Posts tagged Charlie Weis at FanHouse

Miami of Ohio -- not to be confused with Miami Florida, which also has a black head coach in Randy Shannon -- has hired Notre Dame "offensive coordinator" Mike Haywood to run its program. He succeeds Shane Montgomery, who stepped down after a 2-10 season.

Color us a little confused if encouraged by this hire. Just today we wrote about Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis' continued decision to call plays for his offense instead of his, you know, offensive coordinator, who just so happened to be Haywood. It's very likely that speaks to Weis' own massive control demands, but it may also speak to Haywood's abilities. Regardless it's nice to see another black head coach among the ranks.

For a while, the prospects for minority head coaches in D-I-please-don't-call-it-the-Football-Bowl-Subdivision looked grim, as their numbers shrank when Washington canned Tyrone Willingham, Kansas State parted ways with Ron Prince, and Sylvester Croom stepped down at Mississippi State.

What has happened since has been a needed surge of black /minority coaching hires.

Turkey Legs to Go is FanHouse's complete travel guide for all of the 2008-2009 college bowl games. Here, we cover the Hawaii Bowl (Honolulu, Hawaii), which pits Hawaii against BYU.

Overview / Matchup: One would be hard pressed to find a football team more deserving of a trip to beautiful Hawaii than the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Or, maybe you disagree. You filthy cynic. Either way, we all win, because Charlie Weis will be rocking shorts and a Hawaiian shirt come late December.

Okay, yes, that's a losing scenario, but it's one we face with Notre Dame heading to the islands for a post season bowl, and one that will have them face off against the "native" Rainbow Warriors, who are fortunate enough to avoid travel expenses and get to give the Irish a chance to really regret firing Chuckles.

Hotels: There are a few budget hotels closer to Aloha Stadium, but the main tourist area is 20 or 25 minutes away. However, if you're seeking quality accommodation the drive will be worth it. Stay at the Halekulani and swim in their world famous Orchid-mosaic pool. If the Halekulani is out of your price-range, stay at its sister property, the much more affordable Waikiki Parc Hotel. Guests are offered plenty of shared privileges with the Halekulani (except for use of the pool). If economy is your concern, stay at the Pacific Marina Inn. The hotel has limited services and accommodation, but it's one of the only places in Honolulu where you can find a room for under 100 a night. It's also closer to the airport and the stadium than the other hotels.

There was a ton of speculation this week that Charlie Weis, after meeting with his boss on December 8, might be out as the head coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Of course, that didn't stop Weis from telling potential recruits that he would still be in charge of the football team.

Turns out ... he was right.

Sources have told Irish Eyes that athletic director Jack Swarbrick will publicly announce, most likely within the next 24 hours, that Weis will be back for his fifth season in South Bend.

There has been some uncertainty about Weis' future since the 38-3 loss to USC, but it appears Swarbrick will be sticking behind Weis.

"Uncertainty" is a nice way of putting it I suppose; it seemed almost guaranteed that there would at least be some sort of ultimatum put on Weis regarding win totals in the future, at the very least.

But there's been no official word of that and presumably, Sportscenter's reporting of this information can count as "confirmation", right? (Assuming, of course, that Scoop Mortensen isn't behind this story, in which case Weis is almost assuredly fired.)

The fact of the matter is that it would be incredibly difficult for the Irish to actually let Weis go given the, ahem, weight of his contract, and the best case scenario -- with potential replacements Skip Holtz, Tom O'Brien and Brian Kelly all staying put -- seems to be letting the big man ride out his whale of deal.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish, a feel good story if there ever was one, are in a precarious position with regard to their head coach, Charlie Weis. See, in case you missed it, Weis has been stinking the joint up since he got to South Bend. But the Irish just can't punt on Ole' Slim, because they'll owe him an insane amount of money.

On the other hand, they've got a pretty good shot of landing East Carolina head coach Skip Holtz, should they pounce now, and frankly, about anything seems like a viable option compared to Weis. But Chuckles doesn't think he'll be gone next year. In fact, he's telling recruits (via the unfathomably awesome Mouthpiece Blog) that he'll be back next year. Specifically, Shaquelle Evans.

"I asked him about his job status," Evans told the web site after Weis visited him Sunday. "He told me he's good to go; he'll be there. He said he made sure he's good before he left and it's just the media spreading that he's going to get fired. He said if he didn't know if he was going to be there or not he would tell me. It makes me feel good that he'll be there."

See? I told you he was being honest -- if he knew he was gone, he would tell Evans. But clearly Weis doesn't know if he's gone or not, because he doesn't meet with his boss until December 8. But imagine that you were in charge of a company that was failing miserably and you had to meet with your investors in a week: would you be confident of your job status?

Notre Dame came into tonight's matchup against #5 USC at the L.A. Coliseum with nothing to lose. While nobody was bold enough to predict an Irish upset, plenty were predicting that Charlie Weis's team would show some fight against Pete Carroll's Trojans. And they were right -- at least as far as the pregame festivities went.

In a scene worthy of You Got Served (or perhaps Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo), Notre Dame took the field with the zeal you'd expect from a team who's beaten the likes of Washington, San Diego State and Navy, hellbent on showing Southern California who's the man.

The Irish proceeded to interrupt the Trojans' pregame warmups, and the most evenly-matched showdown of the night ensued. Verbal barbs were traded, punches were thrown (but from the looks of things, mostly not landed) and coaches -- and eventually police officers -- had to step in and restrain players on both sides. Fighting extended all the way to midfield, where players from both sides were still trying to get at each other as authorities attempted to separate the two warring factions.

