I don't know if some people simply don't see it, but in 2003, when Willingham showed how truly lazy he was, not even bothering to reach out to players who would have loved to play at ND, the writing was on the wall.

Then when he actually did make an effort to find players, the best ones were either already snapped up or soured on us, and all that were left were players that very few other 1A schools wanted. He even brought in the talentless Tregg Duerson, someone who didn't even deserve two stars.

Charlie Weis had his faults, and lacked head coaching experience. His biggest mistake was trusting Jon Tenuta to run the defense, which easily cost us 4 wins in 2009, where playing "jailbreak blitz every down" gave almost every opponent two extra scores a game.

However, there's absolutely no question that he pulled us out of a terrible pit of muck. Towards the end of the Willingham era, we were settling for two star recruits who would have been lucky to sniff a 1A offer. Weis worked tireless to bring up the talent level, and managed to do that even during that awful 2007 season, and pulled in the strong class in 2008 that gave Brian Kelly a much more well-stocked larder compared to what Weis inherited.