Men Without Chests

Guest author: Frank Pimentel

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis argued that modern education produces "what may be called Men without Chests. It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardor to pursue her."

Sadly, we see this in full effect at Notre Dame today. First, in their initial bumbling attempt to defend the commencement invitation to President Obama, the University distributed laughable "talking points" to the Board of Trustees, which managed, in one swipe, to insult the intelligence of anyone who questioned the propriety of the invitation and to directly insult the initial Laetare Award honoree.

Then Fr. Jenkins compounded the error by issuing a statement to the effect that he, presumably in contrast to the shanty Catholic rubes who saw through the artifice concocted by Notre Dame in its perpetual desire for respect by those whose opinions matter in academia, was going to deliver an "inclusive and respectful speech." In other words, as Lewis predicted, those who attack him, attack "Intelligence."

Alas, the commencement debacle was not the most recent example at Notre Dame of Lewis’ foretelling. Last week, Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick announced that next October, Notre Dame would be fortifying its football schedule by playing Western Michigan University. Parenthetically, I’ll state that for all I know, WMU is a great school and runs a fine football program. But that’s kind of the point; about all I know of WMU is that it is in Kalamazoo – and I doubt that most anyone not from Michigan or northern Indiana even knows that.

Of course, that announcement understandably caused instant deflation among nearly anybody who harbors hope that the Fighting Irish will once again become the team it was under Rockne, Leahy, Parseghian, or Holtz. By way of brief examples, on our way to the 1988 national championship, ND played Michigan, Miami, and USC in the regular season. The next year we played Michigan, USC, Penn State, and Miami before the bowl game. In ’90 we played Michigan, Miami, Tennessee, Penn State, and USC in the regular season.

But that wasn’t the end of the consternation. Instead, echoing Jenkins’ pronouncements surrounding Commencement, Swarbrick announced with respect to the inevitable backlash, "It reflects a not very sophisticated view of what's going on out there." As with Jenkins, those who attack him attack "Intelligence."

But I am not fooled. In the case of football, the problem isn’t finding opponents on short notice, it’s finding opponents who will be bought, not expecting a return visit by Notre Dame. This scheduling philosophy, deemed "7-4-1" for shorthand, means 7 home games, 4 road games, and 1 "neutral site" game televised on NBC -- amounting in substance then to 8 home games and 4 road games. It requires materially watering the schedule down and making it, frankly, boring.

I believe this was intentional. Notre Dame knew that if it shorthanded itself by establishing a Potemkin 7-4-1 "requirement," it would eviscerate future schedules so badly that, by contrast, a league schedule (Big 10? Big East? ACC?) would be appealing. Of course, this is a false choice. Simply returning to a more balanced home/road schedule (6-6, or even 7-5), with the historical norm of playing home-and-home series with marquee schools, would immediately solve the problem.

But that itself is the problem. The powers that be don’t want the supposed scheduling problem solved. Rather, while alumni have always overwhelmingly opposed joining a conference for football, those in the Dome and JACC – specifically John Heisler – "know better" and want it (and for reasons having nothing to do with athletics and everything to do with those whose opinions matter in academia).

They don’t want to solve the scheduling "problem" that they created themselves. Rather, they have set us up to "solve" the scheduling "problem" by, sooner rather than later, throwing up their hands and arguing that the only feasible solution left will be to, surprise, join a conference.

But my Intelligence will not be insulted. Until Notre Dame places Men with Chests back into leadership positions, my checkbook – which had heretofore been open – will remain closed.

More Heavyweights

NBC's Notre Dame contract includes seven Irish home games and one prime-time neutral site game annually through 2015. "You could do [a series with Miami] ... plus do one home and home."

A quote from a post on Rock's House or Cartier Field? Nope. It's a quote from Notre Dame Athletics Director Jack Swarbrick.

Yesterday's Miami Herald had a story about a renewal of the Notre Dame/Miami football series, a brief but intense rivalry from the program's last period of prolonged excellence. According to Barry Jackson, UM AD Kirby Hocutt got on the phone with Swarbrick, who showed much interest, and the two will talk more in April.

This obviously is a great thing for the football program. ND was being boxed into a corner schedule-wise with excessive promises to outside entities. Between the 7-4-1 structure and three Big East games and an alleged "buy games" philosophy, it was looking like one-game-or-bust for fans wanting a quality opponent on the Irish sidelines instead of the multiple choice options a 4-4-4 strategy would bring. Instead, Swarbrick will use the neutral site games to augment a quality home-and-home contract rather than replace one.

The list of eye-opening moves by Swarbrick doesn't stop there. The wildest dreams of Irish hockey fans came true earlier this year when Notre Dame announced plans for a new ice arena. After years of meandering renovation plans for the current (and inadequate) facilities in the North Dome, Swarbrick talked to Jeff Jackson and other benefactors, and made the bold choice. According to folks on campus, he also recognizes the bass-ackwardness of the current renovation project and is putting together plans for the long-overdue practice facility for the basketball programs, to be built between the Joyce Center and the baseball field.

