Notre Dame Chooses Not to Confront Its Own Reality

The Notre Dame media department has a dirty little secret that it does not want you to know about. What's the secret? It's that Charlie Weis isn't just bad. He's really really bad. So bad that they won't even tell you how bad.

The 2009 Notre Dame Spring Media Guide omits the losing seasons from Weis' yearly coaching record on pages 15 and 90. When confronted with the omission, Notre Dame claimed that it was simply honoring the long-standing tradition of accentuating the positives.

Not so fast my shameful friends. Apparently, past media guides included losing records of Coach Bob Davie. But consistency is never a goal with the football team, so why should it be a goal of the media department? Unless of course you're speaking of being consistently inconsistent.

I couldn't help but contrast the shameful secrecy of Notre Dame's Media Guide with the refreshing bluntness and honesty found in Michigan's.  After all, we went 3-9 too.  For all the grief we have suffered in the wake of our worst season ever, at least we are grown up enough to confront the reality that we had a really awful year.

There is no attempt by our media department to cover up the same 3-9 season that was omitted in the Notre Dame guide.  In fact, we say it twice, including right next to Coach Rich Rodriguez's friendly picture.

Now don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying Michigan's football team is better than Notre Dame's.  That will be determined in Ann Arbor this Fall.  I'm simply saying that I'm glad we are not forced to adopt a public relations strategy of deception through omission.  Because then we'd be really really bad.

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