This would be a perfect morning to wake up to the echoes, to believe in the golden-domed notions of a sanctuary within the ethical wasteland so thinly disguised as major college sports. We have Colorado football players answering questions about an alleged gang rape, and the Massachusetts basketball team playing in a casino, and a Towson ballplayer divorcing a coach he said was doing his Brian Dennehy best to mimic Bob Knight.
We could use the South Bend of Knute and Leahy and Ara, the Fighting Irish of Rice (as in Grantland and Tony), Reagan (as in Ronald) and Rudy (as in Rudy ). We could use all the myths of Notre Dame right about now, if only George O'Leary didn't prove to be a myth himself.
"Notre Shame," said Dusty Zeigler, the New York Giants center and a former Fighting Irish captain among those fighting mad that athletic director Kevin White let the university get blindsided by a coach who had claimed everything on his r?sum? but a role in toppling the Berlin Wall.
"I think (White) should be fired," Zeigler said. "Somebody should be responsible, and he's the man hiring and firing coaches. Everyone's embarrassed and ashamed. Now we're just bland, an average Joe, and we can't proclaim Notre Dame as an elite school anymore. Our enthusiasm has been bled dry."
The hemorrhaging started long before O'Leary confessed to the not-so-venial sin of humiliating Notre Dame with tales of a master's degree never earned and a few touchdowns never scored. Remember, the school emerged from the Gerry Faust years to make its Faustian deal with NBC. There was a nasty little booster scandal, probation and Bob Davie testifying about Lou Holtz's sanity in court.
There was White granting Davie a five-year extension, threatening Davie's job three games into that extension, firing Davie, then hiring O'Leary despite knowing the Georgia Tech coach had given one player an improper loan and another player an improper lesson. After Dustin Vaitekunas missed a practice block last year, O'Leary had four defensive linemen charge him and hit him at full speed, pounding the backup tackle into submission (he quit and transferred) and compelling his mother to demand that O'Leary be arrested for assault (the coach wasn't disciplined).
"I don't think he's the type of person you want running your team," Vaitekunas said last Monday.
Kevin White agreed with him four days too late.
"I knew sooner or later his true colors would come out," Vaitekunas said Sunday.
Notre Dame has been exposed as just another Touchdown Tech, another school defined by an impetuous athletic director and blinded by big scoreboard lights. Davie had graduated 100% of his players. Way back when, the devout Faust wasn't offered a contract renewal even though he'd never met a candle he wouldn't light.
It's a shame, too, since a survey of the college landscape leaves one wishing Notre Dame was indeed better than its Saturday afternoons in the sun. Bowl-bound Colorado players already are calling the alleged rape an "unwanted distraction," this after Oregon's Mike Bellotti likened the BCS to cancer. UMass lost its 1996 Final Four season to scandal and still saw nothing wrong with ringing up Central Connecticut State while the Mohegan Sun slots were raging next door. Towson saw nothing wrong with its basketball coach's conduct after Tamir Goodman an Orthodox Jew who drew national attention when Maryland recruited him claimed Michael Hunt kicked a stool at him and held a chair above his head in a threatening manner.
"Tamir didn't attend Maryland because he didn't like the way Gary Williams talked to his mother when discussing his refusal to play on the Sabbath," said Goodman's father, Karl. "Tamir has standards. If a coach crosses that moral line, he won't play for him."
Yes, college sports has far bigger issues than the BCS, enough to inspire one to contact that great Congressional crusader, Tom Osborne, or to dream of a South Bend sanctuary that doesn't exist.
So Notre Dame wants to rise above the field? Here's how they can: Hire a winning coach short on style and long on substance. Hire someone who runs against the grain of college football's disgraceful record of unequal sideline opportunity.
Hire Ty Willingham of Stanford, and then these tired Irish eyes will see Notre Dame as better than the rest.
Ian O'Connor also writes for The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News.