Matthew Cole

February 10th, 2007 at 9:24 am

This article is excellent.

ND supporters should write to the author at BlackAthlete and point out his errors — as this article on uhnd did. The author at Blackathlete should be embarassed by his math errors, factual errors and misleading statements. thank you for setting the record straight.

Tom Drake

February 10th, 2007 at 11:12 am

Here’s the e-mail I sent Norris Gray:Sir: Get your facts straight. There are 117 Division l-A football teams, not 217.

As for Notre Dame and Tyrone Willingham, it is obvious that you have no clue what you are talking about, and have done no in-depth research on the subject matter. After landing a nice recruiting class that entered school in 2003, his last two classes were by all accounts the worst two classes in the history of the program. All you would have to do is look at the depth chart for returning seniors (4th year players) and juniors to see how poorly a job he did recruiting his last two years. And it was only going to get worse, given his introverted personality, inability to generate an offense in 3 years, his lack of development of players (see Brady Quinn, Jeff Samardzija, Maurice Stovall, Rhema McKnight, Anthony Fasano, and many others), his inability to recruit offensive linemen (1 in 2 years), and his refusal at the end of the 2003 and 2004 seasons to fire his woefully inept offensive coordinator (go back and look up the rankings of the ND offense and passing under Tyrone). Gil Brandt, the former draft guru of the Dallas Cowboys, told a friend of mine that in his last year Tyrone was so desperate to find someone to play for him at ND that he was offering scholarships to kids in Texas whose only other offers were from Div.l-AA schools and SMU.

The man is a nice guy, but he is in way over his head as the head coach of a major college football team that aspires to win National Championships as opposed to finishing in the top half of the Pac-10. Go back and look at the tape of the 2004 ND-BC game. It was the most pathetic performance I have ever seen by a coaching staff. How many times, sir, have you ever witnessed a coach calling for a punt on 4th and 4 from the other team’s 30 yard line? Tyrone is working now at the last head coaching job he will ever have at this level. Better tie your horse to some other cowboy.

If ND is so racist, then why was Tyrone hired in the first place? Did it ever occur to you that the alumni of Notre Dame really, really hoped that Tyrone would be successful, but that he just did not have what it takes? And, why, sir, did you fail to mention that Notre Dame is one of only a handful of Div.l-A schools with both a black OC and a black DC? Did you fail to look that up, too?

Guys like you, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton find it convenient to throw around the race card when you are unwilling to research why things are the way they are. I am not defending what other colleges do or don’t do, but when you come after Notre Dame, you better have the facts. And brother, you don’t.

You owe Notre Dame and its alumni an apology.

Kevin Browne

February 10th, 2007 at 11:31 am

Ugh, it’s almost not worth replying to this kind of thing. The author of that article is not going to let facts get in the way of a good story. He couldn’t be bothered to research historical records, and couldn’t even be bothered to look at current events. Ty’s record at UW (admittedly, with even less talent than he had at ND) is 5 and 16 after 2 seasons. However, even with the lower academic requirements at UW, he’s still not getting the elite athletes there. His classes were ranked 35th last year and 29th this year - about the same as he did at ND. He gets the 3-star recruits while Weis gets the 4- and 5-star recruits. Football is a performance-based environment with immediate feedback on how you’re doing. However, some people see Race in everything.