Sea change, indeed.

For the last eight years, ND's athletics leadership seemed to be stuck in neutral ... vast periods of ennui punctuated by poorly-handled coaching searches. Statements by the AD evoked cringes far more often than cheers.

Now we have action on plans, not never-ending plans of action. "Why not?" instead of "Why me?" Instead of focusing on "Sunday through Friday", we're looking to "position our program as one of the best in the nation".

We weren't sure what we were getting back in August when Jack Swarbrick took the reins. ND had passed on more experienced candidates like Steve Orsini to hire a lawyer from Indianapolis, and initially it smelled like another "don't rock the boat" hire. The moves so far, though, are very encouraging. While no one hits 100 percent of the notes, at least Swarbrick seems to be singing from the right hymnal.

It's Gotta Be the Chicken

Seems like every time someone mentions the words "admissions" or "facilities" on the Pit these days, the indignation flows thick and fast. A lot of people criticize those of us who bring these things up, using words like "apologist" and opining that our standards for ND basketball are somehow lower than they should be.

There's a reason we bring them up, though, and it has nothing to do with Mike Brey. We bring them up because both are problems that hold Notre Dame basketball back and will continue to do so no matter who the coach is. They artificially limit the pool of players and coaches who will consider coming to ND to try and make the program better.

"But we can just promise changes to the new guy" goes the common refrain. As long as we show we understand what they need, we can get a hungry good coach to jump at the job. Simple as pie.

Really? Ask yourself if that would succeed if you were interviewing for a job.

You're well respected in your field, and a company wants to hire you. It used to be an outstanding company, but rested on its laurels for too long and has lost its way. They don't understand what is needed in the marketplace today and routinely undermine their employees. The guy who [just left / just got fired] might have needed to be replaced anyway, but the company's ham-fisted decision-making didn't help the situation at all and, multiple times, left the guy hung out to dry.

Now they want to hire you, and they promise you the moon and that all of a sudden they're going to start doing things "right" to help you and the company succeed. Never mind over a decade of mismanagement, this time they're "serious", and they'll give you whatever you need to succeed.

Would you believe them? Or, knowing they're in a bind and might say anything to get you in the door, would you either (a) pass on the opportunity, or (b) require a higher level of compensation to reflect the risk you believe you're taking? Look beyond the frustration after a very-underachieving season and view it dispassionately as a Rick Pitino or a Brian Gregory or a Mark Few or a Travis Ford or an Oliver Purnell or a Scott Drew would. View it as the person who'd be putting their career on the line would.

The chicken must precede the egg here. Notre Dame must make the decision they want championship basketball and then start to take the necessary steps to bring it to campus. They can't "get religion" as part of a hiring process, because that's how you end up getting publicly turned down (see: 1991) or having to overpay someone who isn't an advancement to get them on campus (see: 1999, football 2001).

Anything it looks like you're being forced to do isn't accepted as genuine by anyone. That's why we push for program support by the school now, when it's their own decision and not driven by embarrassment or necessity. If they don't do it, it doesn't matter if Mike Brey is here in September or not.

Yes, this season was incredibly frustrating. The team underachieved and that is 100 percent Mike Brey's responsibility. But how much more frustrating is it when you picture what kind of a difference Austin Freeman might have made on this team? How much more frustrating is it when you look at an alleged "facilities upgrade" that looks like it's being executed in complete reverse order of how it will improve recruiting? What is a game of musical chairs in the coaching offices really going to accomplish in this atmosphere?

For the record, I'm encouraged that Jack Swarbrick understands this. Unlike his predecessor, he understands what ND needs to do to succeed in basketball and is trying to make it happen. But if ND wants to make their next hire a good one, they need to lay the groundwork now. Right now, all we have is a sandy beach.

It Just Goes to Show

Show what, I'm not at all sure.

Nothing, it seems, has been what it seems for the last couple weeks. Charlie Weis was fired, and then he was not. Jack Swarbrick was meeting with him next Monday, then it became last Tuesday when both were jetting around four time zones on the left coast. A presser became a release. Status quo became buyout financing became "responsible stewardship of university resources", and now Weis gets a continuance.

The inveterate straw-grasper in me sees plenty of lawyer-speak in that link. The release doesn't say Charlie Weis will be ND's coach in 2009, only that he will "continue" in the role, with Swarbrick "examining every aspect of the program" and making changes where he "think[s] they are needed". Plenty of ambiguity there, or at least enough to keep my soul from sinking, and we still have an epic tilt against the likes of, as Lou would say, the University of Rice to look forward to over the holidays before all's said and done.

