Out of his league
In the past, I had enjoyed reading Stewart Mandel's college football blogs and mailbags. He seemed pretty impartial, although he could be pretty sarcastic at times. But this article really should be titled, "I F#$%ing Hate Notre Dame" with a subtitle of, "I Hope They Never Win Another Game Again and the Virgin Mary is Raped By a Tiger".
I mean, I know its the cool thing to do to rip Notre Dame, but this is nothing more than a smear campaign. A couple of my favorite lines:
Between the on-field battering he's taken and the constant yo-yoing with Sharpley, Clausen's already fragile, freshman confidence is presumably shattered.Oh, really, Stewart? Have you been in touch with Jimmy Clausen recently? Because the one bright spot in last week's loss to Air Force was Clausen's play in the second half.
Lord only knows how much money NBC has lost on its investment.Ugh...
I can't even go on. Just read the article if you want to get really angry and break something...
UPDATE!
How did I miss this gem that also happens to be the first sentence of the article?
Let's start with a fairly obvious realization: Charlie Weis is a terrible college football coach.I agree that Weis is having a bad year (which Weis himself has admitted on many occasions), but those same upperclassmen that Weis had his first two years stunk when they played for Willingham. Does Mandel really think that had Willingham (or any other coach) been in charge, Notre Dame would've gone to back-to-back BCS bowls the past two years? Because I sure don't. If I recall, at the start of the 2005 season most college football "experts" predicted Notre Dame would start the season 0-6. Weis took them to the Fiesta Bowl. And he did it again the following year. That's a terrible coach?
2 comments:
Unfortunately, I agree with most of what Mandel writes concerning Weis' flaws and mistakes. I have a couple comments:
1) This guy read my previous blog post and stole my premise!
The problem is he didn't read all of my article! He takes the premise of an NFL coach not being able to succeed in college and thinks that is the sole reason for ND's problems this year. It's way more complicated than that.
2) Every article seems to be pumping up our past 3 recruiting classes in some sort of revisionist history to prove Weis sucks, and it's not a talent issue.
This cracks me up. The last 3 years, all I read about is how ND can't get the elite players at the critical positions. Then all of a sudden, when we stink - it's because our "superstar" recruits haven't been taught! Let's summarize the current teams rankings according to Rivals:
2004: 32nd (most players gone)
2005: 40th (Weis 1st year)
2006: 8th
2007: 8th
Give me a break! We have average talent, and the only reason we got ranked as high as #8 the last 2 years is because we had so many recruits to fill the team!
3) Why does a head coach have to be perfect immediately?
Granted this is Weis 3rd year, but even Mandel acknowledges his veteran teams the 1st 2 years. I wasn't a perfect radiologist the first time I was on-call. Is it fair to rip Weis for learning on the job when coaching a GAME? EVERYONE LEARNS AND GROWS!!! To think Weis should have been perfect this year with his first young team is dumb.
Ian is right that this is a smear campaign by the ND haters. All they want to see is Weis quit or get fired so that they can write another round of stories that for the 32nd time, Notre Dame football is truly dead this time! They need to get over it.
The thing that makes me laugh the most about all these articles is that all these sportswriters continue to bash Notre Dame and call us irrelevant. Charlie Weis is a terrible coach... Our schedule won't allow us to succeed... We're losing NBC money because we stink... Our history of greatness is fading... We have to join a conference...
However, what other 1-9 team in the country would EVER get as much press as ND? Has anyone heard about the god-awful season Miami is having? Me either, but every magazine in the country is reporting ND's loss to Air Force.
NBC is laughing all the way to the bank because people are lining up to watch ND (yeah, to watch us lose, but ratings are ratings!), and recruits know that even coming to ND during down years they still have a better chance of making the NFL then if they go to most other schools.
As long as the sportswriters of the world continue to bash Notre Dame, they are the ones that will keep ND relevant in the football news and give us the coverage we need. Bad press sucks, but it's a testament to your program that when you're 1-9, you still have more media attention than almost any other team in the country. Why else would our 2008 recruiting class be #1 in the country?
Post a Comment