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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Ty Willingham, Notre Dame's first black coach, gets fired quicker than any of his modern predecessors, some of whom were less successful. What could possibly explain that?
Dec 1, 2004 | Ty Willingham is out after three seasons as football coach at Notre Dame. When Willingham was hired away from Stanford in 2002 he became the first black head coach at Notre Dame -- in any sport.
And he wasn't Notre Dame's first choice, remember. Willingham was only hired after George O'Leary, hired five days earlier, had been forced to resign following revelations that he'd lied on his résumé.
The Fighting Irish were coming off a 5-6 season in 2002 and they shot out of the gate 8-0 before stumbling to a 10-3 record that included a loss in the Gator Bowl. It was the best first season for a Notre Dame football coach since Ara Parseghian went 9-1 in 1964.
Last year the Irish fell back to 5-6, then went 6-5 this year and accepted a bid over the weekend to the Insight Bowl.
Willingham had a six-year contract. Never before has Notre Dame failed to honor the contract of its football coach. Other than a pair of interim coaches, the last man who lasted as few as three years on the Notre Dame sidelines was Hunk Anderson, who took over when Knute Rockne died in a plane crash. That was in 1931.
Let's put our heads together and see if we can think of anything that separates Willingham from all of his predecessors -- in every sport -- at Notre Dame.
I can't think of anything, can you? That's because this isn't about race, it's about winning. That's the story from Notre Dame, and it's something I think Notre Dame's people believe as they're saying it.
The school's board of trustees held an "emergency" meeting Monday night to discuss the coaching situation, and I don't think the first, last or middle thing said was "We gotta get rid of the black guy." The emergency wasn't that the trustees finally looked at a picture of Willingham.
But just because nobody's waving Confederate flags around doesn't mean race isn't part of the equation.
"From Sunday through Friday our football program has exceeded all expectations in every way," athletic director Kevin White said at Tuesday's news conference. "The academic performance is at a fever pitch. It's never been better. Tyrone has done some wonderful things. But again, on Saturday, we struggled. We've been up and down and sideways a little bit, a little bit inconsistent."
It's worth stopping here to note that Notre Dame is that rarity among big-time football schools in that talk about academic performance is by most accounts genuine. "Academics are very tough," former coach Bob Davie told ESPN Tuesday by way of explaining some of the unique challenges at Notre Dame. "Players are just like members of the student body."
Imagine!
