Words, by this point, have long since failed me to describe what a nightmare this season of Notre Dame football. I have friends and relatives who have as solid a track record of supporting this team as I do who have given up watching the games. It's just that depressing. But I'm still watching. Even though the Ohio State game against Illinois was much better than this contest against Air Force, I still watched the entire sad spectacle.

I said all that to say this. I find myself in the unenviable position of defending the indefensible Charlie Weis from the various people in the media who insist on attacking him or criticizing him. This piece by Kevin Blackistone is well thought out, but it operates on a faulty premise. This season has made history in all the wrong ways and for all the wrong reasons. But that doesn't gild the memory of the Tyrone Willingham era.

I am sorry for the man in that firing situation. Tyrone Willingham struck me as an intelligent, decent man of integrity. He seemed like a thoroughly nice man, but we all know where the nice guy finishes. He did have a winning record (barely) at the University of Notre Dame. In his final season, Notre Dame did finish above .500 and limped into eligibility for one of the more minor of the minor bowls. In his best season, the team fell apart down the stretch after a start in which the breaks beat his opponents and then suffered abject humiliation at the hands of NC State in the Gator Bowl (one of the most major of the minor bowls).

Charlie Weis is a stubborn, somewhat difficult man with the media. And for that I admire him. Why appear chastened and contrite before the self appointed kingmakers? Would that make a 1-9 season hurt any less? Would losing to Air Force, Navy and BC be less humiliating? No, so you might as well go down with pride and arrogance.

One can talk about Weis taking a team to two BCS bowls with a core group of players recruited by Ty Willingham. But one should analyze that statement to the fullest. Did Willingham take those guys to a BCS bowl? The answer - not only a rousing no, but it should be coupled with the reminder that Ty himself enjoyed his most successful season with players recruited by Bob Davie.

A more interesting sideline in this debate is to consider another question. Of those Willingham recruits who formed the core of the BCS teams, how many had draft stock and NFL prospects improved under the new regime? The answer has to be just about all of them. Brady Quinn was looking at mid to late 4th round status prior to Weis coming to town. Jeff Samardzja chose baseball, but he would have been a first round pick and he tripled his career catches by Wies' second game.

Anthony Fasano became a second round pick under Weis, as opposed to a 5th/6th round pick before. Chienedum Ndukwe wouldn't have been drafted prior to that. Mike Richardson was a sixth round pick, but he had to take a year to recover from a game against USC. Thanks to Ty Willingham's belief in regionalization (that players from a certain geographic area will play better in games played near where they grew up), Richardson was thrown to the wolves against USC before he was ready to cover guys like Mike Williams and Kerry Colbert. Richardson was eaten alive, in a sad sight to see.

The trouble is, Weis didn't have to adjust from the NFL to recruiting and motivating teenagers in his first two years. That team was experienced, this team was not. Maybe he was arrogant and didn't consider the ramifications as a college coach should, but that's life. Hopefully he learned a thing or two to adjust in the upcoming offseason.

There is hope in the young players who have been thrown into the fire this season. James Aldridge has the potential to be a very, very, very good tailback. Jimmy Clausen will not be the guy, I don't believe. But the freshman linebackers Dwight Stephenson Jr., Kerry Neal and Ryan Smith will develop into an outstanding unit. Robbie Parris and Deval Camarra are exciting young receivers.

I haven't seen enough of the defensive linemen of the future to comment on them. Trevor Laws has had such an outstanding season on such a terrible team that I've been guilty of concentrating on his play and trying to project his draft status that I've overlooked his peers. The offensive line, frankly, terrifies me. If they don't learn to block even the most rudimentary of blitzes, there is no point in taking the field. I don't see any hope on the horizon there, but I've been spectacularly wrong.

Blackistone made the point that Willingham was the first Notre Dame coach who was terminated prior to his contract's natural extent. I'll take his word for that, but I think there had to be at least one guy who lasted less than three years. Maybe he wasn't fired, but it must have been as good as a firing.

I'm not sure how I feel about changing the traditions of the school and the program. But maybe it's time. I've been told that in order to become a sophomore at Notre Dame, one must pass calculus. That makes the school unique among serious football programs. It's also a daunting prospect. I have a MA in a humanities discipline, and I've never had to pass calculus. Perhaps you might not believe that, with the record of minor, silly mistakes in this frivolous little blog of mine, but it's true. So why should every football player at Notre Dame have to do so much more than every football player at every other school? Isn't the university rigorous enough as it is?

