One question still unanswered is how good of a situational game coach Willingham will prove to be at N.D.  This is a hard thing to measure quantitatively, but the evidence is that he'll be pretty good.  Here are some points in his favor:

1.  Consider t he Stanford-U.S.C. 2000 game, which was shown on ESPN Classic. In summary, Stanford made clutch plays, scoring 2 TDs in the last 7 minutes or so to pull the game out. This actually wasn't one of TW's better teams (5-6), but he made all the right decisions down the stretch.

2. TW was 4-3 against U.S.C. This is pretty good given the talent base that U.S.C. has from which can operate. This is also a bigger game than most imagine. Stanford and U.S.C. are the only private schools in the Pac 10 and U.S.C. fancies itself to be sort of a Southern California version of Stanford, only with better football. (I know this seem ridiculous, but I'm trying to give you the U.S.C. vision of things).

3. TW was 7-0 against California. I know the objection to this, which is that Cal stinks. Fair enough. Cal had only one decent team during this stretch (Mariucci's 6-5 regular-season squad in 1996 -- a performance impressive enough to get him the 49ers job). But this is "The Big Game" for "the Axe." (They fancy it the West Coast version of Harvard's and Yale's "The Game.") Most years, you can pretty much throw out the records. Walsh was only 3-2 against Cal in his 5 years. Five of T.W.'s games were decided by a touchdown or less. If ever there were a game for a Stanford coach to gag, this is it. From Stanford's lower horizon, this is akin to Holtz's run against U.S.C..

4. T.W. was an impressive 21-14-1 in games decided by 7 points or fewer. At a place like Stanford, you damn well better win the close games, because you're not going to get yourself on the right side of too many blowouts. Consider, for example, that Davie was barely .500 in close games (and some of these were lost opportunities for blowouts against service academies) and Faust was 6-15-1 in games decided by 7 or fewer. Devine, N.D.'s all time master of close games, was 15-8-1. Holtz was 21-18-2. Ara was 13-6-4. Indeed, the difference between Holtz's and Ara's overall records is partially attributable to Ara's ability to win (or at least not lose) close games. Devine's teams were less dominant than Holtz's, but Devine essentially matched Holtz's record by playing better in close games. TW appears to be the peer of ND's best coaches in this regard.

5. As far as big wins goes, Stanford's handing Oregon its only defeat this year (in wild fashion) and ending the Ducks' 23-home game winning streak is about as big as it gets on the Farm. I have the link to the game summary below. Also the 38 points he hung on MSU in the Sun Bowl (final score 38-0) would've been about 3-year total for Davie.

At the very least, Willingham appears to be smart enough to call time outs on defense when a scoring offensive possession will likely be necessary to win the game.  The "detail" of the game apparently eluded Davie.