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Sorry kids, but crapping the bed in recruiting, a la Willingham, doesn't compare to what Davie did. Leaving aside what he did to Lou for the moment, this is the moron who ran out Joe Moore and was stupid enough to say out loud that, "Look, he's 62 years-old." This was the guy who waxed poetic about College Station when he was at ND. He was a more malevolent Eddie Haskell who never liked ND that much in the first place. Hardly surprising some of the stuff that has happened at New Mexico during his tenure.
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who didn't have the slightest clue what he was doing..Davie didnt lose to Navy or horrendous Syracuse/UCONN teams..
Weis inherited that. Remember the Blue Gold Game in which the line had to play both ways, because they didn't have enough linemen for a 2-deep?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of Weis, but he did inherit a crappy program. He had some good stars, but very little depth...less than usual.
Wililngham is the worst, hands down. Lazy coach, lazy recruiter, and kept an inept staff.
A lot of people seem to forget that the 2004 and 2005 classes (or at least the part of the 2005 class that was committed) were two of the worst recruiting classes of all time at ND.
When 2007 rolled around, there was virtually no senior or junior depth. That will happen when you fill your classes with players the likes of Tregg Duerson, etc., and we definitely got killed by teams who did have senior and junior depth, and even Nick Saban wouldn't have been able to field a .500 team with that roster.
Charlie Weis had his faults, and looking back on things, wasn't ready to run a collegiate program, since you can't treat college athletes like professional athletes.
He did help turn the program around. Instead of settling for 2 and 3 star talent we were finally getting players who could hold their own against the powerhouses again. I do believe that had he been given one more chance, we could have had a 9 or 10 win season in 2010 (assuming Clausen had stayed).
His biggest mistake was thinking that Jon Tenuta could actually run a defense... When you jailbreak blitz every down with players who aren't the right fit, well, the results spoke quite loudly.
...gone in 3.