Rob

February 10th, 2007 at 12:14 pm

These types of race allegations against Notre Dame are a joke. ND’s long time president, Father Hesburgh, who was instrumental in setting much of the policy at the university, was an original appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and served in that capacity for 15 years, from 1969 to 1972 as its chairman. He spent much of the early civil rights years in the South fighting to enforce the rights of black people to vote. In fact, it was at Notre Dame’s summer camp at Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin, where the final report of the initial Civil Rights Commission was written and where the Commission’s recommendations were voted upon and approved by the commissioners. A Notre Dame benefactor had voluntarily flown the commissioners to Wisconsin after a federal judge in Louisiana enjoined the commission from holding civil rights hearings in Shreveport on the grounds, of all things, that the Civil Rights Commission was unconstitutional. Come to think of it, it was students of Notre Dame who stood up to the KKK when they marched in South Bend, Indiana. In more recent years, the university has made strides to reach out to minorities and to increase the minority enrollment and faculty at Notre Dame. Those still flagging the race card at Notre Dame over the firing of a black football coach who did not perform up to expectations, on the field and in recruiting, are blindly turning their eyes away from the facts. This country has a long way to go to insure racial equality across the board. However, the fact that Coach Willingham’s termination is still considered newsworthy by some suggests that the country has, in fact, made great strides already.

Peder Ahearn

February 10th, 2007 at 1:51 pm

Great article. Thanks for using some common sense and researching your article.

Brandon

February 10th, 2007 at 3:02 pm

Whatever, Blackathlete is not a serious website anyways….. It’s not like the New York Times published this artical. Blackathlete is not expected to be accurate, its an oppinion board.

Dan Lafferty

February 10th, 2007 at 7:58 pm

Here was my reply to this idiot’s story….hope you all enjoy:

How dare you question Notre Dame’s decision to hire and fire Tyrone Willingham. You just sit at your desk, read up on stories that make you get a check every week, and think twice before you attempt to portray any athletic institution, especially the University of Notre Dame, as a place where minorites aren’t thought of as highly as other coaches of color.

Speaking as a Notre Dame fan, your story presents such a falsehood that I was ashamed to even attempt to read it; knowing that at the end of the article, it would come across as a racist attack on any school, team, fortune 500 company because they don’t even attempt to consider black head coaches, black CEO’s, etc., etc.

Maybe just maybe, who you consider suitable candidates for schools like Notre Dame, aren’t as suitable to positions as you think they should be. It has, and this is speaking on behalf of millions and millions of fans across the country, absolutely nothing to do with the color of a person’s skin. Tyrone Willingham wasn’t even the first candidate for that head coaching position to begin with. Did you look up the storyline on how they eventually hired Tyrone? I don’t think so. Stories like this article you published on February 10th on a racist website, keeps this “racism” in the NCAA and throughout the entire world alive and well.

Get your stories straight before writing articles as humorous as this one.

Cloudy

February 10th, 2007 at 8:18 pm

Good article Frankie V.

I wonder if Tyrone Willingham gave his consent to another article misappropriating him as a means to express a personal opinion on the race card issue in college athletics. Willingham’s name and career have probably been hijacked by this walik edwards to further a floundering writing career.

ndirish084

February 10th, 2007 at 8:50 pm

Wow.
I emailed him as well. Those facts were horribly misleading, and somebody should make sure they have accurate information before they play the race card.

Mike

February 11th, 2007 at 12:40 am

I have written an email to the author of the article. His email address is Norris19@yahoo.com. I will let you all know if he responds back.

LOVEMYIRISH

February 11th, 2007 at 3:03 am

I have exchanged a number of e-mails with the author, his editor, and the PUBLISHER of BASN.

I pointed out all the factual errors in his article.

This is the response of the PUBLISHER. (we were copying him on the mails)

“this is NOT my article by the way .. although I don’t have a problem with it …”

Does not have a problem with it??? He knows it is full of lies.

Just goes to show you the BlackAthlete.net believes that to push their agenda they must lie and not care about lying.

LOVEMYIRISH

February 11th, 2007 at 3:07 am

One other thing…this same IDIOT author wrote an article a few years ago talking about the hiring of Sylvester Croom. In it he referenced Ty.

He once said about Willingham: “another former Bay Area coaching star, Tyrone Willingham, formerly of Stanford, guiding them to six straight winning seasons before moving on to historic University of Notre Dame”
(reference: http://www.gibbsmagazine.com/Black%20Head%20Coaches.htm)

Yet this is not true. Willingham was head coach at Stanford from 1995-2001. During that time he posted 4 winning records in 7 seasons.
http://www.michigan-football.com/ncaa/f/stanford.htm

This author is a liar and a fraud. He lives in an alternate reality and the owner of the paper supports his lies 100%.

