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.

I know that you who read this aren't tremendously interested in what books I read and when I read them. But tonight, I feel compelled to tell you, as it seems to dovetail very nicely with this travesty of a sports weekend. The book is The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams, who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is appropriate because that's what I'm going through as both sports fan and blogger.

As a kid, I never thought I'd live to see the day where BC would be ranked #3 overall, and Notre Dame would be a sinking ship grasping at minor trivialities to see signs of hope going forward. And yet that is where we stand right now. Before they start popping champagne corks, or perhaps buying all the Natty Light in Cleveland Circle, BC fans might want to remember that ND was a lot closer to pulling an upset than they should have been.

If the left guard weren't flagged for holding (and God knows, BC has gotten away with a million holds building a mysterious reputation as Lineman U these past 15 years or so), it's a seven point game. Half of BC's points came on drives that started in fantastic field position thanks to a botched snap on a punt and a kickoff from the Notre Dame 15 yard line following the excessive celebration penalty. I hope the Heisman voters weren't watching those sequences.

That said, Charlie Weis has some difficult questions to answer. In no particular order, here are some that have been vexing me. Why wasn't Evan Sharpley the starting quarterback from jump street in this nightmare season? Why, when Demetrius Jones showed no capacity to move the team or hold the football wasn't Evan Sharpley the second option? Why after Jimmy Clausen couldn't move the ball against any team at any time this season was Evan Sharpley not the starting quarterback? I guess you can probably notice a trend here, unless of course you happen to be a BC fan, and anything short of a meat hammer upside your head is far too subtle.

Evan Sharpley has consistently moved the football when he has been called upon to spell Jimmy Clausen. Jimmy Clausen has not moved the football consistently. He hasn't moved the football at all, really. I understand that he's only a freshman, and yanking him now could ruin his confidence. Unfortunately, I am not even remotely sensitive. So yank him. Send him to Northern Illinois to room with Demetrius Jones, or to the North Pole. Just don't let him start another game for a very long time. And send Ron Powlus with him.

Gerry Faust, by all accounts, was a very nice man. He was a great man for considering his players' feelings and trying not to hurt them. He was also a spectacular failure as coach at Notre Dame. The one incident from his tenure I remember most vividly is Jimmy Johnson's response to Faust complaining that the convicts had run up the score on the Catholics. Johnson said: "If you don't want to get blown out, recruit better players."

I said all that to say this: Charlie Weis isn't paid to be sensitive. He is paid to win football games. And paid very well at that. At the end of the day, protecting Jimmy Clausen's ego is right up there with buying the director's cut of the Astronaut Farmer, getting a pedicure and giving up red meat on the list of things to do posted on my wall.

And for those people who would say that coaching is, at least in part, about teaching life lessons, I have this to say. What if you produced as well Jimmy Clausen has in your professional capacities? Would your boss string you along as projects stalled around you, or would you be out on your ass? That's a real life lesson. So what if he's only 20. As John Fogerty said: "You better learn it fast and you better learn it young."

I demand the firing of Ron Powlus. I never liked him as a player. I thought he was in no way, shape or form qualified for the job. He underachieved and failed to handle the pressure of playing QB at ND, and what has Jimmy Clausen done under his tutelage? And I remember that when Lou Holtz retired as coach at ND, Ron Powlus threw a party and came back for one more season at Notre Dame. That was a bad day, and the University should left him where they found him.

But back to Charlie Weis. I don't think the school should fire him. There are signs of hope on this team. The freshman OLBs are great. They get better each week. James Aldridge gets better each week at tailback, and Robert Hughes the freshman shows promise as a big back.

There are some other unpleasant questions one must ask about this team. The most important, other than the quarterback issue, is why weren't the wide receivers that have played well of late playing sooner? I think, and I'm not thrilled to say it, that Weis is finally learning to coach college players. He inherited a veteran team from Ty Willingham, one that could be coached in much the same fashion as the pros he worked with in New England. Now he finally has to learn how to coach a college team, even though he should have after the two bowl blowouts. I'm not ready to see him fired until he shows that he can't learn to coach college kids.

