Why Notre Dame is not competing for National Championships.
by Oldomer (11/26/2006 16:01:45)
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We don't have the athletes. To state this bluntly, we don't have the best black athletes. Black athletes have superior physical skills. They can run faster, jump higher, and react more quickly. (They do NOT have inferior mental skills. If you think you know where I'm going with this, you're mistaken.)
What's bad for us is this: African-Americans are not Catholic. They are uncomfortable with ND's white, midwestern, middle class culture. They are inordinately hungry for financial success because of impoverished backgrounds and want an NFL career more than they want a legitimate college degree, so they will won't come here if they can go to USC or OSU instead. (Choice of college is NOT a 40 year decision for everyone.)
Here's an example of the kind of thing we're up against. My younger son has a part time job with the athletic department of a state university with a powerhouse football team that has won an NC in the last five years. His job is to tutor athletes. No, he does not visit a dorm room and sit down and talk one on one to the athlete about math, history, or English. He goes to the class and takes notes. Then he emails the notes to the athletic department. He isn't even told the names of the athletes he is "tutoring." He isn't even positive they are sitting in the classroom while he is there.
We are an anachronism. Eight of our 11 NCs were won before African-Americans were allowed to compete. For every Gipp, Bertelli, Lattner, Huarte, Hornung, Lujack, Hart, or Eddy, there were 100 black players who were as good or better. Parseghian's first championship team had two black players, Page and Arrington. His second had more balance, and so did Devine's. But Holtz's team is the only ND team to win a championship whose dominant players were African-American. It's been a long time since we've had a Rice, or a Brown, or an Ismael. Our competitors have players of this caliber every year. Perhaps this fact is what is behind the claim that today, in this era, we are irrelevant.
Notre Dame will not change its standards, as it did in the late '80s during Holtz's brief period of influence. His forceout should have been a warning for his successors. Urban Meyer was paying attention, which is why we have we hired Charlie Weis, an excellent offensive coach who embraces our values but who is no longer coaching the kind of talent he had in the NFL where the only things that matter are football skills.
In my opinion, we are barely a top 25 team. During this calendar year we have been thrashed by OSU, UM, and USC. Were we to play a post-season bowl game against Florida, Louisville, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, LSU, Auburn, or California, we would probably lose. We could very possibly lose to a host of other teams as well: Arkansas, West Virginia, Rutgers, Georgia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Clemson, Texas A&M, Nebraska, Oregon, and Oregon state. When Miami, Florida State, and Alabama get their act together, the competition will just get stronger.
But we won't change.
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