Could this be the most Machiavellian approach to the AD chair we've seen since Gene Corrigan was in the house? Perhaps. Was retaining Charlie Weis truly the best option, based on a lack of a "home-run hire" being available? Maybe. Does Charlie know enough to, once again, go into the off-season ready to correct the errors of the previous fall? I guess.

Trouble with all that is, when you've had to dip the bucket into the well of patience as many times as ND fans have in the last 15 years, eventually all you hear is the thud of it hitting the sides. I'd love to give Jack Swarbrick and Fr. John Jenkins the benefit of the doubt here, but 50 times bitten, 51 times shy, I suppose.

At the moment when Swarbrick seemed truly to be examining all his options while waiting on a December 8th appointment, the entire process short-circuited, resulting in a piece of paper issued from the Joyce Center. It's hard not to think about how we've seen all this before. Look kids, Big Ben ... Parliament ... you noticing all this plight?

We should, I suppose, be grateful for small mercies. Swarbrick's predecessor would have attempted a press conference, and it doesn't take a lot of imagination to visualize the train wreck Mr. "Sunday through Friday" would have wrought. But that's cold comfort as I sit in the December chill wondering how the Decided Schematic Advantage is going to be realized, knowing I most likely am going to spend the next 11 months refereeing online fights about what "real ND fans" do/think/want or don't.

But hey, I'm all about chances, right? As of this typing, Charlie Weis is ND's football coach next year. So it's time to stop talking about what could happen and start talking about what damn well better happen, including some capital-R Realizations:

Number one, a head coach is not a special teams helper or a quarterbacks coach or a play-caller. He's a head coach, and he has other people on his staff to handle those other responsibilities. Notre Dame is not a place for those skills to be learned, but rather honed, and if you can't delegate what needs to be delegated, you won't do anything well.

Number two, what works in the NFL doesn't necessarily work in college. When you're not limited to 20 hours a week with your charges and aren't required to provide tutelage in fundamentals as well as scheme, you can get a hell of a lot more done. If you can't dumb it down and have it still work, you need to bring someone in to help you do it.

Number three, you're not going to get anywhere unless you listen. Not give lip service to listening, really listen. As the saying goes, A-level folks hire (and, by extension, listen to) other A-level folks. B-levels and below are afraid to "look weak" or otherwise allow themselves to grow, so they won't have themselves challenged. I don't know whether he needs security or patience or what, but the days of my-way-or-the-highway have to go, because this highway is leading us right to the gates of Hell. Find staffers willing to challenge you and put new ideas out there, and show you're willing to consider what they say.

Fourth, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. So much talk about the sizable buyout keeping you shackled to South Bend, are you willing to walk the walk and announce you've reached an agreement with ND to waive the buyout as of September 1, 2009. You're asking the fans to work without a net here in trusting you can change. How about inching out onto that limb with us?

That's a level of self-evaluation that must happen here, because without it, none of my requirements for 2009 will be met. What are those requirements? Glad you asked.

Win whatever third-tier bowl game ND ends up in this year. I'd also prefer some evidence it's going to be a good long time before we have to worry about a win or the venue, but I'll settle for Weis not becoming the first coach ever to have back-to-back losing seasons and still stay in his job.

Keep the recruiting class together, and add the likes of Xavier Nixon, Manti T'eo, and Jelani Jenkins. If recruiting truly is saving his behind, it'd better keep up.

Create an OL that could successfully block my grandmother, both on the ground and in pass protection. I don't give a damn what our pass/run play call mix is, but in situations where we absolutely have to do one or the other, we need to be able to do it successfully. A decent running game would have meant at least two more wins this year and two more not-so-close games. Lack of depth and stars isn't the case anymore.

On the raw W/L side, 11 wins, at least 10 of them in the regular season. Devil-like details would include no losses by more than 10 points, and that includes Southern Cal, and at least three wins by more than 21 points. It's time for the championship recruiting classes to become a championship team, and Weis is in the red on mulligans as it is.

If he's going to stay, that's what he needs. Otherwise, Swarbrick should spend the next 11 months getting the Tier-One hire on the line, because like it or not, Jack's now inexorably tied to Weis. Will he take him to new heights or pull him into the abyss with him? Only Weis' hypothetical knee doctor knows for sure.

It's Time

This one really hurts.

The last two didn't hurt, but this one does.

Okay, the last two hurt, but not in the same way. The last two times we fired guys, they were guys who didn't really care about ND as a place and decided to treat it as a career way-station on their planned route to College Station, TX, or the NFL. The losses and ineptitude that brought us to their dismissals were painful, but the solution was not.

This solution, however necessary, is different. Charlie Weis was a lot of things, but carpetbagger certainly wasn't one of them. When he told a recruit about the special aspects of the Grotto, he spoke from the heart. He spoke from the soul. He connected to Notre Dame and connected with us, and in doing so, brought hope things would turn around.

