Keith Grieve is 28 years old and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. His sports journalism background includes two years as Sports Director for Cortland State Television at SUNY Cortland, where he did play-by-play commentary for football, basketball, and hockey. He's been a senior writer for eSports for about three years now. His day job is in retail management, but he still finds time to play hardball -- that?s right, not softball -- in an attempt to recapture his youth. Tyrone Willingham's unceremonious removal as head coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish signals the end of purity in sports.
He is the first coach ever fired in the middle of his contract at the once prestigious university.
Willingham arrived on the scene in 2002 and led Notre Dame out of the ashes, it seemed,, to a 10-3 record and a Gator Bowl appearance against Phillip Rivers and N.C. State. (Remember him, Charger fans?)
The team stumbled the next two years and he finished his tenure with a 21-15 record. He will not get credit for the result of the Irish's Insight.com Bowl game, if it is even played.
What does this all mean?
Let's not lose sight of the following:
1. Bob Davie posted a slightly worse record in his first three years (21-16), yet he was allowed to finish his contract.
2. The Notre Dame roster includes 67 freshman and sophomores. Davie went 9-3 in his fourth year. Who's to say Willingham wouldn't?
The bottom line is that Willingham was a good coach, but more important a good man. A role model for young men to follow. A rare combination of success with emphasis on life off the field.
Willingham has posted a winning record. While the past three years have not resulted in BCS bids, the academics of the football program reportedly have never been better.
Wins and grades -- isn't that supposed to be good enough in college football?
Most schools settle for one or the other. They either are perennial title contenders and deal with off the field troubles the best they can or they have great students who can't seem to compete much with the first group.
Willingham was on his way to accomplishing both and keep the university among the top institutions in the country.
What Notre Dame did on Tuesday was serve notice that purity in American sports is officially dead.
I give you this lovely quote from AD Kevin White: "From Sunday through Friday our football program has exceeded all expectations, in every way. But on Saturday, we struggled."
With that, the aura that was the reverence placed on Notre Dame was extinguished. The last bastion of excellence, success, with a heavy dose of class, vanished into oblivion, and there was nothing any of us could do about it.
And that can't be replaced by any bowl game.