Irish Eyes are Cryin'

"On the plus side, Notre Dame haters can breathe easy, knowing that Weis will be bumbling around the sidelines for at least another year. If you like seeing Notre Dame struggle, this is the best kind of news."

Dan Shanoff, http://www.sportingnews.com/, "Shanoff's Wake-up Call: ND Keeps Weis, Really?" December 3, 2008

The rumors started leaking last night, citing "unnamed sources" inside IrishEyes, the Notre Dame forum on Scout.com.

Certainly, it had to be true. Charlie Weis would get another year at Notre Dame.

Booya, Grandma!!!! Fight ON!!!

The only thing a Trojan fan likes better than participating in the demise of a coach at ND is the opportunity to watch everyone associated with the program suffer for another season. It's almost unfair. Beating them last Saturday night in the Coliseum 38-3. Holding them to four first downs -- the first of which came at the end of the third quarter. The last two of which came in garbage time. One of those two only coming after a 15-yard personal foul, courtesy SC.

Although I would have liked to see more offensive consistency from SC and a complete shutout, it's hard to nit-pick the performance. I was hoping that Jimmy Clausen would eat a bigger portion of Los Angeles dirt while pinned to the stadium floor. But, I'll take what we got. Fight ON! I especially enjoyed the Clausen quotes to his teammates overhead by reporters in ND's locker room after the beating subsided: "Guys, we're not that far apart."

Right. In your 21-year-old-sophomore boyish dreams. Whatever gets you up in the morning.

Yesterday, the headline on The Observer, Notre Dame's student newspaper, was "Good grief, Charlie." It was a sober and straightforward recitation of the facts. And, the stats.

Then, today, letters to the editor from alums were published. One student columnist even suggested that the team should decline a bowl game invitation, to circumvent further embarrassment. They awoke this morning to the official statement from their Athletic Director that Charlie will get more time. I don't know if they have enough candles in The Grotto for the procession of sad souls who will brave the bleak, gray Indiana skies in search of mercy.

The cynic in me assumes that the buyout provision in his contract must be more astronomically stratospheric than anyone thought. They just couldn't pay the money. It's not that they don't have the money - it's that they don't want to pay it.

I remember working for a CEO who didn't want to pay a reasonable buyout of an employee that both deserved and needed to go. He declined my recommendation and insulted her with a fraction of the amount. He eventually had to pay her more than twice what I had originally said would do the job. Of course, she had hired an attorney after the first offer. The rest, as they say, is history. It seemed to take forever to get her out of the organziation and pick up the pieces from the damage she had inflicted. And, the money had to be paid anyway. Just to make her go away. Just to "start over."

The pragmatist in me thinks that ND did the research and discovered they can't get Urban Meyer. At least, not yet. Not that Urban Meyer is the only possible successor to Charlie. But, as one of the alum letters in the student newspaper said today, "...We have a lot to be proud of at Notre Dame. I am proud to be a Notre Dame alumni. But we would be well-served if we used this Charlie Weis spectacle as an opportunity to be introspective and reassess the culture of arrogance that has developed at Notre Dame throughout the years."

That arrogance continues to assume that only the biggest names and the brightest talents are lined up like jets over O'Hare for that job. That their national championship-by-birthright is whatever year next season occupies. What the students and alumni have realized, but the administration may not yet understand, is that the world of Division I football has not only passed them by. It's left them dillusional in the dust.

The USC-Notre Dame annual contest has always been described as the greatest intersectional rivalry in all of college sports. Frankly, it's a lot of fun to pound the Irish into sand. But, just as frankly, it's really a lot of fun to pound them into sand -- or, just beat them -- when they're contending for something.

My first in-person USC-Notre Dame game was at the age of 16 with my 18 year-old boyfriend, a freshman at SC. It was a cold, cloudy day at the Coliseum, with the Goodyear blimp humming overhead, a sold-out stadium of long-haired women (and men), and a stadium configuration that permitted Traveler to round a track oval every time USC scored. Anthony Davis was knee-high to a grasshopper and ran and scored until he almost could not stand. Six times. Same for Traveler. The pure fun and no-stranger-in-my-midst environment of the student section confirmed that I had to attend USC. At the time, I didn't know how in the world I would ever afford it. But, I was going to do it. That was an Orange Bowl-bound, 8-1 Notre Dame team. USC won the national championship that year. But, the next year, Notre Dame won the national championship.

