Notre Dummies...

Starting last year, in the midst of the worst season in the history of Notre Dame football, I regularly checked in on NDNation.com to take in the whining and excuse making. One of the my favorite contributions to the site is a regular feature called "The Rock Report", which you can access here for comic relief.

The buffoon that produces this series continues to come up with all kinds of misdirection and bad logic to excuse the horrendous 3-9 record from 2007. It's high comedy.

The most ludicrous myth that "The Rock Report" continues to perpetuate is the notion that former ND coach Ty Willingham and his "lazy" recruiting are solely to blame for the Irish losing nine games last season. In fact, I have even seem some of the zealots that frequent the site tossing Bob Davie into the equation. How with a straight face you can suggest that the 3-9 season was influenced by a coach that hasn't been around for five years is beyond me.

This notion is of course ridiculous. The worst recruiting class that Willingham ever produced (the one that would have been in its fourth year last year) was still ranked approximately 40 by national recruiting services. I wonder what Navy's recruiting class was ranked that year? Or Air Force?

You can make all the excuses you want, if you've got Top 50 talent, you shouldn't be losing to service academies. You shouldn't be putting the worst offense in the country on the field week in a week out.

The reality is that Charlie Weis was initially handed a team that had strong upperclassmen, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. He failed to get most of his underclassmen meaningful minutes during either of his first two seasons. The Domers won a lot of games during Weis' first two seasons because QB Brady Quinn, WR Jeff Smarkdiagzdswoindqgoiape and RB Darius Walker were capable of running and handling the pro style offense brought from New England.

What Charlie Weis had to have realized last season while losing nine of his first 10 football games was that you can scheme all you want to, you can have the greatest game plan of all time and it won't mean squat if you're not teaching the basics of blocking and tackling. The difference between a player entering college (even the best of the best) and a player entering the pro's is too significant to be accurately measured. We're talking light years. I think Weis learned that lesson in a very public and very embarrassing manner last year.

The latest insanity linked through NDNation.com comes to us via another Notre Dame site, "BlueandGold.com". The author, and '96 ND grad posits the following question out of the gate.

"Was Charlie Weis playing possum in 2007?"

He then clarifies the question by asking, "there is at least a possibility that Weis threw caution to the wind and plunked his young bucks into the deep end, figuring that it would pay off in 2008 and beyond. Right?

Basically what Mr. Blue and Gold suggests is that Weis may have sacrificed potential wins in 2007 strictly to get young, talented players reps. To that I say, A) That's an atrocious excuse for an inexcusable season of total non-production and B) If we lived on Neptune and what the writer suggests is even possible, Weis should be canned anyway for being grossly overconfident.

If all that noise isn't ridiculous enough, we also get the following...

Though he would never say so publicly, my guess is the roster almost dictated for him that 2007 would be a lost season. Might as well use it to build a foundation, right? That seems to be exactly what he’s done – and from what I’m hearing around the way, Weis is privately projecting anywhere from nine to 12 victories this year. And yes, a 12-1 mark would equal the biggest turnaround (+8.5 games by Hawaii from 1998-99) in major college football history. But given the schedule, it’s not unrealistic.

You heard it at BlueandGold.com first folks! Charlies Weis completely bailed on the 2007 season on purpose and could go undefeated this year as a result. That'll show Navy!