Charlie Weis, Mack Brown Pass the Buck on Football Downfalls

You would think that if any coaches want to bring up some revisionist history, they could at least wait until after Week 2 of the college football season.

Alas, that is not the case this year.

On Wednesday, a rather slow news day as is, two former coaches of two of the winningest programs in the sport popped up on the radar and lit most of social media on fire for a pair of comments they made that seem to defy reality.

In case you missed it, ex-Notre Dame and ex-Kansas coach Charlie Weis spoke to the Little Rock Touchdown Club late Tuesday and all but passed the blame for his disastrous tenure in South Bend, Indiana, on a few bad hires. Not his own, mind you, but that of a handful of assistants.

From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

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Weis said his struggles at Notre Dame could be traced to the composition of his coaching staff. Three of his assistants — Michael Haywood (Miami, Ohio), Rob Ianello (Akron) and Brian Polian (Nevada) — eventually left to run their own programs.

“I hired too many people that wanted to use the school as a stepping stone for a head coaching job,” Weis said.

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Orlin Wagner/Associated Press

Never mind that Weis himself used one season as the Florida Gators' offensive coordinator as a stepping stone to the job with the Kansas Jayhawks. Never mind that only Haywood left Weis’ staff at Notre Dame for a head coaching job, taking over the Miami RedHawks following a .500 regular season for the Fighting Irish in 2008.

For the sake of accuracy, Polian left for the Stanford Cardinal’s staff once Weis was fired, spending two seasons on the Farm and one with the Texas A&M Aggies before eventually getting the Nevada Wolf Pack job in 2013. Ianello was hired by the Akron Zips after Weis himself was fired. Just as incredulous, Weis then rehired Ianello at Kansas even though he apparently shoulders the blame for one of the darkest periods in Notre Dame history. 

Make sense? Only in Charlie’s world.

If Weis wants to believe his tenure at his alma mater came down to some bad hires on his part, well, that only serves to confirms that he should never again be a college head coach. Perhaps his most endearing accomplishment to the college game remains getting a 10-year extension because of a loss (to the USC Trojans, in 2005) and collecting $4.6 million this year not to coach (per Steve Berkowitz of USA TODAY Sports). 

Weis’ inability to raise his hand and shoulder the blame isn’t that surprising given his history. He isn’t the only former coach to pass the buck either.

In a profile by Tim Griffin in the San Antonio Express-News on Wednesday, Mack Brown seemed to absolve himself of any blame when it came to the current state of his former program, the Texas Longhorns.

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The former UT coach said he feels no real responsibility for where the Longhorns’ program is today. 

“I really don’t,” he said. “I think if that was the case, our first year, we would have had to give all the credit to John Mackovic. So, to me, that’s happens when you change. Change is very unique. Sometimes it works great immediately. Sometimes it takes awhile. Last year, it didn’t work. There were suspensions, changes, injuries and transfers.”

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Mackovic does deserve some credit for recruiting several talented players that later turned into early NFL draft picks, just as he deserves the blame for going .500 two seasons after reaching the Sugar Bowl and finishing in the top 15. The reason he found himself out of the job was because of the latter, not the former.

In the case of Brown, things are flipped. The blame is not.

Eric Gay/Associated Press

Quite simply, there is not enough talent on Texas' roster, and there hasn’t been in some time.

Current head coach Charlie Strong deserves part of the blame, for sure, but the biggest flaws in the program developed and festered under Brown. There was a reason fans and boosters wanted Brown out sooner rather than later—they could see this coming, too.

Texas’ streak of producing at least one NFL draft pick every season since 1937? It should come as no shock that ended just a few months after Brown resigned. He was the one who kept longtime coordinator Greg Davis around and failed to alter his recruiting strategy when it became clear things were not working out. Passing on Andrew Luck, J.T. Barrett and a handful of others lies at the feet of Brown, too.

Strong has made missteps of his own, especially when it comes to the offensive coaching staff and a shifting strategy on that side of the ball. It is hard, however, to smell such a foul stew and not think that the ingredients played a bigger part in the dish than the current chef.

Brown is well suited to his current role as an ESPN analyst, and Weis continues to do more good off the field than on it through his charity work. Let us hope each recognizes his new role does not need to include rehashing an inaccurate world view of the end of his coaching career. Each is disingenuous at best and deceitful at worst.

So please, Charlie, and please, Mack, if you’re going to open your mouth to talk about your former programs, do so in the offseason. After all, revising history to suit your viewpoint is typically reserved for the winners, and that is not, in this case, you two.

You can follow Bryan Fischer on Twitter at @BryanDFischer.