*****For extra points: Who did Notre Dame lose to in humiliating fashion in that Orange Bowl??

When I did get there, we had the USC-ND game of a lifetime in 1974 during the season of my freshman year. "The Comeback." The famous 55-24 miracle of a game, with another impossible Anthony Davis performance. The ND head coach at that time, Ara Parseghian, had brought the defending national champion Irish into the Coliseum and built a 24-0 lead just before halftime. Their previous season result, of course, meant that they had defeated SC at home to run the table for the trophy. But, in 1974, Davis triggered the comeback with a 102-yard kick-off return to make it 24-6 before they went into the tunnel.

We were still screaming, hollering and jumping around too much to see that we had missed the extra point. But, we knew. We knew USC was going to win. It was just a matter of time. Seventeen minutes of time, to be precise. That's all it took to grab an insurmountable 55-24 lead.

Years later, Parseghian was famously quoted as saying that he had had nightmares about "that white horse." Lots of loops around the Coliseum at his expense left him in a whirl. He resigned a few weeks after the '74 beating. Notre President Rev. Hesburgh told USC coach John McKay after the game, "...that wasn't very nice." In typical McKay fashion, he replied, "...that's what you get for hiring a Presbyterian!"

The rivalry is supposed to be like that.

The strategist in me believes that the buyout provision might have declining value the longer Weis keeps his job. Maybe there is something numerically significant about keeping Charlie one more year. For the price of moving forward, it would appear to be penny-wise/pound-foolish kind of stuff. But, Notre Dame seems to operate in a sort of environment that marries stiff, manufactured honor with prudish frugality. At least, for this coach.

Whatever works for them.

It's great to be a Trojan, especially in the first decade of the 21st Century.

Meanwhile, now that the Charlie saga is resolved for one more year, Trojans around the world can turn their attention to their other important rivalry. That would be, of course, the Battle for Los Angeles. This year, USC "travels" to Pasadena to play UCLA in their home stadium. The Rose Bowl. To utter "UCLA" and "Rose Bowl" in the same sentence continues to be quite nauseating. Just not right.

Anyway, Pete Carroll has been working for several seasons to revive the tradition of both teams wearing their home jerseys for their annual tilt. When both teams played their home games in the Coliseum, they both wore their "home" jerseys. That's what old alums like me remember.

The first college football game I ever watched on TV was in 1968 on Thanksgiving night. The "red" team was USC, and the "blue" team was UCLA. The boy who launched my college football education on that evening eventually chose to attend USC because I was living, by then, in southern California.

UCLA kept SC out of the BCS championship game two seasons ago by defending them into a corner, after SC had destroyed Notre Dame at home. UCLA alternates between bad and really bad; but, they still manage to really light themselves on fire for this rivalry. I don't give much to UCLA, but I'll give them that. They don't ever really go away. And, the rivalry really lives. It's juiced by all the "split households," with an SC grad married to a UCLA grad, etc. (Although, someone please explain to me how that could possibly ever really work out!!)

For me, this weekend's visual indulgence, at the mere price of a time-out, will be a trip through nostalgia that will always include those Notre Dame match-ups as well. I can joke about their program, their rotund coach, their arrogant players, and that queer leprechaun. But, to be honest, I really miss the days when a win over Notre Dame really meant something apart from another notch on the belt.

I'll watch the UCLA game on Saturday with my husband. Who was the boy who introduced me to the USC-UCLA rivalry. Who was the boy who took me to my first USC-ND game. Who was the man who married me on an October Saturday in southern California and stood around a small radio with me and the rest of the USC bridal party in the middle of pictures to listen to USC win another one over ND in South Bend. Who screamed with me like a crazy person when Matt Leinart threw to Dwayne Jarrett and completed a 61-yard pass play on fourth-and-nine in 2005. Who held me up when Pete Carroll beat Charlie Weis a few seconds later.

Some things change, but -- thankfully -- some other things remain the same.

*****Extra points answer: Nebraska. 40-6. Ara's worst loss as Notre Dame head coach.