One other note | by Jay

One more thing from today's Cutcliffe presser, and it's about our head coach and his propensity to plan ahead. Check out this little excerpt from Charlie today, on who's going to replace Coach Cut:

I have a contingency plan if I lose anybody, so it's not just him. No matter who we would lose, there's a contingency plan.

Just as I told you coming in, I wasn't blowing hot air when I talked about having a depth chart of coaches. Well, once you hire them, now you need to revise that depth chart so you know who's waiting in the wings and who you can get if something happens, and you have to have them at every position because you never know what's going to happen. You never know what's going to happen in life and what directions you're taking.

Contingency plan? Come on, this is Notre Dame. When it comes to hiring football coaches, we never plan ahead. We turn around three times, bless ourselves and wing it.

Then again, maybe things really have changed. Here's Charlie wrapping up his commentary today:

I'm saying the process is in play. In other words, it's like this. We're already down to who we're hiring and if I didn't come with this answer, A, I wouldn't be very organized; B, I'd have 50 people applying for the quarterback coaching job this afternoon. So they need not apply.

So Charlie actually has a process for hiring new assistants. Just fantastic. And it's a good thing, too, seeing as for the first time in a while, we've got some guys on staff who are undoubtedly looking to move on to bigger and better positions once their stint with the Irish comes to a close. Mike Haywood is unabashedly on record as desiring a head coaching position someday; Bill Lewis certainly has the credentials for another go-around in the NFL; Brian Polian is an up-and-comer who you can bet won't be happy as assistant special-teams coach for the rest of his career. As the Weis era develops over the years, we're going to have turnover in the coaching ranks, and it's nice to know our skipper will have a replacement ready when someone decides to jump ship.

Now if we could only get our administration to have some semblance of a plan when it comes time to select the next head coach after Charlie. There's probably a decade of lead time for this one, guys. Let's hope some of Charlie's perspicacity rubs off.