Shell

February 11th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

I didn’t realize this was still an issue that was being debated. Hiring an African-American coach seems to mean nothing, unless you keep him regardless of his performance.

Gregg

February 11th, 2007 at 3:31 pm

Why in the 21st century is this still an issue? The way I see it, race is an issue , but not necessarily to whites. I am white and feel that in todays society it is okay for a minority to be racist towards whites, but if it is vica versa we as whites get a discrimination suit against us. We all watched the weeks heading up to the super bowl and the biggest issue was the color of the coaches (personally I didn’t care if they were purple w/ pink dots) I wanted to watch a good game!! As for this fellow who wrote the article I respect his opinion but don’t agree with it at all. I guess if a ” black man” isn’t running everything in this country then they are being discriminated against. WELL BOLOGNA!! Ty Willingham sucked as the head coach of ND, and not because he was black. I still have that image of him with his pointer finger on the side of his head, his headset up in the air and the look of deer in the headlights. If Ty Willingham was white would be talking about this at all?

john

February 11th, 2007 at 3:48 pm

People are totally revising history. I read one article where the author stated Charlie Weis should be fired after his 3rd year because his record is the same as ty’s basically.

His argument: He pointed out notre dame lost games of 30 or more with ty there 5 times in 3 years. He compares the ohio state, michigan, usc and lsu losses to those trying to say weis has lost 4 games like that in two years to ty’s 5 in 3 years.

Where do i begin. the author fails to mention that there were seven other games in the Ty era where Notre Dame got blown out and totally dominated making it 11 to weis’s 3. i don’t count the ohio State game as a blowout since ND was within striking distance in the 4th quarter, even the USC game looked worse than it was because of the onside kick returned for a touchdown. But I digress, the author failed to point out the 2003 and 2004 blowout losses against a purdue team with not nearly the talent as Notre Dame.

I simply do not see why we must hear this ty crap all the time. I don’t see anyone mentioning Ron zook at Florida and urban meyer winning with his players.

Also i believe Flrida won 16 games in Zook’s final two years and have won 22 games in Meyer’s two years. a 6 game improvement. where as ND won 11 games in ty’s last two years and 19 in weis’s first two years. That is an 8 game improvement. has any other program done that?

Say what you want about Bob Davie. he did usually seem to get top 10 classes. the 2002 team willingham inherited was a talented one indeed. they had 17 starters back from the 2001 squad. the defense was pretty much all back and the 2001 defense had played well. Unfortunately he decided to take a QB like Carlyle Holiday and make him into a drop back west coast offense QB, thus totally negating his strong point which was his running ability. Anyone else here think if Charlie Weis had taken over in 2002 he would have done that? Hell no. he would have played to holiday’s strengths and I guarantee would not have had the 110th best offense (lor whatever the hell they were) in the country.

ty willingham has won as many games as his predecessor did at washington who got fired in just two years. I have no doubt that Willingham will win fewer than 5 games in 2007 and be fired for Jim Mora jr.

My new prediction: notre Dame will go 13-0 and win the national title and we’ll have to hear how Willingham set the program up for weis to win it all even though the majority of the players will havennever played or been recrutited by Ty.

MacK

February 11th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

I sent the an E-mail to Norris Gray, and this was his response. — Suprised I got one.