In other Notre Dame related matters, two players probably passed each other in the upcoming draft ratings. Trevor Laws has shown over the last two years that he will in all likelihood be a very good defensive tackle in the NFL for some time to come. He's blocked three kicks this season, he leads college linemen in tackles and he's playing end in a 3-4, when he's naturally suited to play tackle in a 4-3. I'm rooting for the Bears to draft him in the second round.

And the player who passed him is on the way down. I know who's responsible and I assume Charlie Weis will take appropriate steps to ensure that he's punished. The player responsible is Kery Neal, the rising star at rush end for Notre Dame. And the player who is plummeting down draft lists as we speak is Gosder Cherilus, the heir to the mantle of overrated fraud from the offensive line tradition dating back to Pete Kendall.

Charlie Weis should have made sure that Kerry Neal read the scouting reports and paeans in the Boston media prior to the game, then Neal would have thought twice before he destroyed Cherilus' livelihood. He probably cost Cherilus $20 million or so by beating him the way he did. Kerry Neal should have been told that BC is now Lineman U. Look at the way guys like Chris Snee and Jeremy Trueblood rule the NFL landscape, who is better than a BC lineman? At least NFL scouts now have warning when guys like Freeney and DeMarcus Ware feast on him.

And then there is the other thing that happened this weekend. I won't admit that I was wrong in my prediction. To say that wouldn't come close to doing it justice. I was spectacularly wrong. I'm still not sure that the Patriots are as awesome as people seem determined to tell me. But they had one hell of a plan when Dallas hit them, taking the first second half lead against the Pats this season.

Maybe the Cowboys were like one of those basketball teams that comes back from a huge deficit, but just runs out of gas. But I still say that Terrell Owens is better than Randy Moss. I'd still take him over any day of the week. I am deeply disappointed that Wade Philips kicked a field goal on 4th and 5, down the way they were in the game. Like it mattered down two TDs. Go for it, and make the Pats go 95 yards. They won by 21 any way.

But the most surprising thing about the game from my point of view is the Bum Philips is still alive. I may sound callous, mean, cruel and insensitive, but you were thinking the same thing, if you even knew who he was (and I'm sure a lot of young fans would believe me if I said Bum Philips was the crazy homeless guy who rode that strange three wheeled bike and screamed like a siren down Comm Ave). So in the privacy of your cubicle, office or home, feel free to raise your hand if you thought Bum Philips was dead until they showed him in the crowd in Dallas.

What disappointed me most about the Cowboys was the performance of DeMarcus Ware. He had one great series in the second quarter and a few flashes in other spots. But he has the talent to take over a game, not quite the way the real LT used to, but as close as any one playing today can, but he didn't show up the way I had hoped.

I don't have a lot to say about the Red Sox going down 2-1 in the ALCS. As I've said, I don't have much enthusiasm for the Indians. Plus I won't believe that the Red Sox are down and out until it's over for good. The ALCS nightmare of 2004 taught me to be cautious. But it was pretty damn funny to see David Prtiz run himself into a big out in the 4th. Especially since Little Leaguers usually know enough not to get hit by a ball running from second to third. I wouldn't have expected a player of his caliber and his talent to waste his own leadoff double in such a silly way. But there is a lot of time left in this series.

In hindsight, I probably should not have reminded the universe of the remarkable coincidence on Monday afternoon. After today's victory against the Royals, the Red Sox are in first place in the AL East. It is true that the Yankees are playing at the moment, and technically have yet to lose a game, but Major League Baseball will announce at any moment that the aberration on Monday evening will not count against the Red Sox in the standings.

Plus Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched seven strong innings struck out ten Royals and allowed only one earned run. That ought to be enough to offset minor inconveniences like a loss here or there. I think most teams are simply going to give up the ghost now that John Buck, Royals catcher and keen baseball mind, has decreed that Matsuzaka has ace-type stuff.

As much as Daisuke's stellar regular season debut is a blow to Sedition in Red Sox Nation, it's just one game against a team that has managed to lose quite a few games over the last two decades or so. It reminds me of another highly touted prospect who made a debut almost twelve years ago for a team I do not hate. I don't know if you remember the Ron Powlus era at Notre Dame. I do. He came in as the most highly recruited player of the year, he was going to join the Pantheon of greats at Notre Dame and a funny thing happened on the way to immortality.

