More Chaos for Notre Dame: Irish To Enter Spring Drills without QB

How much uncertainty can a major college football program deal with?  Notre Dame is going through football chaos, and the bottom may be nowhere in sight.

Replacing a coach can be problematic.  Replacing a coach at a crucial recruiting period can be problematic.  Not having named the replacement gets more problematic with each day that passes.

Most fans felt it was time for Charlie Weis to go.  They feel a new coach could mean positive changes for the football program.  They're hoping this will be the case.

Today, Jimmy Clausen announced he will be leaving school after his junior and will enter the 2010 NFL draft.  This was a move that most Domers were fearing but also a move they new made sense for their All-American quarterback.

Now that Clausen has made it clear, how soon will Golden Tate announce his intentions to follow in his quarterback's footsteps and file for the NFL draft?

Notre Dame fans were bracing themselves for life after Jimmy and Golden—now it looks like a reality.  Now the program doesn't have a coach, and it doesn't have a dynamic passing game—the only part of their attack that stood up this past season.

How will these events affect Notre Dame football?  Is the glass half full or half empty?

A new coach can bring sweeping changes and create new enthusiasm for a program looking to recover from the worst three year stretch in its history.  A delay in finding a new coach may bring to light what most folks around South Bend dread to hear—the job is not so desirable anymore!

A new coach could be an aggresive recruiter with a  vison. A delay in finding a new coach can cause the ranks of next year's recruiting class to crumble.  It's only natural.  Prospects want to know who they'll be playing for—They want to know what type of offense and defense they will be walking into.

Replacing Clausen and Tate will just be plain difficult.  They may not find another combination like this for years.

With all this on their plate, all the uncertainty that the team is facing, there is yet another problem that could be the toughest to deal with—Notre Dame may not have a quarterback to start spring practice in 2010.

Spring practice, which is only a couple of months off, is the time when young players get familiar with the system.  It's the time when players learn the basic offensive and defensive schemes.  They'll have to do it without a quarterback.

When spring practice rolls around, the Irish will have only one player on the team who threw a pass during the 2009 season.  Armando Allen threw one pass.  Armando's a running back.

With Clausen and senior quarterback Evan Sharpley leaving, back-up Dayne Crist was supposed to step in next year and run the team. 

Crist may well do that.  He may be a pretty good signal caller but he tore his ACL in last year's Washington State game and is not expected to recover fully until preseason  practice in August.

His condition is still unknown.  There is a chance he gets to practice in the spring—there is a chance he won't be fully recovered for preseason practice.

The Irish, who elected to decline a bowl invitation, are going to lose two weeks of valuable practice this month.  They are going into the spring without a quarterback.  They are going to have a new coach, new coordinators and a new system.

You might call it chaos.  You might call it a fresh start.

Whomever the quarterback would have been, whether Clausen was returning or Crist was going to be 100 percent healthy, they would have to learn a new system come spring anyway.

This may be the only positive in a situation which presently looks anything but positive.