Oct. 20, 2005
By John Heisler
Understand, right off the top, that I was not a business major in college.
However, I’m willing to hazard a guess that Carolyn Woo, savvy dean of the University of Notre Dame’s distinguished Mendoza College of Business, would routinely suggest that any successful business needs a marketing plan.
So, let’s present one extremely unofficial plan for the Notre Dame football program:
1. Hire a great head football coach. The game simply is too competitive these days to think you can survive very long with anything less. At Notre Dame, experience generally has been a precursor for success. Former head coach Ara Parseghian once said he needed every ounce of experience he’d gained as head coach at Miami (Ohio) and Northwestern to be successful at Notre Dame.
Knute Rockne (no previous head coaching experience) might have been the exception. Current coach Charlie Weis might become another – though the Super Bowl rings he earned calling plays for the New England Patriots certainly qualified him as more than just another assistant coach.
Weis is quick to promote the fact he now has been a head coach for all of six games. However, he has taken great pains to track how his mentor Bills (Parcells and Belichick) handled their craft. When he’s interested in advice, he knows Notre Dame connections like Parseghian and Lou Holtz – not to mention all his professional connections — are only a phone call or e-mail away.
Through half a season, it appears Weis has game – and he has a game plan for just about everything else.
2. Hire a great staff of assistant coaches. No head coach can do it alone, whether it’s coaching or recruiting or dealing one-on-one with 95 scholarship players. Maybe no one understands that better than Weis, who – even with a degree from the University of Notre Dame – had to build his coaching credentials from scratch.
In his spare time last December while helping the Patriots win another Super Bowl, Weis hired what he terms “the best staff ever assembled by telephone.” He kidded that when he walked into the Irish football offices for his first on-campus recruiting weekend, he was shaking hands with his own assistants for the first time
Despite not really knowing any of his staff members on an intimate, personal basis, he managed to attract three former head coaches (Rick Minter, Bill Lewis, David Cutcliffe) and three recruiting coordinators (Rob Ianello, Brian Polian, Mike Haywood). When Cutcliffe stepped aside last spring because of medical issues, Weis added yet another head coach in Peter Vaas (10 combined years at Holy Cross and in NFL Europe).
3. Make sure all those coaches coach and recruit like mad. Weis set the tone for the recruiting aspect last May by spending the entire month on the road visiting high schools. In the past, that aspect of the recruiting process normally had fallen to assistant coaches. In one year’s time, Weis may personally have changed the culture of recruiting nationally. Weis started his coaching career on the ground floor. Somewhere along the way he gained a flair and reputation for calling offensive plays. There’s little question about the stamp he has put on this Irish edition, even after only six games.
4. Make sure your facilities are competitive. At Notre Dame, there’s never been an issue with the game facility. It may have been a long time since Notre Dame Stadium was termed modern, even after the 20,000-seat expansion in 1997. But, after all, there’s nothing wrong with old school when it comes to college football. History and tradition are endearing when it comes to telling tales of the college game – and maybe no collegiate venue has more tales to tell than Notre Dame’s.
Irish football practice facilities haven’t been considered state of the art, but that’s changed with the opening of the Guglielmino Athletics Complex this year.
5. Schedule strategically. Notre Dame long has been proud of its national slate of intersectional games. But, gone are the days when you can play in a New Year’s Day bowl game with an 8-3 record.
So, if the Irish believe a one-loss record (maybe sometimes two) could be a requirement for Bowl Championship Series consideration, it makes sense to assess the philosophy. Future seasons will pencil in a list of coast-to-coast regulars – three from the Big Ten (Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue), two from the Pacific-10 (USC, Stanford) and three from the BIG EAST (starting in 2011). With 12 games the norm beginning in `06, the Irish will play seven times at home per season, with an eighth off-site home game in the works in locales like Florida and Texas by 2009.
So, that’s how the current marketing plan reads. As Notre Dame athletics director Kevin White might suggest, a little dose of magic never hurt, either.
As George Peppard used to say in “The A-Team” television hit, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Charlie Weis (he’d remember that show) probably would agree.