Hiring O'Leary confirms fall from national importance
Robert K. Sauer
class of '73
So Notre Dame has a new head football coach.
A man who took a team rated in the Top Five in all of the pre-season polls and led them to a 7-5 record this season. Sound familiar? With all of the A-List guys spurning Notre Dame's advances, Kevin White went straight to the B-List for this guy. Was Tom Coughlin even approached? If O'Leary really was the best we could do it just shows how far the program has fallen.
Who could have imagined that the 42-yard field goal that ended the Boston College game in 1993 would mark the end of Notre Dame as a national power? Oh, I will still come out to campus at least twice a season. The Warren Golf Course is wonderful. I will follow the band into the Stadium and root hard for the team (which will still win about 75 percent of the time at home) and then enjoy a pint and stogey with my buddies at the Morris Inn. The only problem is that except for those rare occasions when we upset a ranked team the game won't mean anything.
In this holiday season we have been visited by the Ghost of Seasons Future. We can see the seven or eight-win Liberty, Insight.com, Outback or Independence Bowl campaigns to come with an occasional No Bowl campaign like this one mixed in.
Of course there are benefits. When we alumni have to go somewhere on Saturday afternoon we won't have to worry about setting the VCR since the game won't be on TV. How long before we're dumped by Westwood One and can't even listen to the game in the car? We used to be the Yankees of College Football. Now we are the BC of the Midwest. Of course, that might turn out to be an insult to BC.
Robert K. Sauer
class of '73
Garrison, NY
Dec. 12, 2001
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, December 10, 2001
