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A buffoon who never coached college before. That Fr. Joyce and Krause even entertained the notion of hiring a high school coach beggars belief.
at ND, it's on the people that hired him, a MAC or Sunbelt team is where he should learn on the job
He had the sense and humility to stay at St. Anthony's and be just a high school coach. This, "Faust is such a great guy" stuff isn't echoed by most of his former players.
It was preposterously stupid.
Granted Weis had a bit of an ego problem vis-a-vis his real experience, but he walked into a mess and broke a lot of barriers that Kelly capitalized on.
Davie wasn't a bad coach, he just never should have been given the job. He didn't have the cache to lead a program like ND.
Regardless, there was one coach whose utter incompetence easily exceeded Davie, Weis, and Willingham. A coach who came out in his first game with a high school formation. A coach who managed to waste uber-talented players, like Tony Hunter, at will. A buffoon who ran up and down the sidelines yelling at players to say Hail Mary before a field goal, a coach who yelled at his players to not look at the pink walls in the Air Force visitors' locker room, a coach who cried to the priest, literally cried, to put a guilt trip on him and to give him one more season, a coach who threw not only his assistants, but his players under the bus for his failures as a head coach. That guy. It's laughable to put any other ND coach since Ara on the same plane as that guy.
Faust was clearly in over his head but he got the job because of the arrogance of certain parts of ND. He didn't chase the job but took it when offered because loved ND. Everyone knew Faust was going to fail but he was kind to a fault to everyone. All coaches mis-use players. Faust doesn't rule the roost with that (need we talk about the mishandling of Montana by Devine?) My brother worked with Faust and, while understanding he wasn't a good college head coach, speaks very highly of him. My daughter worked with the team during the Ty days and she thought he was a worm.
Weis, Davie and Willingham were far worse people than Faust.
Personally, I despised Devine because I was around the program and saw what a total doucebag he was up close. I can tell you stories about the bs he would pull and his overt arrogance to virtually all the behind the scenes people who make any program successful.
...during de-emphasis.
threw snowballs at Santa Claus. Was at the game with my Dad. They won something like 2 or 3 games that year, just enough to lose out on drafting OJ. They drafted Leroy Keyes from Purdue number 2 who then stank in typical Iggles fashion. Joe was gone by then. He was a truly awful coach to whom they had given a 15 year contract.
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Davie and Willingham had pretty good rosters, but were so limited in their coaching methods that the offenses never got any traction under them.
Davie was bad, but at least he got us to a Fiesta Bowl. He put too much trust in Kevin Rogers, though, and could have had so much more had he put Urban Meyer in as the OC.
Willingham was especially bad, trying to make a power running team run that stripped down, super-predictable version of the West Coast Offense, combined with a quarterback who was only a pure runner.
Charlie Weis had two classes of reasonable talent (2002 and 2003), along with a smattering of the 5th years from 2001. There was very little talent in the 2004 and 2005 classes, which resulted in that awful 2007 season. While there was enough upper classmate talent for the 2005 and 2006 seasons, that was all that was available. Had he simply kept anyone else in the defensive coordinator's position other than Jon Tenuta, that would have been a BCS bowl season.
Even Nick Saban or Urban Meyer wouldn't have been able to get to .500 with that 2007 roster, and that 2008 roster was still lacking in terms of developed junior and senior talent.
Freeman could be gone after next year.
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...with four of the last six coaches is utterly mind blowing.
Jury is out on Freeman for a while...but the early returns are certainly cause for concern.
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