Apparently the rumors floating around now include Washington strongly pursuing Ty Willingham as our next coach.
If this turns out to be true, I’d like to thank the Irish for panicking and not giving Ty another year.
Oh, and a word of advice to Urban Meyer, you’d better be sure you can get the Irish into a BCS game within 3 years if you take the job. It’s not important if you increase academic performance or can avoid controversy (unlike a growing number of coaches). If you can’t win big, the rest doesn’t matter.
This is not to say that Ty was the perfect coach, but honestly I don’t know how much better a different coach could have done. The Irish just don’t have the dominance they used to, and it’s going to take a while to rebuild that. But patience is hardly in large supply in college football. Just ask former Nebraska head coach Frank Solich.
Is this sarcasm? I don’t see any time spent at Nebraska on Stoops’ resume. Maybe I just can’t get past that 13-0 National Championship year in his second year at OU.
Good luck with Ty, may you have many joyous punts from your opponent’s 30-yard line!
Ty is a good coach, the problem is he is a proponent of a style of offense that A. is ill-suited to the college game because of the time it takes to implement, B. requires that the players either adapt to or be recruited for the system, rather than being a system that is flexible enough to adapt to the players, and C. is probably already past its life-cycle. Utah’s spread-option offense is much more cutting edge and adaptable to the personnel. I expect Urban Meyer to have relatively instant success, given that the personnel is there to instantly make the Irish a potent offensive team capable of putting up 40 points every game. That should take them to the 8-, 9-, and 10-win level on a consistent basis. What will take more time to develop–and better recruiting, which should follow once the high-octane offense and consistency is there–is the kind of defense that turns a dangerous team into a national championship contender.
But back to Washington–at the least, Ty will make U-Dub competitive again, instilling discipline and integrity into a program that has lost quite a bit . He’ll also be able to re-establish some recruiting. But while he’ll get Washington back to the level of being able to challenge for the Pac-10 title, he doesn’t have what it takes to win a national championship.
I swear I’m going to buy my father a second clock so he can tell what time it is when he calls me in Hong Kong. He woke me to the news “they just fired Ty” this afternoon.
“You mean morning, as in AM or I AM in bed still.”
“Yeah, but this is important.”
I’m a bit surprised, but the writing was on the wall for next year (and obviously the powers that be didn’t have faith in a winning performance next year). When they hired Ty and Bob Davie, there was a basic fact mentioned about playing for Notre Dame: 9-2 is a crap season. I tried to explain this to a UW person once who kept saying “but the Rose Bowl” as if it was the be-all, end-all of college football, but he just couldn’t get his head around it that we play for the National Championship (not lately though).
I haven’t seen Utah play this year, but I’m hopeful we try something–anything that can develop an offense. We’ve had a top ten defense (or portions thereof) on and off for a number of years, but we just haven’t scored at will like FSU, Miami, or that West Coast team with red helmets whose name forgets me because I’m Midwest / Southern biased in my football knowledge.
November 30th, 2004 at 11:49:31 pm
“Just ask former Nebraska head coach Bob Stoops.”
Is this sarcasm? I don’t see any time spent at Nebraska on Stoops’ resume. Maybe I just can’t get past that 13-0 National Championship year in his second year at OU.
Good luck with Ty, may you have many joyous punts from your opponent’s 30-yard line!
December 1st, 2004 at 12:33:17 am
I believe you meant Frank Solich.
Ty is a good coach, the problem is he is a proponent of a style of offense that A. is ill-suited to the college game because of the time it takes to implement, B. requires that the players either adapt to or be recruited for the system, rather than being a system that is flexible enough to adapt to the players, and C. is probably already past its life-cycle. Utah’s spread-option offense is much more cutting edge and adaptable to the personnel. I expect Urban Meyer to have relatively instant success, given that the personnel is there to instantly make the Irish a potent offensive team capable of putting up 40 points every game. That should take them to the 8-, 9-, and 10-win level on a consistent basis. What will take more time to develop–and better recruiting, which should follow once the high-octane offense and consistency is there–is the kind of defense that turns a dangerous team into a national championship contender.
But back to Washington–at the least, Ty will make U-Dub competitive again, instilling discipline and integrity into a program that has lost quite a bit . He’ll also be able to re-establish some recruiting. But while he’ll get Washington back to the level of being able to challenge for the Pac-10 title, he doesn’t have what it takes to win a national championship.
December 1st, 2004 at 2:05:02 am
I swear I’m going to buy my father a second clock so he can tell what time it is when he calls me in Hong Kong. He woke me to the news “they just fired Ty” this afternoon.
“You mean morning, as in AM or I AM in bed still.”
“Yeah, but this is important.”
I’m a bit surprised, but the writing was on the wall for next year (and obviously the powers that be didn’t have faith in a winning performance next year). When they hired Ty and Bob Davie, there was a basic fact mentioned about playing for Notre Dame: 9-2 is a crap season. I tried to explain this to a UW person once who kept saying “but the Rose Bowl” as if it was the be-all, end-all of college football, but he just couldn’t get his head around it that we play for the National Championship (not lately though).
I haven’t seen Utah play this year, but I’m hopeful we try something–anything that can develop an offense. We’ve had a top ten defense (or portions thereof) on and off for a number of years, but we just haven’t scored at will like FSU, Miami, or that West Coast team with red helmets whose name forgets me because I’m Midwest / Southern biased in my football knowledge.
December 1st, 2004 at 2:59:42 am
I just corrected the Stoops/Solich thing.
LOL re: the 30-yard-line punts!