As for the game action, well, through the first half it's fallen vastly short of the pregame festivities. Through two quarters USC leads Notre Dame 24-0.

I can't envision a situation where someone of sound mind would agree to take the Raiders' head coaching gig, given what's happened since owner Al Davis fired Bill Callahan in 2003. We've seen Norv Turner, Art Shell, Lane Kiffin and now Tom Cable amass 17 wins in four-plus seasons. Staggering.

So maybe Oakland's best hope is to find an eager, young, bright football mind, someone who would use the opportunity to get some experience, while changing the culture of losing in the process. You know, somebody like, say, Lane Kiffin.

Or maybe not. The New York Daily News' Gary Myers has a suggestion:

Former Giants coach Jim Fassel fits the profile to be the Raiders' next head coach: He wants to coach again. After the Lane Kiffin disaster, Al Davis is not going to hire another coach barely out of diapers. The hot assistants are not going to want that land mine as their first NFL head coaching job. So that leaves the recycled coaches.

Myers points out that Fassel lost out to Herm Edwards in Kansas City, Scott Linehan in St. Louis and Kiffin in Oakland, which raises more questions than it answers, I think. Fassel, who took the Giants to the Super Bowl in 2000, couldn't beat out three guys who have subsequently run their respective teams into the ground, and two of them have already been fired?

Alright so the Irish didn't lose today, but they tried their darnedest to do so after leading Navy 27-7 late in the fourth quarter. How did they get from there, to here (27-21 victory with Navy stopped near the Irish end zone)? Lets take a walk on the wild side.

First of all, Notre Dame's "decided schematic advantage" didn't materialize until the second half when they realized Jimmy Clausen would remain an interception machine and it might be better to run the ball against an opponent line on average 40 pounds lighter than the Irish line. Clausen contributed to this decision with a pair of first-half picks and a boneheaded head-first scramble that knocked him out for one play near the end of the first half.

Once Notre Dame acknowledged force = mass x acceleration and accelerated its mass into the Navy defense, they pushed their 10-7 halftime lead to 27-7. Look no further than the 51-19 final rush/pass ratio. Easy breezy, right? Not so much.

And it ain't pretty. Perhaps sensing an opening to take shots at the Notre Dame coach after the new athletic director had to issue something resembling a vote of confidence this week and Jason Whitlock took to calling him college football's "Pear Bryant", the Tribune fired off several more volleys at the ego of the Irish coach.

The Tribune's college football writer Teddy Greenstein delivers a virtual treasure trove of anecdotes and quotes hammering at Weis' seemingly limitless ego. An appetizer:

When [Jeannette PA football coach Ray] Reitz told Weis that [recruit Terrelle] Pryor might attend a USC quarterbacks camp, he remembers Weis replying: "Why send him there? If he's with me for one day he'll be good, two days he'll be great and three days he'll be incredible."

Later, unprompted, Weis asked the Jeannette coaches if they wanted to take a picture of his Super Bowl ring.

What, no request to kiss the ring as well? Ask Pitt what it thinks about Jimmy Clausen after two years with Weis.

Look, I'm not the one saying Charlie Weis is underpaid. It's the fine folks over at Coaches Hot Seat who claim that the best-paid coach in college football isn't making enough. Notre Dame's head coach makes $4.2 million a year, but Coaches Hot Seat says he ought to be paid $5.25 million.

Where do they get off saying this stuff? They didn't just pull that number out of thin air. Coaches Hot Seat figures that a coach should be paid 7.5% of his school's football revenue. Why 7.5%? I don't know, but they claim that the average coach takes in 7.61% of the team's football revenue, so their numbers seem reasonable. Still, take all this with a grain of salt.

Weis is getting shafted by more than a million bucks a year, so is he the most underpaid coach in college football? Nope. Not even close. The school getting the biggest bargain, as measured in sheer dollars, is Georgia. Few can argue with Mark Richt's record as the head Bulldog and, at $2.2 million a year, he probably doesn't remember what ramen noodles taste like. CHS says he ought to be getting just under $5 million. Mack Brown? Underpaid. Jim Tressel? Ditto.

The list of underpaid coaches doesn't stop there.

There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic in South Bend right now. After all, at this time last year the Fighting Irish were 0-5 and well on there way to the worst season in school history. This season they've already surpassed 2007's win total, and are 4-1 while seeming to get better every week. Jimmy Clausen improves with each game, having two consecutive career games, and wide receivers Michael Floyd and Golden Tate give the Golden Domers the ability to score from anywhere on the field.

If there has been a weakness for this Irish team, though, it's been the kicker. Through five games Irish kicker Brandon Walker has made only one of his seven field goal attempts, and he's seven for twenty dating back to last season. After two more misses on Saturday in Notre Dame's 28-21 win over Stanford, Charlie Weis has seen just about enough of Mr. Walker.

"We definitely have to explore Ryan [Burkhart] kicking field goals,'' Weis said Sunday. ''Because in Brandon's case, it's not obviously a case of being able to kick it high enough or far enough. When you're 1 out of 7 kicking field goals, it just doesn't cut it.

''I've heard worse suggestions than that,'' Weis said when asked if sitting Walker for a game or two was an option. ''I don't know the answer to that at this point. We're going to get after this Monday and Tuesday, and we're going to make a decision on what we're going to do.