One More Year
How impatient are college football fans? While struggling to a 6-6 record this year Notre Dame's head coach, Charlie Weis, has been on the hot seat. At least one of those losses can be attributed to the fans rooting against the Irish. In the loss to Syracuse Irish players were being pelted by snowballs from their own fans. While this season has been a disappointment for the team people have to realize this is a very young team. The starting quarterback is a true sophomore. His top receivers were sophomores and freshmen. The offensive line is full of juniors and sophomores.
The defense is also full of sophomores, juniors, and freshmen. Give Weis one more year. His work in his first two years should be enough for fans and administrators to have faith in him. He was 19-6 those two years and last year was a rebuilding year, when there were freshmen starting in almost every position. This is the hardest head coaching position in college football. The tradition is so rich, but the academic standards are strict. Weis cannot recruit the same players everyone else can, and if he could this would be a top 5 team every year.
He does the best with what he has and still does a good job of recruiting talent. He has had top ten recruiting classes each of the past 3 years and should have another one this year. That talent needs time to develop. He runs a complex pro-style system and it's hard to fit young players into it. If he's given the time to run this program the way he needs to then in a few years this will be a distant memory. He needs to build depth so that when seniors leave he has a sophomore or junior waiting in the wings with knowledge of the system, not true freshmen.
The Irish were an embarassment this year, but they lost some close games to very good teams. They narrowly lost to North Carolina and Pittsburgh, and had it not been for the rain, they stood a good chance against Boston College. So Irish fans, be patient. Let Weis show you that this season will not happen again. They should be very good next year.
12/01/08
