This is a sad day in college football. ND sucks.

are you serious?????????

dude he's a good coach, as much as i hate ND...
you can't expect someone to change a football team into a west coast offense in less then 3 years...

Go BC?

Not fair for Ty .

He didn't last long...

Borges did it at Auburn over the off-season.

Pretty sad he's fired. I believe this is the first coach at Notre Dame to not finish out his initial contract.

I think every college coach should have at least 4 years that way they can start bringing in their own recruits. Nobody should be expected to be a college coach and be great the first year or two, or three

that is correct. he is the first to be fired mid-contract.
i do think it's unfair...

also, only 2 black coaches left in div-1a.

This is a horrible decision for ND, Willingham is an excellent coach.

urban meyer looks like he is at the top of notre dame's list for replacement

he's also being looked at by florida and supposedly ohio state

Why fire a coach who won some big games such as the win against Michigan and his win against Tennessee in Knoxville? Bad move by Notre Dame, though Utah's coach is quite good.

Not sure who they'll be able to get to replace him. Seems marquee coaches don't go for ND right away like they used to.

I wonder where Ty will wind up... somewhere out west again perhaps?

notre dame feels like they should be in the bcs picture every year, and willingham wasn't getting it done.

pete carroll got usc back in 3 years

why does everyone think meyer is gonna leave utah...he could stay there. then what? there's nobody good left...

since when was ohio state looking for a new coach? there's only one thing you have to do to stay as coach of ohio st., and thats beat michigan, and unfortunately, tressel is pretty good at that...

friggen notre dame thinks its like the should be in any college football picture because of who they are. no one wants to go there because of their, pardon the pun, holier than thou attitude. the thing that ****es me off if that i do believe they gave davie a longer amount of time to fail than they gave willingham. i hope they fail in all their football endeavours.

yep, davie was given the full 4 years i think it was. it's weird though, a lot of big teams are down...florida, florida st, nebraska, ohio st., notre dame...

i just don't know who can do BETTER than willingham...

YAY.com!!!

If anyone knows anything about football he deserves the boot

care to explain why?

There is no reason for this. Proves that ND cares about nothing but immediate wins. This will hurt their program more than help it.

Their program will head down the gutter anyway. They forget that nowadays, public and private schools are equal and recruits don't care if you are a private school. Years ago, I would agree that recruits preferred private schools like Notre Dame to play sports, but now they fall way behind.

I'm a fan of ND football. I was happy with Willingham. ND had an off year. All teams go through that. Just look at Nebraska, they went from winning 9 or 10 games to being under .500 this year. Even FSU and Florida had off years. This is second biggest mistake ND had made in the last couple of years. The first was hiring that coach that cheated on his resume.

wow. thats nuts.

Bob Davie had longer than 4 years, I believe. I think he had a 6 year contract - he had some good seasons and not so good seasons.

Anyway, this is crap. I cannot believe that the bright minds (and we all have to admit, ND is an intelligent university) did not learn from the debacle that the University of Florida made this year. Zook sucked, he never was going to lead UF back to the top 10, but to only have 2 1/2 seasons is ridiculous.

Zook and Willingham both have true sophomore QBs (Chris Leak and Brady Quinn). Both are good quarterbacks but are young. Both coaches have completely revamped the offensive schemes so most of the players from the previous coaching staff are on a learning curve as well. Zook has had 2 solid recruiting classes and Willingham looks like he found the next great Irish running back (Darius Walker), not to mention, Brady Quinn's numbers are completely turned around from last year.

Snobjobs on both of them. I can't believe my 2 favorite football teams are this stupid. I have supported ND every year by going to either the USC or Stanford game when they come to California. My fiance and I just bought tickets yesterday to the Insight.com Bowl to watch them in Phoenix. I'll be there with a big poster supporting Ty Willingham.

Great coach, great person.

There are 4 options for Notre Dame:

Urban Meyer, Bob Stoops, Butch Davis, and Jon Gruden.

Meyer looks like the best choice just because hes so attractive to the school, and it's part of his roots. Stoops and Gruden you would have to pull hard away from other respective teams also because Gruden just signed a 16 m over 4 yrs deal in offseason, but its part of his roots too.

Butch Davis was very sucessful at the college level but did pretty bad in the NFL but was surrounded by subpar players, some of that he brought on himself, but again has a very good college resume, a la Spurrier.

Its def possible that Stoops will stay in OK, Davis goes to Fla. and Meyer goes to Notre Dame.

Willinghams not a great coach but was a good fill-in for the problem they causes by hiring O'Leary and firing him shortly thereafter. Urban Meyers ressurected 2 programs in 4 years (Bowling Green and Utah) Could possibly see Ty going to the Vacant BYU spot. Also rumors that Saban of LSU might be going to fill in the Browns head coaching spot.

Also, Notre Dames gotta lower their academic standards if they want a sucessful team, requiring a very high SAT score is no way to recruit football players, Any dummy can get into these bigtime schools....Notre Dames got the tools to entice any HS player just on the fact that every one of their games is televised nationally.

