I think each of us want to take our turn on this, sort of like the line that forms in the movie Airplane where everyone wants to smack the woman who's freaking out.
Let's turn our attention to class act Charlie Weis, who always manages to take responsibility while at the same time pointing out who's not to blame for their lousy performance.
First, before the game, I love this interaction from the ballcoach.
When asked what it would take for ND to stay in the ballgame, he reacted with this:
"Hold on. We're not coming here to be competitive. I mean, let's take a timeout. I don't even want to answer a question about coming here to be competitive and staying in it to the end. If you want to rephrase the question to, 'What's it going to take to win the game?' I'll address it."
Okay, so Charlie has clearly moved into Bob Knight territory where he's going to tell us what to ask and which questions are stupid and so forth. Except that most questions like that are based in fact and, as it turned out, were totally justified! And since Fat Charlie obviously didn't have an answer in the second half last night, he should have stopped his answer above at "Hold on. We're not coming here to be competitive."
Now we move onto Charlie's ability to throw his pretty-boy QB under the bus. We've seen him do it before in postgame press conferences, wherein he claims to take responsibility for a loss but simultaneously intimates that someone else could be to blame if he felt so inclined. This is sort of like saying "Sure, we would have won the pickup basketball game if Tim didn't brick all his three-pointer attempts and if b-dowd could get a rebound, but really, I'll take the responsibility." Oh, wait, is that example too accurate? Let's see.
From the story on last night's game:
"I don't think he [Quinn] was the biggest problem, though," Weis said. "That's the problem. The quarterback is the easiest one to blame. Hey, I'm the head coach. I'll gladly sit there and take the bullets for the team. But the quarterback is the easiest one to look at when you say, 'Well, he's 15-for-35.'
"It would be nice to sit here and say he laid an egg, but that's hardly the case."
It would? It would "be nice" to say he laid an egg??? Weis is basically saying here, "Well, if my quarterback could have won this game despite our inferior talent, I'd be sitting here making arrogant, witty comments to you assembled media and be shining up my crown as king of college football coaches. But I can't since he sucked tonight and since I'm the head coach I guess I have to say it's sorta my fault."
I mean, I can't believe I'm defending Brady Quinn but, really, the guy does what he can. He's got one good receiver who will probably be snapped in half in the NFL and, well, can you name their starting RBs?
Some final thoughts on this BCS-worthy (?) bowl team:
- ND has given up 1200 yards of offense in their last two bowl games
- Their last bowl victory was in 1994. Thirteen years ago. Brady Quinn was 9.
- Putting ND into this BCS bowl game makes about as much sense as the NBA saying, "Okay, well, at the end of the season, we're going to have the Knicks play the Bulls for the Eastern Conference Finals simply because, you know, New York teams draw well." These bowls mean nothing except to those who love (or hate) the teams playing.
- No confirmation yet on whether or not Notre Dame will be scheduling each military academy three times each next season.
- As bad as Purdue's football program is getting, they were only two wins behind ND this year.