Notre Dame Coaching Options
The top candidates for college football's top job.
Pete
Fiutak
Charlie Weis is fired? No … it can’t be. What’s next, Dan Hawkins is going to get another year at Colorado? Adam Lambert is just flamboyant? What? Who could’ve seen this coming?
The “schematic advantage” didn’t work out in South Bend with Weis unable to overcome the disaster in 2007 to build the program into a BCS contender. If he had gone 8-4 this year he might be staying put, and he would’ve been around for another year for sure with a 9-3 record, but to lose to Navy for the second time in three years, and because the program doesn’t appear to be all that close to playing for the national title, it's time to make a change.
It’ll be a stunner if the athletic director, Jack Swarbrick, and the Irish higher-ups make a move right away on a new head coach unless someone like a Brian Billick or a Jon Gruden turns out to be the “wow” guy to end the debate before it starts. However, there’s no reason not to wait six weeks or so and be able to talk to some of the big-time college coaches after they’re done with the bowl season.
Assuming that Weis really is done, there’s no shortage of who's who options to look at. Here are the six most viable dandidatess and the odds of possibly getting the gig.
6. Jon Gruden Odds: 150-to-1
The combination of don’t-ruffle-feathers, don’t-burn-bridges, play-it-safe, cliché-ridden analysis, along with a speaking tone stolen from Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China, appears to have been enough for ESPN to give Gruden an extension after just a half year of milquetoast work on Monday Night Football. He can go on living a sweet life dumbing down America even further as a broadcaster, but everyone knows he’s itching to get back into coaching as soon as humanly possible. While he wants to be back in the NFL, he’s widely thought to be the No. 5 man among the Big Five of coaching free agents (behind Bill Cowher, Mike Holmgren, Mike Shanahan, and Tony Dungy), and after this year, there might not be a slew of jobs available at the price he’s command. Most of the bad teams in the suckfest known as the bottom third of the NFL are manned by coaches just getting started in the turnaround process.
While Gruden is an attractive name for Notre Dame to pitch woo to, and he has the potential to be a god of a college coach because of his youth and enthusiasm, this might not be the right fit for him. He doesn’t need a high profile job, he’s already hanging out in everyone’s living room for three hours every Monday night, and he certainly doesn’t need the money after Tampa Bay had to eat a portion of his contract. And Notre Dame doesn’t want to be seen as a stepping stone for an upwardly mobile guy like Gruden. If anything, Louisville, if and when that job comes open, might be the better stopgap for a few years before a trip back to the NFL.
5. Brian Billick Odds: 50-to-1
Because Weis wasn’t an insufferable enough blowhard, and because dealing with the program under his reign wasn’t enough of a challenge, Notre Dame might be looking to do the impossible and ramp up the arrogance level even more. Billick made a name for himself as a brilliant offensive mind at BYU, San Diego State, and Stanford before turning the Minnesota Vikings of the early-to-mid 1990s into a record-setting juggernaut. Of course, he’s mostly known for leading the 2000 Baltimore Ravens to a Super Bowl with, arguably, the greatest defense in NFL history, but that was a bit of an aberration as his teams were never able to catch lightning in a bottle again.
Billick is a big personality and a big name, but his abrasiveness will rub parts of the Gold and Blue Nation the wrong way from Day One, considering Weis and Ty Willingham weren’t exactly Mr. Warm and Captain Fuzzy
and many will want a different type of coach. Do recruits care about Billick’s name or résumé? Probably not, and he’d have to prove right away that he can appeal to the top name, four-and-five-star prospects or this would go very, very badly, very, very quickly. However, he’s extremely bright and is reportedly flawless in interviews. If Notre Dame picks Billick and he turns out to be 1/10th as good as he thinks he is, it’ll be in the BCS every year.
4. Jim Harbaugh Odds: 40-to-1
Notre Dame fans want to beat USC again and Harbaugh has done it twice. While he has successfully poked the bear while turning around a Stanford program that cares about academics even more than Notre Dame does, there’s one problem … the dude is sort of, well, different.
There’s no question that he’s a brilliant football coach, especially for offenses. His teams at San Diego (the college version) were fantastic, his tutoring of quarterbacks has been phenomenal, and his arrogance and attitude have been a plus for teams in need of arrogance and attitude. But he’s not necessarily going to be a P.C. sort of figurehead who might fit in with the image Notre Dame wants to project. Remember, he was out of the running for the open Michigan job a few years ago before he was even a candidate after dogging the academic side of things under Lloyd Carr.
There’s also the Gruden-like issue of his career goals. In a heartbeat he might turn out to be the hottest NFL coaching prospect from the college ranks, especially after the success his brother, John Harbaugh, is having with the Baltimore Ravens. But Harbaugh says he loves coaching at Stanford and isn’t looking around, he can stay the head coach as long as he wants to, or at least through the extension that goes through 2014, and most importantly, he has a sweet $70,000 office bathroom. And yeah, he’s just wacky enough that he really might stick around.
