The Piper
I defer to your opinion about Rosenthal given you had a much better perspective as a varsity athlete at ND during his tenure.

My response was based on the one time I had a very positive interaction with him during some very good times football – wise at ND. My only comment would be no one did less in their tenure for ND football and no one played more golf during his time there than Ty W.

As far as the AD making his presence known at non-football varsity sporting events…I can not say one way or another if that is status quo for a major D1 AD or not. My son was a potential walk on baseball prospect and I can say that the varsity team seemed to be pretty much out on thier own..devoid of the main stream hype and PR from the AD’s office. That would be Jack’s first year as AD.

I’m not an insider or anything, but it’s been my observation that this tide turned earlier than most people give them credit for. I felt they’ve been embracing football since late November 2004 but it hasn’t been so noticeable because people often equate failure with lack of effort. And that’s not always true.

The effort to fire Willingham was there, but the execution of the PR aftermath failed because some of the old regime (Monk and White) hadn’t yet been purged.
They did attempt to hire the hottest coach on the market, Urban Meyer, but failed to execute.
Throwing all that money to lock up Weis halfway through his first season may have a failure of judgment but it undeniably indicated an effort to win.
Allowing Weis to make upgrades in recruiting and assistant coaches’ salaries showed an effort to win, but they failed in the execution of choosing the right mix of assistants and developing the players.
After Weis was fired, before going after the hottest coach on the market they attempted to hire one of the 3 hottest coaches NOT on the market (Stoops) but failed in the execution.
Then they hired the hottest coach on the market (I’m not trying to make a point about whether he was suitable or not), and for the first 2 years they seemed to be underachieving in the execution.

That’s not to say that anyone should feel better about all those failures of execution over the past 8 years. Just drawing a distinction between failures of effort and failures of execution.

Nice try but I’m calling bullshit.

JVan’s discussion that I quoted was entirely football related. Putting on his “active participant” hat, JVan began a discussion about how much of ND’s success so far this year is due to changes in Kelly’s coaching style. Numerous people had the audacity to treat JVan like any other active participant and disagreed with him just as they would for any other poster they might disagree with, which led JVan to get super defensive and demand some kind of special deference.

That discussion had nothing whatsoever to do with how the site is run, but I can see how someone could have difficulty differentiating criticisms of their opinion vs criticisms of their website – JVan apparently did in this instance. You’d think somebody running a football website of all things would have thicker skin – and he thought the other guy was too sensitive!

I suppose you could continue to respond with false choices like “start your own website”. Or you could just let my examples stand on their own and consider with an open mind whether Cash is in denial if he really thinks that dissenting opinion are made to feel welcome. Or both. Choice is yours.

Last fall, they had us on CNBC for the same topic. At that time, our football team was 4-2 and on a bye week.

But I do agree with your points about the “ND sold its soul” comments coming (well if we win a big bowl game maybe) and how dumb White’s BCS agreement was.

Joe Schaefer, you have paid attention! Great letter. Thank you.

Dick Rosenthal may be a good guy, but his tenure was 8 yrs of the Holtz era. “Let us not confuse brains with a bull market”…

He never had to hire a football coach. In fact, he almost never had to do ANYTHING. The only two times he did was when he hired a basketball coach (John McLeod – an abject failure), and when he inked an NBC contract that angered everyone else in the CFA (we paid for that in ’97). His time was like the Coolidge administration…and he was quieter than Silent Cal..

In addition, as a varsity athlete I found it disconcerting that not one time did he ever attend a game of ours, nor did he ever meet an individual on our team. His idea of AD was to shake hands, smile, and play golf. All the power to him as apparently it worked…here he is being praised 20yrs later on a blog site.

He is irrelevant to this discussion.

Sidenote: Kevin White was essentially hired by Gene Corrigan, not Dan Devine. And Gene Corrigan is one of the great ADs in college sports history (he’s the one who hired a 145lb guy with a lisp).

SEE, you wrote a great piece. Hope we’re good enough that we reach Media Cycle Part II. It’s still early.

I have this gnawing feeling that BK is not showing his hand offensively until the right game. Each ranked opponent has been almost un-ranked by the time we play them. When he does, I think it will be awesome. That is the Saturday I’m looking forward to.

The posts that are replied to with “feel free not to post here” are not the ones with “unpopular football arguments”. They’re the ones bitching and moaning about how the site is run. Since they believe it to be so easy, I tell them they’re welcome to start their own or find one they believe is run more to their liking.