Someone was posting about Davie being hired the other day because Purdue offered him their job and forced Notre Dame's hand. While that may be true, the amount of quality viable candidates during the Davie, Weis, and Willingham tenure who were building their own resume's is immense. Not only were they numerous, they were mostly Catholic. Of the top football coaches today who were very hire-able at the time, most of them would have had a serious link to Notre Dame through faith. Nick Saban (actually has a team mass before his games), Urban Meyer, John (mass before games) and Jim Harbaugh, Jon Gruden, Bob Stoops, Chip Kelly, Mark Dantonio, Chris Peterson, the list goes on. There is little doubt most, if not all of these coaches would have jumped at the opportunity to coach at Notre Dame given a strong leadership in the athletic department. Instead we settled for Davie, Willingham, and Weis. 20 years of misery that didn't have to be... Kudos to Brian Kelly for using our Catholic faith to his advantage in bringing in a devout Catholic in Mike Sanford (turned down other higher profile positions at other schools), who I really believe is the future of Notre Dame football. Spend a minute with the guy and he'll blow your mind with his personality and football acumen. The future looks bright folks, but looking at the list of names above, its hard not to look back without some regret.
