A Rant about Tyrone Willingham, the national sports media and ND Football

One of the more interesting games coming up this weekend is between the visiting ND Fighting Irish and Washington Huskies in Seattle, setting up a battle between Charlie Weis, the head coach of ND, and Tyrone Willingham, the head coach of Washington. As many of you know, Willingham was fired after three years at ND amidst a lot of controversy.

Before I continue with my rant, a light hearted observation of this. This game will be televised on ESPN2. It has been reported that Bob Davie may do the play by play of Saturday’s game. I wonder if Lou Holtz will do the studio analysis ? Maybe we can top this off by having Gerry Faust do the coin flip ???

My rant is directed at the national sports media and their continuing belief that Willingham was not given a fair shake at ND and that he “should have been given more time.” Willingham has added to this with an interview with John Saunders of ABC, back in 2005, in which charges of racism on ND’s part were floated by Saunders during the interview and, which Willingham did not directly shoot down. This led to an uproar among ND fans which has basically not subsided to this day, in large part due to the disastrous 2007 season. The national media has never really bothered to examine Willingham’s inept management of football programs. His program management, game preparation, game management, in game adjustments, and, most tellingly, his recruiting have been colossally inept.

Let me say right off the bat that the paltry number of African American head coaches on the college football is an outrage. It’s absolutely appalling that the NCAA has not really addressed this issue in an effective way. Willingham often makes reference to this issue in his defense.

However, let me also say that “racism on ND’s part” as the reason behind Willingham’s firing is an absolute piece of crock. If anything, Willingham’s performance at Washington validates ND’s decision to terminate him. At that time, ND was staring into a recruiting abyss as a result of Ty’s lackluster recruiting.

Let me explain: After his second season at ND (a losing season), he signed one of the worst recruiting classes in ND history. A class that had zero (if memory serves me right) offensive linemen. I remember the uproar among ND fans on the internet...”how can you not sign one single offensive linemen in this recruiting class ?” Knowledgeable ND fans started to pencil in the 2007 season as a potentially lost season.

In his third season (the Irish finished 6-6), his absymal recruiting continued. Recruits were de committing. There were only a couple of offensive linemen who verbally committed. By this time, it became evident that Willingham’s recruiting was severely lacking. He was fired in December of 2004. Weis came in and salvaged what he could from Willingham’s last recruiting effort.....only 15 players were signed.

Fast forward to last year’s disastrous season. As we all know, the Irish finished 3-9. Weis bears some of the blame. However, I believe that 90% of the problem was the fact that the deck was stacked against Weis in terms of personnel. Until last year, he had depended on the Brady Quinn class (the only decent recruiting class put together by Willingham and that was after the first season). Once that class graduated, there was really nothing. To be specific, last year ND had only 12 juniors and 8 seniors. Only two offensive linemen between those classes. How the hell can you compete with those numbers ? As a result, Weis was forced to throw players into the fray before they were ready.

In the meantime, let’s look at Willingham’s recruiting track record at Washington. He has only 6 players left from his first recruiting class. Furthermore, he has just 12 players remaining from his second recruiting class. He had a decent recruiting class last year. Currently, he has only 5 verbal committments for next year, which ranks last in the PAC-10 and 86th nationally. Through his lack luster recruiting, he has effectively put Washington in a deep hole for years and years to come. This may be as bad as the death penalty imposed by the NCAA on SMU back in the 1980’s. Ty has only himself to blame.

And what about Weis during this same time span ? He has been able to pull in three consecutive top 10 recruiting classes and it is starting to pay dividends. ND is still lacking quality and quantity in the senior class (and you need a great senior class, for the most part, to succeed in college football...if you have a mediocre senior class, the chances of winning a NC is slim to none). Weis pulled off one of the most impressive recruiting jobs in the history of ND football last year. Despite a disastrous season of epic proportions, he was able to sign a class that was ranked #2 in the country. There’s still work yet to be done in terms of filling some holes. But judging from the play of the young players, the future appears to be very bright. 14 out of 16 touchdowns have been scored either by a freshman or a sophomore.

What about Stanford, where Willingham coached before taking the ND job ? One blogger noted that Willingham did precisely the same thing there. When he left Stanford for Notre Dame, he left behind a recruiting black hole as well. The successor, Buddy Teevens, had only two upperclass offensive linemen to work with in his first year. As a result, the Stanford program cratered in the two years under Teevens.

In other words, Willingham has shown the same disturbing pattern when it comes to recruiting at Stanford, ND, and Washington. And yet, there is still a great deal of sympathy in parts of the national media for him. Ty’s failures are the result of his unbelievable ineptness.

I can predict, with a fair degree of confidence, that the national media (or some portion of it) will pontificate this week that ND did Willingham wrong and that he should have been given more time as Washington gave him. Never mind the irony that Washington, by giving him an extra year, may have inflicted further damage on their own football program, judging by his recruiting results as of now. In his 4th year at Washington, there is no demonstrable progress being made. In fact, the program is fading into obscurity under Willingham. If he had pulled in three good consecutive recruiting classes, it’s a fair bet that the program would be in better shape than it is now. Alas, that is not the case.

Finally, with regard to the notions of racism implicitly floated by Saunders and Willingham in that infamous interview of 2005 and with regard to Willingham’s continuing references to the appallingly low numbers of African American head coaches at the college level, Willingham needs to take a look at the mirror. What has he done to promote African American coaches in the college coaching profession ? More precisely, how many African American offensive and defensive coordinators has he had at Notre Dame and Washington ? ZERO. Both of Weis’s offensive and defensive coordinators are African American. What’s up with that ?

As noted above, the national sports media will continue to insist that ND should have given Willingham “more time.” So mediocrity in all aspects of running a program is a reason to give him more time ? Give me a break. One writer said that ND lowered their standards when they fired Willingham. No, ND lowered their standards when they hired mediocre coachs such as Faust, Davie and Willingham. What is wrong with striving for excellence ? Clearly, Willingham was not meeting that standard. The facts are there. The proof is in the pudding. In other words, we are watching the “Ty-tanic” in Seattle. And no, Leonardo DiCaprio is not starring in this one.

As Charlie Weis would say “It is what it is.”