3. Bob Stoops Odds: 25-to-1
It has been reported by the South Bend Tribune that Stoops is high on the Notre Dame wish list … two places behind a 78-degree November day in South Bend and Beyonce gift-wrapped under the Christmas tree. While Notre Dame might want Stoops, Stoops likely isn’t going anywhere for a long, long time. And why would he? This year was a total aberration and would’ve been far different had Sam Bradford and TE Jermaine Gresham not been the leaders on a long list of injured players. Oklahoma is less than a year removed from playing for the national title, and there’s no reason whatsoever to not think that there won’t be more trips to the BCS Championship in the near future after elite recruiting classes have stocked the shelves with great young talent.
Only the brainless and demented would dare to grumble about the 2009 season as anything more than a bump in the road for Stoops, however, there’s a school of thought that his time at Oklahoma might be growing a tad stale, at least for him. Only 49 and with no realistic prospects of going to the NFL, Notre Dame would be one of the only steps up he could make. The only other possible option at the collegiate level might someday be Iowa, his alma mater, but there’s no real reason for him to leave Norman any time soon.
2. Urban Meyer Odds: 10-to-1
Really, what do you expect him to say? He’s deep in the hunt for his third national title in four years and has the pressure of dealing with Alabama and the weight of expectations. When the options are between winning a national championship or a failure of a season, Meyer can be forgiven if he really can’t deal with the Notre Dame coaching talk right now. On top of everything else, he has had to deal with Tim Tebow’s brain, Brandon Spikes’ eye gouge, little production from his wide receivers, and Lane Kiffin. However, if Notre Dame is patient, it will get its chance to make its pitch.
After spurning the Irish the first time around after a low-ball offer, the game has changed for Meyer since 2004. Money wasn’t an object before for Notre Dame, but now it’s apparently more willing to spend the dough needed to get the guy it wants, and it’ll want a two, possibly three-time national champion. The former Notre Dame receivers coach from 1996 to 2000 would be the perfect fit, and the time might be right.
Meyer isn’t a fit for the pros and there’s no other college job other than Notre Dame that would be a step up, at least in prestige and exposure, from Florida, and he’s also coming off the end of an all-timer of a run that will be next to impossible to match. Alabama is only getting better, Tennessee will soon be fantastic under Kiffin, LSU isn’t going anywhere, Auburn and Arkansas are improving, and Georgia isn’t going to be a dud again any time soon. Basically, the SEC won’t be easy to roll through and Meyer’s Gators might have to do some rebuilding; does he really want to do that? Billy Donovan, the Florida basketball coach, had other offers and actually left for a few moments, but he stayed after winning two straight national titles and has had trouble finding any of his old magic. Could Meyer learn from that and leave while the situation is right? He’s the wild-card in the mix.
1. Brian Kelly Odds: 2-to-1
Of course he wants the job … and badly. You don’t play linebacker for Assumption College (a liberal arts, Roman Catholic private school in Massachusetts) without dreaming about what it would be like to run out of the tunnel wearing a gold helmet. If you thought the behind-the-scenes lobbying and politicking done in Washington over the health care bill was intense, that’s nothing compared to what’s going on here. Kelly, like Meyer, is pushing for the BCS, has a huge game coming up, and has national title dreams; he has to say all the right things at the moment and has to pretend he wants nothing to do with the Notre Dame job hunt. After starting out his post-college career in politics, he knows what he’s supposed to do and what he’s supposed to say to keep his name alive while not screwing up his team’s great season. But while he might seem like a great fit, he might not be the slam-dunk you’d think.
First of all, he might not be quite the big enough superstar to make the splash the Irish want to make. Kelly has had a ton of success at both Central Michigan and Cincinnati, but he’s still the hot coach of the moment while Stoops and Meyer are the hot coaches, period. And then there’s the debate over style. He brings the schematic advantage that Charlie Weis’s offense didn’t have (watch a Cincinnati game and notice how many times the quarterbacks are throwing to wide open targets), but it’s not like his teams have been brick walls on defense. They’re aggressive and they get into the backfield, but they’re not brick walls. Notre Dame already did the big-offense, questionable-defense thing, and it might not be fired up to try it again. There’s a risk by taking Kelly, but Notre Dame can get him far cheaper, like millions cheaper, than one of the other big coaching names, and it would be getting a coach on the ascension.
And there’s on final option … The Field Odds: 3-to-1.
The first time around, did you think Charlie Weis was going to turn out to be the head coach? Don’t let anyone tell you differently; Notre Dame is the coaching job in all of sports. It’s bigger than North Carolina basketball, it’s bigger than the New York Yankees, and it’s bigger than the Dallas Cowboys. The Weis coaching situation has held the sports world hostage for weeks now, and it’s going to be front page worldwide news once the situation is rectified. By the time Swarbrick goes through the process (and this will all be done very quietly and very secretly), it wouldn’t be a shock if Meyer, Stoops and Harbaugh really do want to stay put, Gruden and Billick are thinking more NFL than Notre Dame, and Kelly simply isn’t the man the program wants.
Skip Holtz? Chris Petersen? Gary Patterson? Everyone and anyone would listen to the offer. It’s going to be an interesting ride.