It was only natural for a lot of people who weren't "in the know" about the situation, or who had blind loyalty to Wililngham, to listen to the hype that the mainstream media had been spewing out there. The media can be quite powerful when it comes to influencing people.
I remember the sheer number of people who were screaming "Notre Dame is racist because they fired their Black head coach!" during those days, and it took several more years until they finally realized how much egg was on their faces when Lionel completely bombed at Washington.
God only knows, he almost destroyed our program after two years of the absolute worst recruiting in ND history. The class of 2004 was bad enough as it is (only 6 players had any meaningful playing time), and the class of 2005 would have been even worse if Weis hadn't snagged about 5 more serviceable players (including Paul Duncan and Mike Turkovich, who basically doubled the number of offensive linemen that Willingham had brought in for the 04 and 05 classes).
2007 was a rotten year, but anyone at the helm would have had similar results, since there was literally no developed junior and senior leadership, much less actual numbers...
Understandable at the time
Replies to: "Understandable at the time"
- pretty tough article 15 years ago toward kevin white/ ND Football [NT]
[LINK]
- DonMiller - 12:20pm 6/14/22
(21) [View All]
- There's context around that article, specifically the date it was written. - jakers - 6:09pm 6/14/22
- Always amazed when people think Ty’s firing was unjustified. [NT]
- WestCoastIrishFan - 12:51pm 6/14/22
- His posts suck? [NT] - BaronVonZemo - 6:28pm 6/15/22
- AKA the volunteer assistant for the Leland Stanford Junior University Cardinal Women's golf team? [NT] - ND521 - 9:59pm 6/14/22
- The reality is, his hiring was far more unjustified than his firing. [NT]
- Chrisb - 6:26pm 6/14/22
- Agreed completely - ndunabomber - 1:24pm 6/15/22
- I remember Zorich, Duerson, Rocket, & Brady Quinn all went public with their displeasure. [NT]
- ELP - 2:54pm 6/14/22
- Understandable at the time - ndunabomber - 10:33am 6/15/22
- I understood Quinn defending him. But the others? Absurd. [NT]
- jakers - 6:10pm 6/14/22
- Duerson, I can understand, though - ndunabomber - 10:36am 6/15/22
- Lost respect for those guys. Willingham was dereliction of duty pure and simple. I wanted him to - TakethetrainKnute - 3:29pm 6/14/22
- He was afforded every opportunity - ndunabomber - 11:01pm 6/14/22
- Very typical for some players current and ex to stick up for a prior or current coach. [NT]
- THEISMANCARR - 4:51pm 6/14/22
- I get why...but Willingham was ignoring certain basic responsibilities so blatantly... [NT] - TakethetrainKnute - 5:20pm 6/14/22
- I've rarely seen a coach more humbled than after his flameout at UW - humbaba - 1:49pm 6/14/22
- Ty was obviously in over his head. [NT] - THEISMANCARR - 4:52pm 6/14/22
- surprised Jesse didn’t try to shakedown the Catholic church [NT]
- WestCoastIrishFan - 1:53pm 6/14/22
- Was that before or after his secret luv chile was discovered? Hypocritical race man! [NT] - Irishize - 4:01pm 6/14/22
- Kevin White was woke before it was fashionable. He used the race card when Ty got fired. [NT] - Irishize - 12:54pm 6/14/22
- ... especially in light of his performance post ND. [NT] - Curly1918 - 12:53pm 6/14/22
- Jenkins knocked it out of the park when he fired Lionel. - Irishize - 12:37pm 6/14/22