. One of those “maybe a meteor will hit the stadium” games, but good.

8

Urban Meyer is a lucky schlub who has the benefit of a well-paid roster. Notre Dame is a conservative white cult with zero remaining football credibility. Urban Meyer deserves no credit other than knowing on which side the bread’s buttered.

9

I also think that the lure of the NFL and the modern athlete’s perception of which football factory school is going to give them the biggest and best stage to jump to the NFL is a big factor, and I don’t think that the modern athlete has ND on their short list when the recruiters from Florida, USC, Alabama, Ohio State, etc come calling.

10

For what it’s worth, I was one of the people making the 2nd argument. I’m not at all sure I’m right (indeed, as a longtime Subway Alumnus, I hope I’m wrong).

Urban Meyer is a lot more than “lucky.” Ron Zook had all the advantages Meyer has, but couldn’t win at Florida. Meyer is a superb coach. But he was also smart enough to pick a job where he’d have a MUCH better chance of winning right away. At Florida, Meyer will always have the best high school athletes at his doorstep, he’ll have lax academic standards, and the best facilities money can buy. He’d only have two of those things at Notre Dame.

Most 17 year old football stars really want just two things: a realistic chance to win the national championship and a realistic chance of going to the NFL. Mack Brown, Pete Carroll, Urban Meyer and Nick Saban can offer those things. I’m not sure ANY Notre Dame coach can, under current circumstances.

Now, if Notre Dame were determined to be a football powerhouse again, could they be? Maybe. If they wanted to dilute their academic standards and pay top dollar to bring in an elite coach with a nationwide reputation, maybe they could. But I wonder if it’s even worth trying.

It’s really a question of what Notre Dame wants to be. If they want to be a football factory, they’ve got to act like one, with all the corner-cutting and compromising (and potential corruption) that entails. Or they can be like Stanford, Duke and Rice; that is, they can choose to be an academic institution first, and accept that 8-3 or 7-4 with a trip to the Holiday or Alamo Bowl will constitute a good year from now on.

11

Pretty much…Lou Holtz wasn’t a racist, although he came off looking like one…

12

They want three things: the two things mentioned above, and women. :smiley:

13

I would agree with Stanford possibly having higher academic standards. I will also agree that all three of Cal, Stanford and Michigan are excellent academic schools. What I’m wondering (because I honestly do not know) is what their admissions requirements are, and how flexible they are with athletes. I know that Notre Dame and Stanford maintain the same level of scrutiny for incoming athletes as they do their regular students. I don’t know about Cal or Michigan.

ND can’t compete right now with Pete Carroll in that respect, but Charlie Weis has a very good argument against the other schools, as he’s usually wearing at least one of his four Super Bowl rings on his recruiting visits.

14

I believe that Cal requires that all incoming athletes meet the minimum academic requirements for admission to the UC system. These are far lower than the competitive threshold, however…ie, the minimum may* be a 3.0 GPA and a combined 1700 on the SAT; but the average (non-athlete) incoming freshman has a 3.9 and 2200.

*I pulled these numbers out of my ass, but they’re probably fairly close.

15

ND has one significant advantage in recruiting; they play every home game on national TV. No other school can say that and it makes a big difference for going on to pro careers and winning major awards. Brady Quinn was an average college quarterback but since he played at ND he in the pros now. Jimmy Clausen was getting mentioned for the Heisman trophy and still has a good chance of being in New York for the award ceremony. It doesn’t take much to get national attention at ND and that is a huge recruiting tool.

The only problem they have is that they haven’t won anything in the memories of any of the recruits. At least Ohio and Michigan can point to recent success to counter they current failures, I’m 26 and i barely remember the good days under Holtz. The approach needs to change for a couple of years and instead of trying to win every single game, this year’s attempt was a horrible schedule, they need to work on getting signature wins. Once they can show they can beat a big name school consistently then it is easier to steal recruits even if they don’t do so well on the rest of their schedule.

Weis is a great recruiter but apparently his player development sucks. His recruiting classes have been top 10 every year but he’s only finished a season in the top 25 twice. I think that while there are problems with what the school wants its pretty obvious that ND can get good players they just need a coach who knows what to do with 18 year old kids to turn them into all-Americans.

16

There is that. Even IF Charlie Weis is a brilliant X’s and O’s guy, and his game planning is masterful, that means litttle if he’s no good at teaching his system to the kids, or getting them to buy into his system.

17

What are you talking about? Quinn was an amazing college quarterback. Here’s his 2005 line, mixed in with Matt Leinart’s, Colt Brennan’s and Jay Cutler’s line:

283/431 (65.7%), 3815 yards, 28 TD, 8 Int.
292/450 (64.9%), 3919 Yards, 32 TD, 7 Int.
273/462 (59.1%), 3073 Yards, 21 TD, 9 Int.
350/515 (68.0%), 4301 Yards, 35 TD, 15 Int.

Here’s 2006, with Brennan, Troy Smith (the year he wasn’t putting up ground numbers, but won the Heisman), Kevin Kolb, and JaMarcus Russell:

232/342 (67.8%), 3129 yards, 28 TD, 8 Int.
203/311 (65.3%), 2542 yards, 30 TD, 6 Int.
559/406 (72.6%), 5549 yards, 58 TD, 12 Int.
289/467 (61.9%), 3426 yards, 37 TD, 7 Int.
292/432 (67.6%), 3809 yards, 30 TD, 4 Int.

I picked the QBs based on being in the NFL, winning the Heisman and/or being named Colt Brennan. Looking at those numbers, there’s only one that stands out as obvious. The rest are about as interchangeable as they could be.

18

Given that Notre Dame has top-10 recruiting classes most every year, and had classes ranked better than USC and Florida as recently as 2008, I’m gonna go with “Charlie Weis is mediocre.”

19

Uhh…no one is disputing that or bringing that up for question. The question is, “what would Notre Dame look like if Urban Meyer had been the coach the last 5 years?”

20

My guess is that if Meyer had gone to Notre Dame five years ago, they would been invited to BCS Bowls at least twice during that period. They probably wouldn’t have been in the BCS Championship picture, but good enough to qualify for the BCS’ “Notre Dame” slot. Given that sort of exposure and success, you can bet Meyer would have the pull with the campus Fathers to get the marginal recruits in like Holtz used to. I could see Meyer appearing in a BCS Title Game with ND, especially in a year like this one where it appears there might be only one sure fire no-doubt “qualifier” for the BCS 1 v 2 game. Its certainly would be more likely than Boise State ever getting the chance to no matter what they do.

And you can bet they would still have a winning streak going against Navy…