Notre Dame is 0-5

I have to admit it's hardly funny anymore. I feel really badly for the guys who went to school there to play football who obviously don't have any ability or resiliency. And I feel sorry for everyone who's realizing a few years late that Charlie Weis might be a fine offensive mind in the NFL, but can't recruit for crap and can't teach a team to play with heart, fire, or toughness.

It's just...painful now. Really really painful. Notre Dame should never have dropped this low. There's no reason for it - you can't blame academic standards, because places like Appy State (which I think could probably beat ND handily) are good academic schools. Or, good by comparison. And Cal Berkeley is full of freaking hippies and particle physicists and particle physicist hippies, yet is ranked in the top 5 in the country. USC is a private school, let's not forget (Number 2 ranking). And the service academies all have possibly the toughest eligibility requirements of any school in the country, but they are going to beat the pants off of the Fighting Irish.

So what's the deal with UND?

Gotta be Weis - that's all I can think. Or maybe there are a lot of really talented and intelligent athletes who realized that Ty Willingham was fired for reasons other than being unable to beat USC; maybe all those talented intelligent athletes saw that Weis was hired and Willingham was fired in part because one is white and famous and the other is black and not. And those players, seeing this, decided to go to other places that made offers, like Case Western Reserve and Cornell and State University of New York-Albany.

Seriously. How can a team fall so far so fast? How can a team recruit so badly? Even the blind squirrels aren't finding nuts.

I hope NBC cancels their Notre Dame broadcast contract this offseason, for the sake of the school and all that it used to be.