Shoot Me Before I Metaphor Again

Right about now, Jeff Long has got to be one of the happiest people in college football. Stanford University didn't just pick up his trash for him, it came into his kitchen and took the garbage bag out to the curb.

When Stanford hired Walt Harris to be its next football coach, it saved Long, the University of Pittsburgh athletic director, the trouble and embarrassment of firing Harris.

The termination of Harris' employment at Pitt was a done deal, if not before this season, then certainly after the Panthers lost to the University of Connecticut -- there's no shame in that on the basketball court, but this was football, where the Huskies were in their first year at the Division I-A level.

And if not after the UConn loss, then definitely when Pitt had to go to overtime to beat Furman. Or when the Panthers needed a two-touchdown comeback to escape Temple, which was in the process of being kicked out of the Big East on the grounds of incompetence.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Harris' execution. Pitt started winning, finished with two wins over top-20 teams in three games, took the Big East title, and a berth in a New Year's Day bowl game.

By all indications, none of that changed Long's mind about Harris. That much was evident this week at the press conference where the university announced the coach's departure for Stanford. An account published by the Associated Press all but described Long's message for Harris being, "Don't let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya."

Firing the coach would have been a PR nightmare for in the national media, which would have blasted Pitt for firing a coach after an 8-3 regular-season record, its first conference title ever and its first Jan. 1 bowl game since before there was a Bush in the White House.

Former Stanford coach, and Certified Football Genius, Bill Walsh, could provide the ammunition. Walsh headed up the welcoming committee for Harris at Stanford by taking a slap at Pitt, referring to it as, "not a four-star program, but a two-and-a-half-star program," even using the word "forlorn," according to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Scott Ostler.

Part of Pitt's problem, Walsh was only so happy to point out, is that it can't recruit Ohio State/Michigan-level talent. And that's precisely why Long didn't try a lot harder to keep Harris.

Western Pennsylvania isn't the high school football mother lode it was when the steel mills were running 24 hours a day, seven days a week and the region's population was twice what it is today, but it's still good enough to provide the nucleus of a four-star college program.

Good enough, that is, if the coach can protect his own backyard, which Harris hasn't been able to do. The last top recruit Harris got out of western Pennsylvania was quarterback Tyler Palko, the sparkplug in the engine that pulled Pitt into a premier bowl game.

Since Palko, Pitt and Harris has seen the wide receiver Steve Breaston go to Michigan in 2002. Linebacker Paul Posluszny in 2003 and defensive back Justin King in the 2005 recruiting season both headed off to Penn State.

In 2003, quarterback Anthony Morelli made an oral commitment to Pitt, then changed his mind after the Big East Conference began its disintegration and, like Posluszny did and King will, went to Penn State. Morelli will be starting at QB for Penn State next season.

There is no guarantee that the next coach will do any better at recruiting western Pennsylvania than Harris did. But, then again, Harris didn't set the bar all that high.

By hiring Harris, Stanford saved Pitt from having the most laughable coach firing of the 2004 aftermath.

The Fighting Irish: From Chic to Geek

Notre Dame still holds that honor.

The situation in South Bend, quite frankly, has got me in the basement going Abu Gharib on a metaphor involving one of those 1980s Savage Steve Holland movies where John Cusack dumps his devoted, if a little nondescript, girlfriend because he hears a rumor that sexy Urban Meyer wants to go to the prom with him.

Only too late does John find out that sexy Urban Meyer would rather hook up with the captain of the ski team. And he can't go back to his devoted, if a little nondescript, girlfriend because she's moved on to someone else. So, John contemplates suicide until the cute little foreign exchange student from France makes everything all better.

And -- AAAAUGH!

Oops. That was either the sound of a metaphor being brutally tortured, or Charlie Weis' reaction to being cast as a cute little foreign exchange student from France.

In either case, it's questionable whether Weis can teach the Fighting Irish to ski the K-2. In his introductory press conference at Notre Dame last week, Weis exposed a naiveté about college recruiting when he likened it to enticing free agents in the NFL.

There are four ways to attract free agents in pro football. One is with the potential of winning championships. The second is with money. So are the last two.

In college, the rules prohibit using money, and championships have been non-existent at Notre Dame for more than a decade.

Recruiting is about making face time with parents and selling yourself to them. Although Weis acknowledged that at the press conference, he won't be able to do it, possibly until after letter of intent day, because of his 18-hour days with the Patriots.

And recruiting, even at Notre Dame, isn't what it used to be. The days that a coach merely had to throw open the doors in South Bend and wait for the nation's top high school players -- all with 3.8 grade-point averages -- to beg for admission, are over.

The fact that, in the previous skit, Notre Dame was cast as hip geek John Cusack -- when it was the ski team captain not all that long ago -- says volumes about the fall of Notre Dame football.

What Weis does have going for him is the opportunity to play for four seasons with players recruited by Ty Willingham, his predecessor. And by the time those players are gone, Weis might be gone, as well.

There's a part of me -- the part that thinks there were a minimum of eight shooters in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, and that Woody Harrelson's father was one of them -- that sees Weis' move to Notre Dame as a way station on his path to an NFL head coaching job.

Over the last few years, Weis has been linked in media rumors to a number of head coaching jobs. But he hasn't ever seriously been considered because those positions always have been filled before New England has finished its season and teams with vacancies are prohibited by the league from even talking to an assistant coach from another team that is still in the playoffs.

That prohibition doesn't apply to college teams looking for a head coach.

And two or three years down the road, if Weis has even moderate success at Notre Dame, he'll get offers and interviews from NFL teams that will have to wait only until mid-December instead of mid-February.

In other words, Weis might do to Notre Dame what Notre Dame did to Willingham. And there's a certain justice in that, especially for those who might be devoted, if a little nondescript.