That connection kept Weis' head above water last year during a horrific 3-9 campaign that was as much his own doing as caused by his predecessor's recruiting shortfalls. But at 6-5, in the wake of one of the worst losses in Notre Dame football history and staring down the barrel of a top-10 team in Los Angeles that needs style points if they wants to play in the BCS championship game, that connection is dragging us down with him.

It's time to cut the connection before we all drown.

There really is no alternative. For the second consecutive season, ND will finish with a worse won-loss record than its talent would indicate. For the fourth consecutive season, ND will look worse in its last game than it did in its first. John Walters ran the numbers, and Charlie Weis sits today after four years with the exact same win percentage his two predecessors had on the day they were fired. It wasn't good enough then, and it's certainly not good enough now.

Weis said it himself: We didn't bring him here to go .500.

Dylan over at BGS described Jack Swarbrick as, "having barely opened his office door, has found the whole place to be on fire". Fair or not, football coaching hires are how AD's are judged, and it's Swarbrick at the bat, or with the fire extinguisher at least.

In a perfect world, he would have been sounding out potential replacements early to make this as seamless as possible. I'm willing to bet a lot of money that hasn't happened. But fear not, such things are still possible, and time remains.

Weis, in retrospect, was a poor hire. But I gain hope from the hiring track record of the current administration since that day. On the academic side, Tom Burish seems to have been a good get at Provost, there are a number of excellent candidates on the short list for the Law School, and even the most curmudgeonly curmudgeon on Rock's House applauded Marianne Corr's hiring as General Counsel. On the athletic side, Jeff Jackson prowls the blue line in the Joyce Center after taking Notre Dame to its first Frozen Four.

Good hires of people more than capable in their field seem to have been made in recent years, all without the word "residentiality" being uttered. This tells me the people involved know how to hire. If they all of a sudden can't get it done in football, that will tell me a whole list of other things, none of them good.

But in the spirit of hope springing eternal, I think it's important to remind all my gentle readers of the things all previous successful ND coaches since Rockne have had in common:

All were very experienced as a college coach. Elmer Layden had coached for nine years prior to arriving in South Bend. Ara Parseghian had 13 years' experience. Dan Devine and Lou Holtz both coached their 17th season in their first year at ND. The only exception to this rule was Frank Leahy, but he got quite a bit done in his two years at BC.

All had coached at the top levels of college before coming to ND. Duquesne was a strong program when Leyden was there. Ara coached in the Big 10, Devine in the Big 8 (now Big XII), Lou in the SWC and Big 10. Again, Leahy stands out with BC being an independent, but also again, what he did there makes up for it.

All had coached at least one major college team to an undefeated season, a top-10 ranking, or a major NYD bowl. Layden's 1929 Duquesne team went 9-0-1 and his 1933 team went 10-1 and won what is now called the Orange Bowl. In two years at BC, Leahy's teams went to the Cotton and Sugar bowls. Ara had Northwestern ranked #1 during his career, an unheard-of achievement in those days. Devine had an undefeated season at ASU, and had four top-ten finishes and went to three Orange Bowls and a Sugar Bowl at Mizzou. Lou was an Orange, Fiesta, and Sugar Bowl veteran by the time he arrived in South Bend, and had four top-10 finishes to his credit to boot, including one at NC State.

So it can be conclusively proven that Notre Dame has had success when led by an experienced, known-commodity coach. The myth once perpetrated by a former administration official that "Notre Dame makes coaches, not the other way around" is just that, a myth.

Unfortunately for us, however, these men also had two other things in common:

They were not in good coaching situations when they were hired. Notre Dame represented a step up or a dream come true for all of these men. Layden and Leahy were alumni. ND was a bigger stage and could give more than the Integer outlets at which Ara and Lou toiled. Devine was coming off a failed attempt to coach the Packers.

It definitely takes more moxie than the norm to woo a top coach away from what might be considered a cushy job. But we are, as the commercials during the game tell us, the Fighting Irish, and I expect a fight no matter who we end up hiring. What was the title of Charlie's book? No excuses.

They weren't saints. This has been a strong refrain of NDOldTown in recent days/weeks, and in this, he is absolutely right. All these men were ethical and good people. But they also were winners, and were willing to do what it took while following the spirit of the rules to get there. They worked hard and so did their players. If they saw an advantage, they took it. And they certainly didn't have people in their job interview talking to them about the importance of Catholicism and other tertiary concerns. There's a reason the Boy Scouts don't have a football team, and as long as we aren't treating players like pieces of meat and we ensure they graduate with meaningful educations while keeping our noses clean, it's all good.

These are the times that try men's souls, times when people who aspire to be Notre Dame legends have an opportunity to prove their worth. Fr. Jenkins and Jack Swarbrick have such an opportunity now, and it may be their last. Make it count, gentlemen.