UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

Here's the deal on this: They thought all along that Urban Meyer was going to be the guy. The trip to S.L.C. that night was expected to be a formality, and they were stunned to leave without a deal. As a result, we were really poorly prepared, because we didn't believe there was a need to do much research, widen the casting net, etc.

As a result, when the Meyer deal fell through, they were scrambling and opted to consider low-hanging fruit. And Weis was probably a way better candidate than Clements, even though all of Clements teammates and coaches from back in the day have sworn up and down that he'd have been a great fit.

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Urban Meyer saw several advantages in taking the Florida position, and when it came down to it, the prestige and honor of being ND's head coach were dwarfed by the benefits and perks of being Florida's head coach.

1) Florida was very well stocked with 4 and 5 star talent. The previous coach, Ron Zook, wasn't a good head coach, but he was a proven recruiter (hell, he even had success at Illinois as a recruiter), and the depth chart was stacked with future NFL draft picks.

2) Notre Dame had two full recruiting classes that were decent (2002 and 2003), along with a handful of 2001 holdovers. Beyond that, we had two of the absolute worst recruiting classes of all time in the way of 2004 and 2005. 2005 would have been much worse if Charlie Weis didn't make some last second recruiting bids for some decent players (Duncan, Turkovich, and I believe Kyle McCarthy were all part of that last ditch effort). Meyer knew that in 2007, things were going to hit rock bottom, and he wanted to win championships instead of trying to rebuild.

3) Florida gave Meyer total control over the football program. Notre Dame's Board of Trustees wouldn't allow for it, nor will they allow for it with any future coach.


Even Urban Meyer would have had a nearly impossible task of getting us to a .500 team in 2007. There was no way we were going to be able to compete with Tyrone Willingham's awful recruiting classes, since a lot of them (especially in that 2004 class) either quit or transferred. Without developed juniors and seniors, you're not going to beat teams that have decent developed depth, plain and simple.

And his antics were a far better fit for that program. He wouldn't have gotten in (or retained) many of the stars that helped him there.

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It did not work out, it happens.

White, in his defense, wanted nothing to do with Willingham in 2001. He (almost) hired Jon Gruden, and then O'leary, who were both better hires than TW. Who knows what would have come of it.

good under those circumstances.

Urban he would have a better chance at winning and a NC elsewhere.

He had two main problems: 1) He didn't understand recruiting for depth or position, which left ND lacking in key areas; 2) Lack of a training table, which caused ND to fall apart in November. Reports were players were losing 15 lbs. over the course of the year due to improper nutrition.

He Weiss was only good at implementing Belichick's vision and nothing beyond that. My bro is astute.

And since we're on the subject...

It's Rees, not Reese
It's Davie, not Davies
It's Clausen, not Claussen
It's Golson, not Gholsten

Not hard.

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You sound like the kind of person who misspells/ mispronounces a person's name & when corrected, responds with, "durrr, I didn't know. derp... that's how everyone else says it... durrrr. How was I supposed to know?" 😂

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You do know he is dead, right?

On a side note, you do need to change your birdcage liner more often.

For what it is worth, I think Blanche would have been an excellent choice.