Perhaps it's unfair that the expectations for academic and athletic performance at Notre Dame are so much higher than they are at any other school. I do admire the school for its commitment to providing an excellent education, but can one obtain an excellent education without calculus? But this is also a slippery slope. If they make this compromise, what stands between them and institutions of ill academic repute like the one in Chestnut Hill or Miami?

As usual, when I raise a question, or series of questions, I don't have an answer. The one thing I do know is that a season like this demands a scapegoat. For a change, I do have a suggestion. It's the guy upon whose hiring I screamed bloody murder...Ron Powlus. It made no sense to me, to bring in a guy who put up numbers everywhere but where and when it really mattered to try to shepherd and mold another Notre Dame QB. Quarterback play has not been good. Offensive line play stank like rotten compost (and if they let the o-line coach seek greener pastures, I won't weep), but it took Clausen seven starts to learn that he can throw the ball away to avoid a sack. Powlus must go. And immediately.

In a rare serious note, today marks the 232nd anniversary of the establishment of the United States Marine Corps. Tomorrow is Veterans Day. I wouldn't be able to write this silly little waste of a time of a blog without the sacrifices of generations of Americans who served in the military. I may hail from a region of the country not noted historically for patriotism and self-sacrifice, but I am eternally grateful to those who are better men (and women) than I am. God bless you, men and women of the Marines and the American Armed Forces and God keep you.

Well, it's been a while since I last posted...for obvious reasons. There hasn't been a lot to talk about with the Sox winning it all and the Pats rolling along the way they are. What could I say, for instance, to make fun of Papelbon. Yeah, he looked like a total tool with his silly dancing? So what if he looked like a douche with the Bud Light box on his head?

Do you care that I know of a Sox fan who let his kid rock a Bud Light box on his head as a Halloween costume? Is that a sign of the decline of American civilization or the end of the world as we know it? Probably not. It's also not going to be the one irreversible step that leads to the most heinous of societal ills...underage drinking. It's probably not boding well for the kid's chances of becoming a well adjusted adult at some point, but how many of us are actually well adjusted adults?

I don't have a whole lot to say about Navy beating ND. Sooner or later, it had to happen. I know I ripped Tommy Tuberville for playing for the tie earlier this season against South Florida, and I should rip Weis for not trying a field goal with less than a minute to go in a tie game. But he didn't play for the tie, he went for it on fourth and eight. Not a very good idea, but aggressive. It blew up when the play resulted in a sack and a loss of eight yards (a double negative play when a missed FG would have ended in a turnover on downs at a spot seven yards from the original line of scrimmage). So what can I say, is this loss somehow worse than any of the other terrible losses this season? I'm out of things to say.

The worst thing about losing to Navy is that it still gives BC fans a little something to smile at, even though this FSU loss stuck a dagger in their national title game dreams. For as much as this season delights BC fans, and as much as Notre Dame has fallen off the face of the Earth for a year, it's not all glory in Chestnut Hill. If they lose another game this year, they will not got to a BCS bowl. So there's that to look forward to, small consolation to be sure, but a little bright spot.

And the Patriots survived a game that they could have lost. At the end of the day, all that matters is the final result, but this game presented quite a scare to the Patriots. Some of the calls were questionable, particularly the pass interference on Ellis Hobbs, but that's part of the game. There were too many penalties. The pass protection left a little to be desired. If Indy played a bit more aggressively, who knows whether they could have hled the lead. But as they say, if grasshoppers were armed to the teeth, perhaps they'd have less difficulty with birds eating them.

I have a friend who has a theory that winning this game might not be the best thing for the Pats. They clearly didn't play their best game today, but they still won. It might be a positive because they have so many different ways to beat teams. But it might be a negative, since this might lend even more confidence which might blow up in their face.

If you take LSU as an example, the Bayou Bengals are so far ahead of the teams they play talent wise that they have fallen into the habit of coasting till the fourth quarter till they spring the big comeback on their opponent. Unfortunately, they couldn't quite comeback far enough to beat Kentucky, who won that wild game in Lexington in triple OT. If BC hadn't lost, that might have ended up costing the Tigers a shot at the BCS title game.

The thing about this is that these are conditions and hypotheticals. I hate admitting it, but based on the games to this point in the season, the Patriots are the best team in the NFL. When the dust clears and all the games are played, that might not be the case, but that's too far down the road to see as of today. I think the Pats are vulnerable but that might be true or it might be my own prejudice against the team leading me into a conclusion that isn't accurate.