It turned out he was overrated. After a nice debut against a very bad Northwestern team, things just kept getting worse for Ron. Now, he's back at Notre Dame as quarterbacks coach, preparing touted recruit Jimmy Clausen to replace Brady Quinn. That is not making me happy to be a Notre Dame fan next season, but what can you do? Just something to think about, there's a lot of room for regression after today's performance by Daisuke.

This piece by the CHB on the hype leading up to Daisuke's debut isn't worth reading, but it is worth taking a look at him in that video that accompanies it. Holy crap, he looks like Kramer from that episode of Seinfeld where he turned his apartment into a smoking lounge and hyperaged himself in a couple of days. He's kind of like the Picture of Dorian Grey, and not just in the sense that he's unreadably pretentious. Finally the man on the surface matches the madness within.

Not only did the hated Red Sox prevail, but ESPN interrupted its regular lineup to bring us the breaking story about the fate of the Florida junior class following their repeat performance this week (also part of the payback for me celebrating the Red Sox defeat and TMC showing Cromwell). Who cares? This draft is about Oden and Durant.

And this Florida team isn't a top 5 or 10 all time team. Remember, these guys only came to college because they weren't good enough to go pro right from jump street. College basketball was better this year because people had to go for at least a year after high school under the new age limit rule. But imagine if no one went pro straight from high school for the four or five consecutive drafts? Only then would it be fair to measure this generation against the past.

Finally, there is the Miami-Cleveland game tonight. I was looking forward to watching it, because it is an increasingly rare occurrence that a sporting event should take place where I actually like both teams. However, the universe could not allow me to enjoy it after the indecent enthusiasm with which I celebrated the bone the universe threw me on Monday. No matter how the game shapes up on the floor, Turner Broadcasting is continuing the universe's campaign against me.

Reggie Miller, Doug Collins and Kevin Harlan are calling the game. Things are being taken away from the table at an alarming rate. Early in the first quarter, Shaq hit Haslem with a no-look pass. Perhaps jarred by the fact that Udonis "Hand of Stone" Haslem caught said pass, Miller went on a mini-tangent about the pass. In his ecstasy, Miller giddily narrated the replay and marvelled at the fact that Shaq's eyes didn't stray in Haslem's direction, after telling the viewers that a no-look pass was coming.

Now I didn't attend that celebrated disco with books that is the University of California in Los Angeles. But it seems to me that the fact that Shaq did not look at Udonis Haslem whilst passing the basketball to him is what makes it a no-look pass. Of course, I may be wrong. But redundancy in engineering complicated systems is a good thing, and redundancy in broadcasting is a bad thing. Reggie Miller is not helping fans enjoy the game.

TNT would be better served to let Barkley and Kenny Smith call the games. Even better, throw Tommy Heinshon in the mix. Maybe a fourth guy like Ernie Johnson as a referee/moderator. These are intelligent guys who love basketball and know the game better than anyone. More importantly, they're honest, they have integrity and they aren't afraid to speak their mind.

I'm sick to death of announcers trying to pretend that a bad game is interesting, exciting and/or intrinsically watchable simply because it's basketball. Also, keeping abreast of current events would be helpful. And by that I don't mean world news, arts, literature, politics and so on. I mean what happens in the game. For instance, Kevin Harlan just announced that Antoine Walker made his first appearance of the game at the 11:11 mark of the second quarter. Toine was on the floor in the first, I know it for a fact. I saw him. Wearing number 8.

Good broadcasters would now something like that before they said it, or they wouldn't bring it up. A team like Barkley, Smith, Heinshon and the moderator might make a mistake like that from time to time, but they'd call one another on it. They'd make a bad game watchable because they have personalities. They'd tell you it was a bad game, start talking about other things and telling stories about a bygone age when basketball was basketball and players passed, played defense and we were as kings.

I know every broadcaster tries to do some or all of those things, but 95% of people in the world can't tell a story to save their life. It's a natural gift. Something you can't be taught. A good storyteller has a rhythm. A certain vocabulary, maybe a patois (as much as I hate pretentious, foreign words like that, but there isn't a good English alternative). It's not about using big words or small, complicated words but about using the words that come naturally to you from your environment and experience.

Guys like Barkley and Heinshon can be offensive because they speak their mind extemporaneously. I remember an All Star Weekend event (I think it was a celebrity game), Barkley was calling it with Ainge and a couple of other people. Two WNBA players were on the floor and Ainge said that we were seeing two of the best point guards in the world. And Barkley cut across his point and said, slightly derisively: "You mean for girls, right."