Willingham
Hello and thank you for the informational email;
I would like to thank you for giving me an insightful view of
The football program of Notre Dame
Yes I made two grave errors on this article and my mistake was to use
ESPN as my source and I should have looked into it farther.
Most of you harped on those two errors and not the real problem the NCCA has with hiring African American coaches
Most of you are avid sports fans and if you would read my other articles this does not happen often.
I trusted ESPN and its reporters in my short story
You will see that I try to write the best every time.
http://WWW.GIBBSMAGAZINE.COM is my home base and not BSN.
One thing that still brothers me about most of the emails I have received the past few
Days
They seem to forget that once an African American college coach gets fired it seems to be the end of the road for these coaches.
An example is the recent coaching vacancy at San Jose State Univ. he has not been interviewed for another job. It’s been almost three years.
Race in America will always be an issue with head coaches until we have Black College Presidents, Black Athletic Directors, and Black Alumni Presidents in decision making positions. The old boy network still exist my friends and Willingham was a victim of this system.
An African American coach rarely gets another chance while mediocre white coaches get rehired many times and fail many times. So African American coaches have to excel immediately, while white coaches do not. If you deny this fact then you my friend are truly blind.
Another question is how Willingham can coach Stanford and Washington so well and not coach at ND?
I must admit that I do not like some of the policies at ND because it comes across as though they think they are a privilege school and deserve these privileges
1) UND refuses to join a conference in football (BIG TEN)
2) They receive all bowl monies and do not have to share monies with anyone.
3) They have there own national network NBC and their football program
can be seen almost every weekend either on ABC, ESPN, or NBC. This program receives 2.1 million dollars for each telecast which other schools do not receive every week. This is a serious disadvantage for other schools.
I did not put this in the article because I thought it would be ND bashing but I guess it did not matter.
For your information The Black Coaches Association will be suing the NCAA this year for the lack of hiring African American HEAD Coaches. I praise UND for hiring two assistant coaches, and yes I should have written about this, but it needs to go farther.
Again thanks for your time

Wertzy

February 11th, 2007 at 5:31 pm

I too wrote to old Norris, and I got the same canned response as MacK. Nice canned reply.

john

February 11th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

The thing is football fans are probably the least racist people there are. personally i don’t care what a coach’s skin color is as long as he can actually coach. We ND fans thought willingham was the greatest thing since sliced bread when he started 8-0. But then he was exposed and went 13-16 in his next 29 games with 11 blowout losses, including among others two to Purdue, a team Notre Dame had owned over the years.

Not to mention a very subpar recruiting class in 2004 and what was looking like even a worse class for 2005 before he was fired.

Personally I hope Mike Hayward and Corwin Brown to great jobs and although i relaize if they do it means they will liklely get head coaching job offeres elsewhere, it also means that if they have success they could some day return to lead the program at some point in the future

Clarke

February 12th, 2007 at 1:24 am

The thing that is most funny about Norris’ response are his arguments about the certain benefits Notre Dame has. The humor, and major irony that exist in his arguments, most specifically Notre Dame not being in a conference, is that the main reason Notre Dame doesn’t compete in a conference is Notre Dame was victimized by prejudice. When conferences in college football began to form, Notre Dame wanted to join a conference, but being a catholic school in a society at the time that was largely prejudice towards catholics, they weren’t granted admittance to a conference for that reason. Notre Dame was forced to be an independent, and go out and build a nation wide schedule. The success of the program allowed them to develop what was then, and is still the largest nation wide fan base. He may ask, “what proof is there of that?”. Major proof in that is that in the majority of Notre Dame’s home games, NBC has the best performance in the ratings among the nationally televised games on saturday’s, and in the majority of the times they don’t, they mostly come in second. Notre Dame certainly does have other benefits that other programs don’t have, but the reason is that they earned it. Does this guy really expect that Notre Dame give up their exposure to that large nation wide fan base and join a conference, and NBC not to cash in on Notre Dame’s exposure around the country? If he does, then he is the one who is truly blind. What he doesn’t realise is that Notre Dame is actually a program that had to overcome prejudice, and really build their program more than any other team at the time. Granted that was decades ago, but the point is that Notre Dame is a university that stays true to the roots that made it great, and now people say they are prejudice, when that is the kind of struggle they had to overcome to be as great a university and football program as it is.