I think any coach inconsideration should just say no to Notre Dame. Unless they produce a National Champion immediately, they are gone. Why put up with the stress? Same think happened with Solich in Nebraska. They give you winning records, and you boot them. With the insane schedule that the Irish play, firing Ty was unacceptable.

They will regret firing him

Why should Notre Dame lower their long-standing academic standards just because athletes are getting dumber and dumber? That is insane. The whole academic standard excuse is just that...an excuse. It's a cop-out for the fact that the football program just is not attracting top players at the moment. The problem today is players are not realizing the value of an education - if you play football at Notre Dame, you play against the best and you graduate with the best.

Also, Willingham will not go to BYU. He's either going back to Stanford or to Washington. He is a much better coach than being stuck in a Mountain West conference, and I'm sure he wouldn't be thrilled in going to another religion-based school. He is not simply a "fill-in" coach...fill-in coaches don't go on the road to Knoxville and win, nor do they destroy a team like Michigan.

3 years to build a program is not enough, I don't care what happened at Utah. Every year ND has one of the top 5 toughest schedules in the country. Willingham got ripped, period.

hey, they did not destroy us! :mad:

my little sports rivalry nooblettes...

being an SC alum, there is ONE major, glaring, and HUGE reason he was cut loose. you do not, ever, under any circumstances, lose to USC by 31 points 3 years in a row.

it is, to alumni, unspeakable and perverse, and they would not stand for it. personally, i would have taken 20 more years of ty, which would have translated into 20 some years of SC thrashing ND.

he was a decent coach at a school that demands a level of excellence almost unheard of. and, as pointed out, he had to do it with students who actually did well in class...not the easiest thing to do.

its a job, he made a ton of money, and will end up somewhere else. he just didnt fit there.

ripped

What else do you expect playing the #1 team?

they werent #1 either of the other years.

Let's see...

This year: #1
Last Year: #1/#2
Other year: top 25

Looks like they were #1 pretty much all those years.

I was at the 2002 game at SC when Carson Palmer went off on the Irish defense (which was one of the best in the country before this game). What I saw this past weekend was the EXACT same scenario as 2002 - the Irish came out smoking, defense stuffed the run, SC had done nothing in the 1st quarter. 2nd quarter...it all fell apart. In fact, Palmer and Leinart had almost the same exact stats in their respected games.

Over 300 yards passing, over 3 TDs, all damage done in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarters.

Now, if you want, you can blame Willingham. But as for me, my blame goes to the defensive coordinator and coaches, specifically Kent Baer (who, conincidentally, will be coaching the Irish in the bowl game). Even my brother-in-law, the die-hard Irish fan, called it last Saturday after the 1st quarter. He said the same thing will happen because the DBs were playing 10 yards off the ball and they had NO pressure at all on Leinart. Sure enough, game was in doubt after the 3rd. Defense let them down, again.

as a Gator fan all i have to say about this is:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

WHHHYYY??

seriously, from the early 80's til 2003, USC was a joke of a football team. you would not have beaten the irish for another 20 years. after this year or maybe next year, you will go back to being the joke of a football team you usually are.

ahahahahaha, USC is recruiting like crazy, and even if Chow decides to boot it for Stanford, they are getting talent like they did in the 70s. They are the new Gators and Hurricanes.

And, it wasn't until 2001 that USC even broke back into the top 25 consistently (in '99 we finished 49th at 6-6). Since then, we have climbed back into the picture and now own again. And last year, we slowly climbed to #1 by the end of the season. Willingham just got tied to a school that needs to find a way back to the limelight. And it won't be easy.

Ah, even nicer, I'll be at the game this Saturday at the Rose Bowl.

ripped

you're being awfully optimistic...only time will tell. as of right now, you are still just a fluke.

oh, i see Michigan in your sig.

never mind, i was gonna post back, but since your dreams were smashed last Rose Bowl, can't really add more to make it any worse. (wait, i can, if you make it to the Rose Bowl on January 1st, you can lose to Cal this time!!!!, NICE)

Wow, that's one of the most stupid moves I've seen in a long time... next to the Nebraska firing Frank Solich deal.

yeah, the rose bowl sucked, i was there. honestly, i'm not expecting much, we have a true frosh at tailback and a true frosh at qb. and we are already there this year, just ordered my ticket last week. don't overlook ucla...or we could be having a rematch.

you can post back what you were really gonna say, i love talking trash
as soon as you guys make it to a bowl game/have a winning season for 30 years straight, i'd love to continue this discussion

oh yeah, and wanna read something funny?
(regarding the ND game)

"This will be a USC's third home sellout in 2004, a school season record. Earlier games against California and Arizona State were sold out."

for having a #1 team, your fans are a joke...3 sellouts in 1 year is a record??

It is quite a big stadium

I don't like USC, but they do have a good team.

URBAN MEYER to FLORIDA!!!!

wow, i'm really shocked by that.
so there goes ND's hopes...

i thought urban was in a contract that he could only leave for ND...?

HAHA Im so giddy to see ND get what they had coming.. fired a good coach for a guy who didnt even pick em.

I knew this was coming. Now they are doomed