Marketing this mess no easy task
Boy, Charlie Weis needed that like a drowning man needs an anchor.
The Notre Dame head coach's problem is that a must-win win over Navy isn't what Irish football fans expect.
Beating Navy used to be to Notre Dame what beating the Swiss army is to the world's great military minds.
But this is what it has come to for the Irish: The Annapolis primary is as crucial as the general election once was.
Traditionally, Notre Dame's important victories came in national championship games, or on New Year's Day, or maybe even in the Super Bowl, according to lore.
So today the South Bend marketing geniuses will have to dig their shovels deep to make Saturday's 27-21 victory over Navy appear encouraging.
If you wanted Weis fired before this game, you really do now. If you didn't, you might wonder why not.
Marketers will suggest you forget that Navy successfully executed two onside kicks in the final minutes and was throwing near the end zone for the potential game-winner.
Forget also that Notre Dame committed dumb penalties and looked badly coached. And that at the end the Irish were gasping for air and Weis was grasping for his job.
Weis' salvation is that Notre Dame's spinners are good at this kind of stuff. If, that is, they don't dislike him enough by now to sabotage him.
Remember, these are the folks who make feature-film subjects of walk-ons named Rudy and presidential candidates out of movie actors who portray the Gipper.
Whether they can make a head coach like Weis bearable is the current question.
Back in August a couple of items came across my desk as if the Irish were defending national champions.
The first was the impressive "Greatest Moments in Notre Dame Football History" by John Heisler, one of college sports' all-time great publicists. The other was "Here Come the Irish 2008."
The impression browsing the publications was that they fit nicely alongside Notre Dame's contract with NBC-TV and its radio broadcasts that sound like national infomercials.
Anyway, now the assignment is to herald the victory over Navy as a one-game winning streak that gives the Irish a 6-4 record and makes them eligible for a prestigious mid-December bowl game.
Perhaps Notre Dame's marketing department should be in charge of hiring the football coach. It couldn't do any worse, could it?
No marketing guy would have picked Bob Davie to follow Lou Holtz; tabbed George O'Leary for the job before realizing he fudged on his resume; or hired Tyrone Willingham as the school's first black football head coach and then fired him after a mere three seasons.
More than anything, no marketing expert would have hired an insufferable blowhard like Weis to represent a dignified academic institution.
Nor would Weis have been given a 10-year contract after he won a few games with Willingham's recruits and before he won any with his own.
Listen, Weis shouldn't be fired this soon even if Willingham was fired sooner. It wouldn't even be surprising to see Notre Dame start winning big next season and make victories over Navy a given again.
The Irish's crack marketing department can use the practice trying to emebellish the image problem Charlie Weis created for them.
mimrem@dailyherald.com