Mike

February 12th, 2007 at 8:28 am

I wrote to Gary as well and it appears as though he has had several emails written to him because i got the exact same response.

Willingham
Hello and thank you for the informational email;
I would like to thank you for giving me an insightful view of
The football program of Notre Dame
Yes I made two grave errors on this article and my mistake was to use
ESPN as my source and I should have looked into it farther.
Most of you harped on those two errors and not the real problem the NCCA has with hiring African American coaches
Most of you are avid sports fans and if you would read my other articles this does not happen often.
I trusted ESPN and its reporters in my short story
You will see that I try to write the best every time.
http://WWW.GIBBSMAGAZINE.COM is my home base and not BSN.
One thing that still brothers me about most of the emails I have received the past few
Days
They seem to forget that once an African American college coach gets fired it seems to be the end of the road for these coaches.
An example is the recent coaching vacancy at San Jose State Univ. he has not been interviewed for another job. It’s been almost three years.
Race in America will always be an issue with head coaches until we have Black College Presidents, Black Athletic Directors, and Black Alumni Presidents in decision making positions. The old boy network still exist my friends and Willingham was a victim of this system.
An African American coach rarely gets another chance while mediocre white coaches get rehired many times and fail many times. So African American coaches have to excel immediately, while white coaches do not. If you deny this fact then you my friend are truly blind.
Another question is how Willingham can coach Stanford and Washington so well and not coach at ND?
I must admit that I do not like some of the policies at ND because it comes across as though they think they are a privilege school and deserve these privileges
1) UND refuses to join a conference in football (BIG TEN)
2) They receive all bowl monies and do not have to share monies with anyone.
3) They have there own national network NBC and their football program
can be seen almost every weekend either on ABC, ESPN, or NBC. This program receives 2.1 million dollars for each telecast which other schools do not receive every week. This is a serious disadvantage for other schools.
I did not put this in the article because I thought it would be ND bashing but I guess it did not matter.
For your information The Black Coaches Association will be suing the NCAA this year for the lack of hiring African American HEAD Coaches. I praise UND for hiring two assistant coaches, and yes I should have written about this, but it needs to go farther.
Again thanks for your time

Elizabeth

February 12th, 2007 at 10:05 am

I actually received the canned response and then another personalized one. I posted it on the football board, but I’ll post it here, too:

“i really dont care if willingham ever gets another job. he is not one of the better coaches. The NCAA is currently at fault. after 60 years only 5 african american coaches now man the sidlines in america .. that is a disgrace with over 200 schools. come on be real. with white administrations this will always be a problem. you mean to tell me that all of these school cannot find minority coaches.. it took legal action to move the NFL and it looks like it will take legal action to move the NCAA. i may have made mistakes in my article but you can bet the NCAA did not make mistakes in the hiring tactics of minority coaches. until white americans look in the mirrow and say yes, we are part of the problem and yes i will truly try to help we are just playing word games..”

First, don’t even get me started on his spelling, grammar, and punctuation. How can one expect readers to respect his writing if he writes like a seventh grader? But anyway…

Basically, the writer admitted that Tyrone is a poor coach and stated that his real problem is with the NCAA. Well then, Mr. Norris, perhaps you should bash the NCAA in your article, not the University of Notre Dame.

Nebraska

February 12th, 2007 at 2:21 pm

Frankie V:

Just curious, but why would you even bother with a publication named “BlackAthlete.net”? I mean come on. Paying attention to what they have to say is no different from paying Rush Limbaugh’s comments regarding Donovan McNabb seriously. Look, this Willingham thing takes a lot of sensitivity. It takes that to admit that Willingham obviously did not get a fair shot in terms of the time that it takes to move a talent - poor option program into a passing program, and a lot of black people are going to see that and relate that to their own personal experience of dealing with unfair racism. They especially note how the schedule has been MUCH EASIER under the first two years of Weis (where he has gone 19 - 6 without having to beat a single top 20 team) than it was under Willingham.