With their massive offensive output (at least prior to the game today), the Pats have been compared a lot lately to the St Louis Rams. Perhaps this could present a glimmer of hope. Those high powered Rams played the Patriots twice in 2001. We all remember the stunning victory in the Super Bowl, but how many recall the beating the Pats took in the regular season? Obviously the Super Bowl is the much bigger game, and that's why we remember it, but maybe one of these teams the Pats have beaten could sneak up on the juggernaut should they meat again? It doesn't seem likely, but it's not impossible.

It's getting late now, and I'll have more to say as this week goes on about the rest of the NFL games, and some other things that have been neglected over the course of the postseason baseball nightmare.

This was not a very good week in Sedition in Red Sox Nation land. I think, at this point, that I just might be out of things to say about Notre Dame. Maybe I might have something to throw out there if they ever manage to win a game, but that isn't looking very likely at the moment. Who knows what Navy is capable of after the last 40 years of losing to the Irish? And Duke is looking tremendously better than they have in living memory.

It is true that the last two weeks have seen some improvement. They seem to be moving closer to victory, but that's not the way things are supposed to be. That's not the way things are supposed to be at all. It was supposed to be a thing of beauty. Even if they manage to beat BC, it's still depressing. BC is supposed to be the spoiler of seasons, not Notre Dame.

And then for the first time since 1995, the Boston Red Sox have won the AL East. The Yankees twelve year reign of terror is over. If I were a Red Sox fan, however, I wonder just how optimistic I'd be as the playoffs open. In one way of looking at this matter, the Red Sox are rolling into the playoffs tied with the Indians for the best record in Major League Baseball. But that's only part of the story.

The Red Sox finished the season 42-30 against the AL East. The Yankees ended up at 39-33 in the division. There could be some small cause for concern there. After all, I'm sure Red Sox fans remember that the Yankees took the season series 10-8. That means the Sox won five more games against the Blue Jays, Orioles and Devil Rays than the Yankees did.

I hope Sox fans will forgive me for going the long way around to make this point, but the rest of the AL East wasn't particularly good this season. Toronto did finish two games over .500, which really surprised me. I haven't paid much attention to them, even when they play the Red Sox. But the Orioles finished twelve games under .500, and the Devil Rays ended the year two games behind them.

I said all that to say this - managing to beat these teams more than the Yankees did isn't a tremendously encouraging sign going forward. Last I looked, none of these teams are going to be playing in this postseason. The competition facing the Red Sox as they chase that World Series trophy is going to be slightly more formidable.

The Red Sox did win the season series against the Indians and the Angels. But it seemed that their victories against the Angels came early in the season and then later on the Angels got the better of the Sox. One wonders just how much this matters when the division series starts. I wish it weren't the case, but the Angels and the Indians scare me. And not in the good way. The matchups seems all wrong to me. I can't stand either team, so it will be a lot harder to root for them than it would be to root for the Yankees.

The last time the Red Sox and Angels met in the playoffs was in 2004, and the Sox swept them in the ALDS. I know that's all in the past now, but I don't see the Angels winning this one, to tell the truth. I know all about his stats and his talent, but something about Vlad Guerrero doesn't inspire confidence in me. Their running game could pose problems for Varitek whose arm isn't really all that good. But that hinges on them getting on base, and I'm not entirely sure that they will do it consistently.

Should the Red Sox win and the Indians prevail, I won't much enjoy the ALCS. Until guys like Travis Hafner and Grady Sizemore show me that they can produce in pressure situations, I won't be too optimistic about their chances. Obviously it's kind of hard to build a postseason resume when your team hasn't gotten into the playoff. But I don't remember them burning it up two years ago when they chased the White Sox down the stretch.

Of course the Yankees might be a more formidable opponent, and I'd love to see them beat the Red Sox because it will vex Red Sox fans much more than any other team taking an ALCS from them. Should the Red Sox fall to the Angels, that would be interesting, since they have had a nasty habit of beating the Yankees in playoff series lately. But I'm not too worried about that since, as I've said, I'm not holding out hope for an Angel win.

In unrelated matters, Donovan McNabb really showed me how wrong I was when I ripped him last week. He really took over tonight's game against the Giants, right? Getting sacked 12 times showed that his knee is completely healed, that he is the answer for the Eagles and the best QB of all time. Of course the dozen sacks weren't all his fault. Obviously the line sucked, and the coaches might have wanted to think about taking a different approach to blocking that guy who got six sacks by himself somewhere between sack two and sack six, but that's just me. But you can't tell me that McNabb couldn't have thrown it away two or three of those plays, can you?