“If they decide to make a change, I’d
have to say I’d have a tough time arguing with that. If they decide to
make a change, I’d have a tough time arguing that because 6-5 is not
good enough,” the Fighting Irish coach said Sunday. “Especially when
you’ve lost five games by a touchdown or less and several three-point
games that went right down to the wire.
“My intent is to be here. But if that were the rationale, I mean it would be tough for me to argue with that point,” he said.
Notre Dame lost its third straight
game and fell to 6-5 on Saturday with a 33-30 loss in double overtime
to Connecticut on senior day in South Bend.
He made the comments after being
asked about his quote when he was hired five years ago after Tyrone
Willingham was fired with a 6-5 record.
At the time, Weis said: “You are what
you are, folks, and right now you’re a 6-5 football team. And guess
what? That’s just not good enough. That’s not good enough for you, and
it’s certainly not going to be good enough for me.”
Weis’ 35-26 record gives him a .573
winning percentage. That’s worse than the .583 winning percentage that
got Notre Dame’s two previous coaches, Willingham and Bob Davie, fired.
Weis declined to answer most
questions about how the Irish have done in his five years, saying he’s
too busy getting ready for Stanford (7-4) to think about that. He said
he’ll answer those questions in the future.
“I’m going to need significant time to get to that point,” he said.
Athletic director Jack Swarbrick has
said he will decide on Weis’ future after Saturday’s game at Stanford.
Weis said he hasn’t talked to Swarbrick since he saw him in the locker
room after the loss to UConn.
When asked to characterize his
relationship with Swarbrick, who was hired in July 2008, Weis said it
has been “fair and cordial the whole time we’ve worked together.”
Weis, who has a contract that runs through the 2015 season, said he couldn’t envision any scenario where he would resign.
“No, that’s not happening,” he said.
Weis conceded that he’s responsible for any shortcomings of the program.
“Who else is responsible? Now, I
could sit there and try to blame everybody else, but ultimately, it
falls on my shoulders,” he said.
Weis was generally in an affable
mood Sunday. A reporter was talking about his tie when Weis came in and
Weis quipped: “a Kmart special.” When asked if he was gong to be the
whipping boy on Sunday, Weis joked: “Welcome to my world.”
He also pretended to be ignorant
when first asked about his 6-5 quote from five years ago, saying: “I
might have short-term memory here, if you’re going to reminisce at this
point.”
He did get terse when a reporter
asked whether coaches or players were to blame for the team’s poor
defensive play, an area where the Irish have struggled since Weis
arrived.
“Do you really expect me to come up and throw people under the bus. Is that what you think?” he said.
Irish players said after being the
game they were at a loss to explain how they’ve gone from being a team
with Bowl Championship Series aspirations and two players, Jimmy
Clausen and Golden Tate, being talked about as potential Heisman
candidates, to losing three straight.
“You kind of step back and look at
it all and you don’t think this is where we should be. But it is,”
linebacker Harrison Smith said. “We can’t change anything now.”
Safety Kyle McCarthy said he can’t believe how the season has turned.
“Coming into the season, I would
have laughed in your face if you had told me this is what was going to
happen,” he said. “We can’t point fingers. We can only point them back
at ourselves.”
The Irish players say they support
Weis. The captains stood beside Weis as they led the team out of the
tunnel Saturday with their arms linked in a show of support.
Tate said he wants Weis back because
they have such a good relationship on and off the field, saying he
wouldn’t be the receiver he is without Weis.
“But it’s not up to me,” Tate said.