the Home Stretch | by Pat

Every year since he's been head coach, Charlie has stayed behind in California after the last regular season game against Southern Cal or Stanford in order to recruit and visit the remaining west coast recruits still considering Notre Dame. Finding out his plan post-Stanford this year would be another big clue as to not only what will happen with him, but also the timeline of when things might go down.

Yesterday, Jack Swarbrick let the cat out of the bag.

Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick said Tuesday that Weis will return to South Bend, Ind., after the game, and the two will likely meet within a few days to discuss the coach's future and that of the program.

What makes this news notable isn't so much that Charlie and Jack will sit down and discuss future plans. What is an even bigger hint to the outcome we all expect is that Charlie won't be doing any recruiting in the interim. Per NCAA rules, head coaches get one in-home visit per recruit. If Charlie were to use his in-house visits with west coast recruits like Anthony Barr and others after the Stanford game, as he has done in years past, then a potential new head coach would not have an in-home visit available and any interested recruit would be forced to travel to South Bend to meet him. Now, those in-house visits will be kept as an available option.

Assuming ND has been running a search, they've been doing a pretty good job so far of keeping things quiet. Many of the usual news leaks appear to have been plugged. Letting everyone know Charlie is coming back to ND so early in the week might not have been the best idea for keeping things as quiet as possible, but it's not like we all don't know what is coming. In the meantime, the team is prepped to fly out to California for Turkey Day and the final tilt against the one yearly opponent that has yet to beat Notre Dame in the Charlie Weis era.