Escape hatch: Weis to Giants?
BY
JAY MARIOTTI Sun-Times Columnist
A prediction: The Rev. Jesse Jackson soon will make a serious visit to the University of Notre Dame. He'll ask why Charlie Weis is keeping his job as football coach, in what could be the worst season in the program's storied-to-stinky modern history, after an African-American coach named Tyrone Willingham was fired in his third season with a 6-5 record and 21-15 career mark.
And Jackson will be absolutely right to ask. Because if perception is reality, the Domers are guilty of a racial double-standard.
When the priests, lawyers and CEOs who run the place made their dramatic call on Willingham, they established an extraordinarily high standard for their football coach. The knocks were that Ty wasn't recruiting well and was losing by lopsided scores, but truth be known, Weis had success the last two seasons with Willingham's very recruits -- Brady Quinn, Jeff Samardzija, Darius Walker, Tom Zbikowski -- and has lost his last six games by 20, 27, 30, 21, 38 and 17 points. That includes another wickedly bad, 31-14 home loss Saturday to Michigan State, which drops the Irish to 0-4 for the first time.
Rarely have I seen a major-college team struggle on Saturdays like Weis' group. It's beyond belief that a man with a $40 million contract through 2015, an offensive guru who created Tom Brady and wears three Super Bowl rings, could oversee a clueless, non-competitive blob. And it's almost surreal to think Notre Dame, though it hasn't really been NOTRE DAME in 15 years, could sink to such farcical levels that NBC should run a laughtrack during the game telecasts. I'm going to guess NBC wasn't sad about Willingham's ouster; so why does the network tolerate Weis' stinkbomb? This is about the last football program a major network should showcase every weekend, for the Irish are watchable fare only for gawkers who like car wrecks.
Don't be shocked, should the Flailing Irish start 0-8 and finish 2-10, if Weis seeks a convenient escape hatch in January: the New York Giants. How interesting that Tom Coughlin's tenure is ending as Weis, a New Jersey native and former Giants assistant under Bill Parcells, stumbles in his so-called dream job. Rewind to last month, when Weis said he expected to end his career at his alma mater:
``First of all, I bought an expensive house and dumped a lot of money into it to make sure my family is happy. I've got indoor riding arenas, I've got outdoor riding arenas, I've got paddocks, I've got a baseball field, a pool, a playroom. I've got a TV room downstairs that's pretty sweet, pool table, ping pong table, a game room. Do you think I'm in a hurry to move somewhere else?
``If I didn't think I could stay here for the rest of my career, both by me wanting to be here, me believing I could do it here, or them not wanting to get rid of me here, I would not be doing the things I'm doing off the field. I would not be doing it with my housing situation, I would not be doing it with my son or daughter, I would not be doing it with our charity. I really believe that this is where I'm going to retire. And the reason I believe it is the pressure that you feel that comes with this, I don't feel. I really don't feel that pressure.''