Now that was a little bit sexist (or a lot sexist). But he said what a majority of the audience was thinking. Men are better basketball players than women. Fundamentals are important, but they take a back seat to the ability to play above the rim. I complain a lot about the way basketball is played in the NBA, but I flat out refuse to watch the WNBA. The fundamentals are so good in women's basketball because they aren't athletic enough to get away with anything else.

Barkley wasn't excessively hostile toward the idea of women's basketball, and he wasn't saying that the two women didn't belong on the court in general. But he was right to point out that the two women could play in the All Star Weekend exhibition against retired players and celebrities, but they weren't talented enough to play top flight pros from the NBA in a genuine, honest to goodness, no fooling NBA game. That's the truth, more to the point it's one man's honest opinion, untainted by fear.

A certain amount of sensitivity is important, but not more than honesty. In that celebrity game several years ago, Ainge was right in the sense that the two WBNA players of whom he spoke are among the best point guards in the world because they can play better than the vast majority of human beings on the planet. But the two of them were not better than even the worst point guard in the NBA at the time, so in that sense they were not two of the best point guards in the world.

Barkley just said during the halftime show that Dallas needs to pick up their intensity or they might lose to Utah in a potential second round playoff matchup. There are a lot of reasons to dismiss this out of hand, Dallas has won 62 games this season. They've won 9 out of their last ten. But Barkley says Dallas has not been as focused on its defense lately, and now is not the time to sleep on Utah.

He may be wrong, I hope he's right. But then I may be attracted to that line of reasoning because I hate Dallas. But he's obviously thought about it, he didn't shout that prediction the way a lot of commentators do these days. He didn't say it to take the other side of the trade the way a lot of talking heads do. It's something he thinks, and he threw it out for people to take or leave. If he's wrong, he'll admit it, and if he's right he'll throw an "I told you so" or two at us, but he won't be a tool about it. That's why he should be calling games.

For his part, Tommy Heinshon is no stranger to saying some things that aren't tremendously sensitive. There was the Dikembe Mutumbo comment about hunting lions. And the Yao Ming chopsticks comment. His sensitivity could improve, but he has a gentleness about him that leads people to overlook his comments, which are very few and far between. People will always forgive a guy they like for minor transgressions.

That's the difference between the insensitivity from Barkley and Heinshon going largely unnoticed and the firestorm that greeted the Billy Packer "fag out" comment. It's not just that the audience in Heinshon's case is fairly small, because there could not have been more than 100 people watching that particular Charlie Rose. After all, you can't tell me you know more than three people who watch him.

It seems that hating Billy Packer is the one thing that makes us all Americans at heart. And unlike TO or Tank Johnson who are widely criticized but defended here and Ozzie Guillen who called a sportswriter I loathe a fag and was defended in this space, I will not defend Billy Packer. I really don't care if he called Charlie Rose a fag, or implied that Rose is a fag. While I would like to see him retire, I am not going to attack him for this.

I want CBS to show him the door because he's a bitter old man who seems to hate what he does. He has no sense of timing. It seems like there are moments when a small aside comparing a contemporary team or player to one or more from the past works and then there are moments when Packer does it. And never the twain shall meet. Plus, it's never a short aside. It seems like 15 minutes of game time elapse while he's talking about what Dr. Naismith told him about throwing the spheroid into the peach basket.

Maybe I would hate him less if he didn't work with Jim Nantz. Jim Nantz with his voice stuffed full of fake sincerity and fake emotion and fake gravitas will exercise his formidable talent at turning what should be a legitimately dramatic moment into an artificial, saccharine schmaltz fest as fake as Natntz' own claymation character hairline. He's the only reason not to look forward to the Masters.

Hearing him say "Amen Corner" or azaleas or "What a moment" or "the Masters on CBS" in his phoney "I alone understand the full signifigance of this moment" voice makes me wish that the tree the course owners would not remove for Eishenhower would fulfill its destiny and fall on Nantz' head. It's going to be a long weekend.

PS- Antoine Walker had 20 points in Miami's win tonight. Danny AInge would be rolling over in his grave, if he'd only drop dead.