Shedding Our Skin Really, Really Hurts

Notre Dame fans really need to start rethinking their goals.  Our expectations are growing faster than our abilities as a team.

All of the talk lately is a bunch of bull.  This is 2008.  A time when parity rules almost all sports and it's extremely difficult to win a national title at a premier program, let alone a mid-tier conference school.

"Can Charlie Weis bring a national championship back to Notre Dame?"

"Is this what you expected from Charlie Weis in year four?"

Stop fooling yourselves. 

It'll be over 20 years (after this season) since Notre Dame's last championship.  We've had two, maybe three, chances at national titles since the 1988 run and those came during the Lou Holtz era.

Let me fill you in on a little secret:  This isn't your grandpappy's Notre Dame anymore.  We're no longer built to succeed year in and year out at top ten levels.  We're on the right path, but we're not there yet. 

We're undefeated against losing teams and we're winless against winning teams.  We are what we are folks, and right now we're a .500 football team.

But that's where we SHOULD be.  This team was ridiculously low on top talent and it takes time to get that back.

It is unfair to Charlie, or any head coach for that matter, for us to say "National championship or bust".  It's illogical and it's ignorant.  This team was not built for a championship and it will take several more years.  Now add parity into the mix.

Look at USC.  Arguably the most talent-stacked program in the nation and even they lose a game almost every year.  Last year, LSU won the title with two losses because the rest of the nation beat up the rest of the nation.

Expecting 12-0 year in and year out isn't fair to Notre Dame and it isn't fair to yourself.  You'll get ulcers if you wait for years like that.

Now this school has lived in the past for so long it doesn't (or at least didn't) realize that the game of football has passed it by.  Weis is trying to catch up.  The players are trying to catch up.  The fans are complaining that it isn't happening fast enough.  It's like taking a student who can barely read and giving him the SAT, then sending him to his room when he gets a 300.  

I understand that the team isn't playing up to our expectations, but maybe that isn't Charlie's fault or Jimmy Clausen's fault or Brian Smith's fault.  Maybe that's our fault.  Maybe our expectations are so unrealistic that we're blinded by our own ambitions.

It appears to me that this team has hit a brick wall.  All of the improvement that we saw at the beginning of the year has completely stalled and it's quite obvious.  But maybe right now, at this time, it's the best we can be.  Perhaps it's like a snake who has grown out of its skin but can't quite shake off its molt.

Right now we're shedding our own analogous skin, and it hurts.  It's frustrating because we're so close yet so far away.  It hurts watching us lose close games to good teams, but until we get this skin off our back we'll never make it.

Maybe Charlie Weis isn't the right coach to give us a championship, but he is the perfect coach to give this team the makeover it so desperately needed.  It's frustrating, but I look at the future and I see us growing into a full-blown title contender.  For now, I'm ok with that.