There's no point in pretending that the offseason loss of players won't hurt next year, because it will. Dykes and Elam are guys who would've been major contributors, Lovecchio might've been a major contributor and Cory Jones and Crawford might've seen some important playing time. If Julius Jones has academic problems, it's like having a huge rash of terrible injuries and N.D. hasn't even laced up a shoe yet. Yes there are capable players left on the roster who play all of these positions. Grant, Holiday, Sapp and Earl might all magically be able to play every important down next year, but we all know that football doesn't work that way.

The loss of JJ would be, in a football sense, the worst one of all. Before all the Grant fans jump on me here, let's be realistic about it. Putting all your TB eggs in the basket of a sophomore with about 120 career yards gained is not a good situation, no matter how good he ultimately turns out to be. JJ or no JJ, Grant is going to be an important player for N.D. next year, but it'll be a miracle if he's able to take 250 carries (only about 20 per game) and last all year without some nicks: thigh bruises, hamstring pulls, etc.

Now, N.D. does have enough quality football players that it can suit up a competitive team for each and every game. Even with the losses, I don't think I'd want to swap rosters with any opponents we have next year except for F.S.U. and perhaps Michigan. M.S.U., B.C., Stanford and U.S.C. all probably have a significant number of players who would start at N.D., but probably don't have the overall talent level. The other 6 teams have ranging from probably a few (Maryland and Pitt) to almost no (Rutgers and Navy) players who could start for N.D. So, we aren't likely to overmatched in any game except for perhaps F.S.U. and maybe Michigan, but we aren't going to overmatch a lot of teams. Prepare yourself for a lot of close games. Hopefully we won't be snakebit like we were in 1986, but this is a realistic possibility.

To start looking for silver linings, Willingham has a great chance to get some of the younger players (including incoming frosh) into games and to let them develop. There's only so much you can accomplish with players in practice, you have to get them into games. One of the many reasons that Davie's teams never seemed to develop was that he wasn't much good at doing this. Even in games where we should've been killing the opponent (e.g., Navy) he never could put anyone away, so we always had the starters in the game for the whole game. If someone went down with injury, it was hard to plug the holes, and when we lost starters to graduation the starters the next year had relatively little playing time under their belts, hence the perpetually awful starts to seasons. The chance to play early on at a glamour program like N.D. should also be a huge recruiting draw as well.

I suspect that the road back will look like the road back in basketball. Basketball had its Holtz (Digger), its Davie (McLeod), its O'Leary (Doherty) and now its Willingham (Brey). Yes there are differences: Digger didn't win a NC, but he did make a final 4. McLeod's basically a nice guy (or so it seems), but he's just about as bad a coach as Davie. Doherty actually stayed around to coach a few games and O'Leary didn't. But in most ways, Brey and Willingham are similar hires. They came from places where it isn't easy to win but they had won nonetheless. McLeod's last 4 years were 9-18, 16-14 (NIT berth), 13-14 and 14-16. Doherty went 22-15 with an NIT berth and Brey has gone 20-10 with an NCAA victory and then 22-11 with a convincing first round victory and a loss to Duke in the second round that did a great deal to signal to the world that the Irish are back. Since there are roughly 3 times as many D-1 basketball programs as football programs, winning a 1st round NCAA game is about the equivalent of winning a significant bowl game and finishing in the top 10 to 15 in football.

It's true, of course, that basketball programs are easier to turn around because fewer players are needed and N.D. is willing to take transfers. But N.D. has maybe 10% the basketball tradition that it has football tradition. The problems in basketball were much the same as they are now in football. The team appeared to be slow and unable compete athletically with national-caliber teams. The team had only one real difference maker (Murphy), and a bunch of role players. The team didn't really expect to win and performed terribly in post-season play (no Big East tournament wins, ever). Now look at us in basketball. We have won, we expect to win, we have players like Chris Thomas who could play for any program in America and we're hauling in the stud recruits by the truckload.

Probably Willingham won't be able to get all of this done in 2 years as Brey did, but he'll get it done. The road back started on 1/1/02. Anybody who isn't ready for a few bumps, now's the time to hop off. But we're pointed the right direction.

Addendum on basketball and football coaching records:

Here are the win rates of N.D. basketball coaches since the 1920's:

Keegan .771
Krause .671
Jordan .603
Dee .594
Phelps .666
McLeod .461 (106-124)
Doherty .595
Brey .667

Here are the win rates of Irish football coaches since the 1920's:

Rockne .881
Anderson .630
Layden .770
Leahy .855
McKeever .800
Devore .500
Brennan .640
Kuharich .425
Ara .836
Devine .764
Faust .535
Holtz .765
Davie .585 (35-25)