Please take a moment to visit our sponsor's banner above! This helps us to pay for server fees. Thanks!
A Timing Spin, or Where Have You Been, Honey?
UHND.com - Rock Kanutski
11/27/2001
A quick spin on timing from the Rock, thanks to Morris Goldberg's delightful investigations about the hiring of the new Notre Dame head football coach.
Just feast your mind on this. As we tune in, our team has fought the usual brave fight, this time against Purdue, but nevertheless has managed to win/lose again.
So now it's over. The Nation is both relaxed after an exhausting emotional ride and braced for what follows. Beers are poured, oblations spilled to the gods, and the Nation sleeps through the weekend. Night falls on Sunday the second.
Sleep gently, Nation. The flood is almost upon us. When dawn breaks, the story unfolds as follows:
1. Davie resigns / is fired / slouches toward Bethlehem on December 3.
2. Gruden-Mariucci, the new head coach, is announced on or before December 5.
3. Cerrato-Chmiel, the new recruiting coordinator, is announced at the same press conference.
4. Mattison plus two assistants (plus Mickey) are retained in transition to run the banquet. The guest speaker? Gruden-Mariucci, of course.
5. Malloy-White is respectful of the players' need to say goodbye to Davie. A private event is arranged. Tears are shed; promises exchanged. A lone figure rides out of town, trailing a mist of Texas barbeque.
6. After a respectful day or so, new-coach shores up the fort. He meets with the players, plays winter golf with key alumni/ae, flexes his Super Bowl finger in anticipation of the weight it will carry. Everybody wants to touch him. He wants to be touched.
7. Recruits who once thought ND looked like your sister now see us as JLo, glammed in spangles and ripped in ghetto 'tigues. Where have you been, honey? Have I been blind? The phones don't stop ringing. It's not too late to bring up those grades, son, say the popular receiver and DB coaches. Let's try that test again.
8. Gruden-Mariucci (or at least, Gruden) rolls to the Super Bowl trailing clouds of enjoy-it-while-you-have-it glory. The team responds appropriately. Somebody wins, but nobody loses.
9. It's February already, and ND has just signed the best Freshman class in years. The Nation is OD'ed on anticipation and relief. But no sleep yet. Gruden-Mariucci rides into town for good, spurs jingling, and holds a winter pep rally near the invisible Ara memorial on the steps of Sorin Hall. The visible Ara shows up.
10. Tears frozen to their faces, the crowd can't get enough and offers new-coach the imperial crown, which he refuses thrice, each time less firmly than the last. (Oops, wrong story—kill the crown stuff, for now.)
11. Finally, everyone sleeps, except of course the basketball fans, who find a surprise in their stocking. Jeez, are we golden or what?
12. In April the real work starts. And as we bid farewell to the land endless waiting, the curtain finally falls on this part of the story.
While I haven't confirmed this yet with Monk's sister's boyfriend's milkman's maid, not
much else makes sense, so I've given my sources the evening off. It's a night landing, but
the lights are everywhere.
Now, would this make your winter, or what?
Yours in the coming of Fall,
Rock
(c) Rock Kanutski
All rights reserved.
If you're curious, the Rock was saying this in September:
The Wet Season: It's Crying Time Again
Published September 9After the Fall: The Transition
Published September 27
And the Rock on Davie, an unintentional epitaph:
The Dry Season 3: But Does He Have the Mark?
Published August 21