These people are not Notre Dame fans who followed recruiting, the performance of the team from week to week, the press conferences, the performances and handling of the assistants, etc. Those people know that even if Willingham had been given all of the time that he needed to succeed, that it still would not have mattered, he was going to fail anyway, and as a result it was in the best interests of BOTH Willingham AND Notre Dame to part ways when they did, as Willingham was still able to get another job where he has a better chance of success (thanks in no small part to the lowered expectations) and Notre Dame was able to attract a very qualified coach.

You are NOT going to hear that perspective on “blackathlete.net”, or from any of the agenda - driven race - mongerers. You are not even going to hear them talk about how not even Jesse Jackson said a peep when Willingham was fired. Why? Because Jesse Jackson is a former college football player - and was a very good one, was offered a free agent contract by the New York Giants - and knew the deal; Willingham wasn’t even able to recruit Jackson’s own power base of Chicago! Just like you are never going to hear Rush Limbaugh admit that Donovan McNabb’s completion percentage would be better if he had guys like Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne to throw the ball to, and guys like Edgerrin James and Joseph Addai to hand off to (sorry, Todd Pinkston, Freddie Mitchell, Brian Westbrook even when he is healthy, and Correll Buckhalter are not in their league … boy, drafting Corey Simon - who gave the Eagles one and a half whole seasons before getting overweight, getting hurt, and quitting like FSU products almost always do - over Plaxico Burress is really looking smart right now isn’t it?).

Sure, black coaches face discrimination in the hiring process and face more barriers after their hiring, but “Blackathlete.net” ought to be asking why Tyrone Willingham, Karl Dorrell, Denny Green, Bobby Williams, Bob Simmons, Ron Cooper, John Blake, Ron Dickerson, and Jim Caldwell are not as successful as has been Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith. My theory: when black coaches get hired, it is often not the most qualified black coach, but the one who best fits what “affirmative action” types are looking for: guys who look all nice and presentable on the surface. Case in point: Tyrone Willingham has gotten a long way out of knowing how to play the race game, but Tony Dungy for some reason gives a lot of people the creeps when they meet him personally. That was why Willingham, who has zero football knowledge, was a head coach at Stanford while Dungy, who himself invented a new style of defense, was still working as a coordinator in Minnesota. A lot of the people in the “race shouldn’t matter” crowd seem to forget that the only reason why Dungy ever even got a shot was because NO ONE ELSE WANTED TO COACH THE TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS! At the time, they were the worst franchise in pro sports, and the team’s notoriously bad owners were in the middle of a “build us a new stadium or we will move the team” shakedown of the city, which of course did not want to shell out hundreds of millions in tax revenue to keep a team that went 2 - 14 every year from moving. So Dungy was offered the job only after Jimmy Johnson and Steve Spurrier turned them down publicly and who knows how many people turned it down behind the scenes. No one save Dungy was willing to take the job for a franchise that was threatening to move, and ironically it was their ability to promote the hire of Dungy (along with a “raise taxes and use half for the stadium and the other half for public schools” scheme) that kept the franchise in Tampa Bay! Had Malcolm Glazer not made being willing to coach the team no matter where or when he decided to move it, someone else would have taken the job, and Tony Dungy would have never gotten the chance to coach the Bucs, and probably would have never been a head coach at all. And since Lovie Smith is the coach of the Bears because he was defensive coordinator of the Rams, and he was defensive coordinator of the Rams because he was Dungy’s linebacker coach, Smith wouldn’t have gotten HIS CURRENT JOB either. So, these folks who were so quick to say “Why do we have to talk about the race of Dungy and Smith, why can’t they just be two good coaches” are able to say that because they have NO IDEA HOW CLOSE WE WERE FOR THAT MOMENT NEVER HAPPENING; FOR DUNGY AND SMITH TO HAVE NEVER BEEN HEAD COACHES AT ALL!

