Willingham

By Christian Schmidt

Let’s be honest. Ty Willingham wasn’t fired because he is black, but his race sure didn’t help him in his Notre Dame career.

Willingham was fired after three seasons as coach at the nation’s most prestigious football program with two years still left on his contract. He was the first coach in Notre Dame’s history to be fired before fulfilling the length of his contract.

Why? Because Willingham didn’t fit the mold for a head coach of Notre Dame football, not in the eyes of certain powerful figures around South Bend, Ind.

He wasn’t looked at seriously as an applicant for the job until George O’Leary &045; a white, Catholic, Irish football coach &045; had already lied himself out of it. Despite his credentials &045; successful tenure at Stanford including a Pac-10 title and a stellar record of graduating players &045; Willingham seemed almost like a hire of last resort rather than the hot commodity he was.

It isn’t a coincidence that Notre Dame had never had a black head coach in any sport before Willingham was hired; Notre Dame isn’t exactly a hotbed of racial diversity. It ranks among the lowest national universities in most studies of diversity.

About 3.2 percent of Notre Dame’s 8,000 undergraduate students are black. That’s 256 students. I’ll leave to your imagination how many of those students play a varsity sport for the Irish.

In other words, Willingham wasn’t hailed as the potential savior of Notre Dame football, he was crashing the old-boys club.

By the administration’s own admission, he led a top-notch program off the field. His players’ academic performance was great, there were not significant discipline problems and Willingham was generally a class act.

But that didn’t matter.

Willingham’s on-field performance hadn’t lived up to Notre Dame standards. After a stellar 10-3 season that began with an eight-game winning streak, Willingham’s teams fell to 5-7 and 6-5 the next two years.

Of course, those standards are outdated and won’t work in today’s college football landscape. Notre Dame hasn’t won a national title in more than a decade, nor has it really been in contention for one during most of that time.

The schedule is too difficult, with a slate of national powers coming in every season to play the Irish. There just aren’t any gimme-games for Notre Dame to warm up with. The Irish aren’t head-and-shoulders above the rest of the nation anymore and they should follow the lead of other top programs and make the schedule just a little softer.

But more than that, Notre Dame isn’t getting all the best recruits these days. Sure, the Irish still get their fare share of All-Americans, but other programs have caught up. The Florida schools, the top Big Ten programs, the California schools and the best of the Big XII are pulling in players that Notre Dame might have had 20 years ago.

The Irish need to have more patience and understand that a national title isn’t going to happen every year. But given the way Willingham was treated, I don’t see that happening.

Christian Schmidt is a sports writer with the The Natchez Democrat. Reach him at (601) 445-3633 or by e-mail at

christian.schmidt@natchezdemocrat.com

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