Sunday, December 05, 2004

Serenity Now | by Jay

THA over on NDNation has some soothing words for anyone exercised over certain media commentary about the state of our program. He writes:

"Some of you who are not NY Yankees fans (to pick up your example) may be shocked by all this accumulated hatred being released. Those of us who are Yankee fans--and Sinatra fans!--are used to press hatred and revel in it. Hated by the press and by TV and Radio personalities! Can there be anything better? When SC was staggering around in its coaching search, a few years ago, there was no national hue and cry. Here and there a story, of course."
He goes on to offer the obvious (yet oft-overlooked in the heat of the moment) remedy:

"ND must make a careful search and choice. It should not, in my opinion, satisfy impulses to spend a gazillion dollars on some NFL coach who demands the moon. That will generate continued bad publicity and plausible moral outrage on its own campus. It should pay reasonable college-level market rates, and if necessary slightly above. I'm responding here to a thread about Shanahan's salary. I have no idea if the figures bruited about there are correct, but if they are, and if he were a candidate, and if he expected comparable dough at ND, I would, speaking personally, say no.

The Searchers must make a superb appointment. If they do, then I suspect the coaching fraternity and the commentators will suffer in silence. Their worst fear will have materialized. They know that with the right coach, ND will be as formidable as it was a mere 11 years ago. Mere. Mere. Mere. Nothing major has changed structurally in the game or in the program over that tiny period to account for ND's catastrophic decline. Bad coaches have accounted for it."

I have to admit, I was disappointed with Rocket's ramblings yesterday, and I was fairly incensed at what Aaron Taylor spit out ("the mystique is dead", over and over). These bits of bile really sting, especially from some of our former legends.

It can all change in a heartbeat with the right hire, though.