pretty tough article 15 years ago toward kevin white/ ND Football
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Link: https://www.espn.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&sportCat=ncf&id=3422039
Replies to: pretty tough article 15 years ago toward kevin white/ ND Football
There's context around that article, specifically the date it was written.
Summer of 2008. Plainly speaking, 2007 was the year that ESPN and its business siblings went out of its way to attack Notre Dame football. The broadcasters, the columnists, the daily snippet bloggers.....all of them associated with that company made a concerted effort to drag N.D. down. It was intentional.
To be clear, none of those people believed Willingham was a great coach. They knew he wasn't someone that programs with then-B.C.S. aspirations would have any reason to chase. And they knew he wasn't fired for race-related reasons. We were simply a competing product, and this was their chance to swing as much of the market in their direction as possible, with the added benefit of extra clicks with all of the articles they could post on the matter due to name recognition.
Our 3-9 season -- context and surrounding circumstances be darned -- gave them the cover they needed to do exactly this.
Always amazed when people think Ty’s firing was unjustified.
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His posts suck?
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AKA the volunteer assistant for the Leland Stanford Junior University Cardinal Women's golf team?
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The reality is, his hiring was far more unjustified than his firing.
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Agreed completely
I do wish we would have given O'Leary a chance, at least. I think he could have done a fine job here.
We could have had any number of other coaches if not O'Leary. Instead, we settled on a terrible coach who had two decent years at Stanford during a time that the Pac-10 was pitifully weak.
I remember Zorich, Duerson, Rocket, & Brady Quinn all went public with their displeasure.
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Understandable at the time
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...
I understood Quinn defending him. But the others? Absurd.
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Duerson, I can understand, though
Dave Duerson's blind loyalty to Willingham can be attributed to the fact that Willingham brought in his son, Tregg, who was a zero star recruit, and didn't have any notable offers.
The fact that Tregg Duerson was even offered shows how low Willingham had sunk.
Lost respect for those guys. Willingham was dereliction of duty pure and simple. I wanted him to
Succeed beyond everyone’s wildest dreams…just like every Irish coach.
He was afforded every opportunity
Despite what some may believe, he inherited a decently stocked team, with an excellent defense full of NFL draft picks at each position.
He actually had a competent offensive roster, but for some stupid reason, tried to turn Carlyle Holiday into a West Coast Offense quarterback. He simply wasn't the type to run that kind of an offense, especially since Willingham's WCO was heavily stripped down.
It didn't take long for opposing defenses to figure out that they could simply stack the box with 8 and sack Holiday.
He actually had a quarterback on the roster in 2002 who could have run the WCO in the way of Jerald Clark, but instead, turned him into a tight end.
Very typical for some players current and ex to stick up for a prior or current coach.
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I get why...but Willingham was ignoring certain basic responsibilities so blatantly...
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I've rarely seen a coach more humbled than after his flameout at UW
The media went to its tiresome outrage™ mode after Ty was fired from ND, and I remember Jesse Jackson saying that Ty's future "shines brighter than a golden dome."
Ty was obviously in over his head.
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surprised Jesse didn’t try to shakedown the Catholic church
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Was that before or after his secret luv chile was discovered? Hypocritical race man!
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Kevin White was woke before it was fashionable. He used the race card when Ty got fired.
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... especially in light of his performance post ND.
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Jenkins knocked it out of the park when he fired Lionel.
As for White, nobody ever did more to fuck up ND football than that pathetic asshole.