So yes, it is possible to be sensitive to the legitimate concerns of “blackathlete.net” and their ilk while simultaneously ignoring everything that they say, and that is the path that I urge you to take.

Cloudy

February 12th, 2007 at 10:05 pm

Elizabeth

I received an email from Norris 19 and he naivley asked “What is the big deal…?” He hasn’t a clue but he clearly wants in on this national dialogue about minority coaches. He hasn’t the heft or stamina to swim with it though. I kind of feel sorry for him. … NOT! (I know; old extraction, but it works here.) He’ll probably drown trying. n.

Walik Edwards

March 1st, 2007 at 7:51 pm

I’m kind of late to this dance, but since I saw my name posted on here I’ve decided to chime in - and under my real name, so there’s no mistaking who the source of this is.

First to Cloudy, because you too have to check facts, etc., when someone actually throws up a link for you to look at, click on THAT link. If you start fumbling around just looking for a name to rail against, your cred bites the dust and you just come off as a wannabe, and almost as irresponsible as the author you’re really supposed to be hurling spitballs at.

This is the URL for the article I wrote when Willingham was fired: http://www.blackathlete.net/artman/publish/article_0199.shtml

There’s no time in there when I say race is a factor in why he got fired, and if you find one, I’ll be available at walik-a-mouse@msn.com.

I applaud everyone who wrote back to this author (I don’t know him personally) in regards to his error, because as I said near the end of my article, “Let’s be more responsible to our younger people and say, in order for you to sustain this, these things have got to happen.” In other words, you have to win, or you’ll be out of there.

There are three paragraphs (and please check it so you know that I’m not just blowing smoke) from my article that sum up my feelings on this:

I don’t like to call out racism acting crazy like my steroids are kicking into overdrive, especially in this case where there were many other factors that led to the firing, and with my son being close to six months old, I would prefer him not to have jump on the racism bandwagon every time a black person gets fired, or is berated for participating in a ridiculous football game introduction.

I want him to dig around like his father, and come up with a comprehensive on why and why not based on something other than the old-reliable-status-quo-I-feel-better-getting-that-off-my-chest-again, thanks said university, team, etc.

They looked poor over the last couple of seasons, and because it was showing its you-know-what that he could not recruit at the school, it might have been time to bite the bullet because waiting another three years for him to come up with the elixir to make talented kids want to come to Notre Dame, and pass up better opportunities at Miami, Oklahoma, USC, etc. isn’t money-friendly – and just in case you forgot the bottom line to all of these jobs, is getting coaches who can win in a hurry, because winning brings in the dough.

I spend a lot of time putting out a lot of unpopular sentiments in this article, and got plenty of e-mails in the “HOW DARE YOU?!” vein. I’m usually fighting with BA because the race hoo-hah is the first bullet to be shot out of the gun, and I think it’s irresponsible.

I was the only one, I think, who jumped on Tony Dungy for ripping those teams who didn’t hire Marvin Lewis at first, and while Mr. Dungy doesn’t know me from Cloudy, I was happy that I took my particular tack because Marvin (as if I know him) said that he stunk in his interviews - so we got a little counseling on how to do them, and now he’s the warden for the Cincinnati Bengals.

I contribute to BA, it’s not my bread-and-butter gig, and I’m not here to promote anything, but I think you have to look at the scant few of us who are not jumping on the race card bandwagon every time a Black loses a job, doesn’t get hired, etc. I personally think people who complain a lot are people with very little skill when it comes to problem solving.

I don’t do it because it’s different, I do it because it is the truth, and aren’t we who expect people to read our stuff responsible to be credible - at least somewhat credible?

I agree with Frankie V. that backtracking is tiresome, and if we don’t have anything new to say, then shout at a wall or something, but I’ll end this by saying, if you’re going to open a mouth and say something, make sure all your facts are straight, Cloudy, and if you’re going to try to ridicule someone, at least do it with a name that sounds real.