College football coaches are hired to be fired

{image1} Now that the University of Washington has hired Tyrone Willingham, can everyone just shut the hell up already?

I mean really. The past two weeks have been the most ridiculous waste of airtime, newsprint and talking head banter about Ty being canned in South Bend.

This just in: coaches get fired. In fact, they are hired, to be fired. Even they know this much. That's why they ask for guaranteed money, and lots of it.

Don't cry for Tyrone Willingham, he'll be fine. Anybody who goes a whole two weeks between million dollar jobs is not worth agonizing over. Not only is he back in the Pac-10 where he had success before, but he's finally back at a major football program.

Yeah, you heard me right, Domers. His days as a pretty good "mid-major" coach in South Bend are behind him.

Oh, you object to being called a "mid-major?" Well, what else do you call a program that has gone 10 years without winning a bowl game? The last two bowls saw the Irish give up a combined 76 points to Oregon State and Georgia Tech. Marshall has produced more bubble gum card caliber NFL stars than you have in the last six years.

Memo: Simply having your own network TV deal doesn't make you a "major" program.

Notre Dame remains important, only because the media insists that they are. Whether anybody believes that, is irrelevant.

So Notre Dame firing a coach, who had clearly regressed in three years, was seen as some sort of apocalyptic moment in the "sanity index" of college sports. The firing of Ole Miss head coach David Cutcliffe around the same time, however, was buried deeper than Jimmy Hoffa in the sports pages.

Cutcliffe took an SEC second-tier school, and won seven games or more his first five seasons -- a feat no other coach in Ole Miss history had ever achieved. This season, after losing the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft, he went 4-7. Shame on him. He was fired.

Beating Mississippi State couldn't even save him.

And yet, the Willingham to Cutcliffe ratio of discussion has been almost 1,000-1. See, Cutcliffe is not black, and Ole Miss is on TV less than "Supertrain" re-runs. You might also have noticed that most of the famous personalities on ESPN and "Live with Regis and Kelly" are not from Ole Miss.

Willingham fired? Boo-hoo. Cutcliffe was 4-1 in bowl games since he took over, beating the likes of Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Nebraska in the process. What people in the SEC already know, and what Notre Dame fans need to learn quickly, is that they are all swimming in the same murky cesspool of big-time college football.

Which means: "Nothin' personal. It's just business."

Oh, you say the Willingham firing was an "embarrassment" and a "black eye" to the program? Why? Just because their No. 1 choice Urban Meyer stiffed them at the altar? Hey it happens.

The Notre Dame situation looks like an accounting seminar compared to the clown show Auburn put on last winter. You may recall (although I doubt it, since few ESPN personalities or co-hosts of "Live With Regis and Kelly" went to Auburn) that the Tigers tried to pull off a coaching assassination of Tommy Tuberville.

Then president William Walker and athletic director David Housel had already flown to Louisville to secretly install Bobby Petrino as the Tigers next head coach. A brilliant plan, except for the small detail of their supposedly secret meeting making all the local papers. A classy Tuberville, not playing the victim, went out and beat rival Alabama with a coaching death sentence hanging over his head. Walker and Housel were ousted, while Tuberville survived.

He went undefeated this year.

Now that's what I call a school embarrassment! You got to love it when your program bungles things so badly, you aren't quite sure if you are watching a repeat of "Home Alone 2" or a football press conference.

You think that having to scramble for two weeks before finding what might be a brilliant hire in the Patriots Charlie Weiss, is somehow a disgrace? Please. What's a disgrace is that some people still think Notre Dame's sweaty gym bag doesn't stink like everyone else's. It's a disgrace that many in the media will waste our time with long, probing pieces about what Notre Dame must do to get back into the college football elite.

Who cares about what they have to do? Either do it, or don't. If winning National Championships are important to you, then there's a simple way to get there. Lower your criminal standards for recruits to one notch above "..until proven guilty." Create a bunch of classes that are easier than Paris Hilton after a bottle of wine. Throw the ball 50 times a game, and get off your Holier-Than-Thou high horse.

Because the modern high school athlete looks at the Notre Dame lovingly immortalized by 40-something men, like a 14-year-old looks at a fax machine today.

Huh?

There is a crisis of relevancy with the Fighting Irish that is consistently ignored by most who think the school can still recruit toe to toe with the likes of Florida State. The fact that Notre Dame is on TV every weekend on NBC is irrelevant. Every big school is on TV every weekend, somewhere.

Knute Rockne, the Four Horsemen, "Rudy" and Touchdown Jesus can't compare today to ESPN Gameday, X-Box, Basket weaving 101 and warm weather.

I am just old enough to remember when you could watch the Sunday morning re-cap of Notre Dame games as narrated by Lindsay Nelson. "We move ahead to further action in the same series..."

But I am 36-years-old, and have no eligibility left. I doubt any blue chippers who remember the same, do either.

So excuse me if I choose not to shave my head in protest over this, even though a high-ranking black woman at Notre Dame did just that. Outgoing school president "Monk" Malloy said he was embarrassed for Notre Dame football over the firing, but waited over a week to say so publicly.

It was probably just coincidental that Notre Dame had already lost Meyer at that point to the Gators, right? The two couldn't possibly be related, could they?

While the number of black coaches in college football is shamefully low, ridiculous hand wringing when any of them happens to get fired is counterproductive to the cause.

It reminds me of the hilariously uncomfortable episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," when Larry David has to terminate the services of his home theater technician because the TV never works right. Turns out, it was David's fault after all -- a simple oversight on his part and a misunderstanding of his own setup. But the pained and bitter exchange between him and Wanda Sykes is the stuff of comedic immortality.

When exactly, is it "OK" to "fire the black man" as the phrase was so awkwardly put?

The answer in college football is "whenever you feel like it." Just like how it has been with all of the white coaches for years and years.

In that respect, we can now say: "Welcome to the club, Ty. You are truly one of the boys, now."