Cries and Whispers

You didn’t hear it here first: The next football coach at Notre Dame is going to be...Gerry DiNardo. Even before ND fired Bob Davie last weekend, the buzz had begun that the Irish eyes would soon smile on Gerry. After all, DiNardo was a favorite son and a former All-American. He understands the school’s unique environment. He’s available. His initials are the same as “Golden Dome.”

Never mind that the Irish would be dolts to hire DiNardo, who most recently served a coaching stint in the XFL—not even the pig-slop-eating prodigal son sank that low—and whose previous two collegiate employers sacked and sued him, respectively. Other than Louis Farrakhan, it’s hard to think of anyone who could leave so many white people so pissed off as DiNardo did at LSU and Vanderbilt.

And never mind that none of the Media Geniuses at Davie’s season-long wake have reported that any conversations between DiNardo and ND’s athletic department had actually taken place. It’s all a whiffenpoof, sustained by speculation and circumstance. Can you imagine what things would be like if Washington and Wall Street operated like this? (OK, bad examples.)

This game—now playing in South Bend, Nashville, Berkeley and other college football outposts—starts whenever a coaching vacancy looms. Some of it is the creation of the besotted wretches of newspaper sports departments who need something to write about in between junkets to hospitality rooms. It works something like this: Identify potential candidates; seek comment from them about their pursuit of the job for which they have not been contacted; if they don’t deny anything, or offer a non-denial denial—poof!—you have a story.

Sometimes the game is hatched by obsessive fans and alums whose mental world is a planet other than our own and who, to judge from their chatter on a host of Web sites, have nothing more important to do than fantasize about who the next coach might be. (When Tennessee fired Jerry Green last year, the wishful thinkers among the Orange Nation had just about everybody from Steve Alford to Magic Johnson and John Wooden crawling to Knoxville for interviews.)

Sometimes the game assumes a life of its own. The luckless Davie, for example, was about to be tabbed for a major head coaching job before he joined Lou Holtz’s staff at Notre Dame. Supporters of a rival candidate, however, used the prevailing (and inaccurate) buzz to convince Davie that he was the runner-up. Not wanting to be passed over and see his stock fall, Davie withdrew. The position, with Davie bluffed out, went to the rival who had been the second choice all along.

DiNardo, of course, isn’t the only source of speculation in South Bend. Among the other candidates (some of whom don’t even realize they’re candidates yet) ordained by resident fantasists are Raiders coach Jon Gruden, Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin, 49ers coach Steve Mariucci and Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops.

Gruden, runs the thinking (and we use that term broadly), would happily demote himself from his lofty spot in the NFL because he grew up in South Bend and his father once was an assistant at ND. Coughlin, who is likely to be unemployed after December, might be a good fit because he was successful at another Catholic school, Boston College. As for the others, they’re all top coaches, and Irish fans just naturally assume that Notre Dame is still the top college coaching job in America.

At this point, the National Enquireris about as likely to identify correctly the next Notre Dame coach as the Media Geniuses. Scientists are still working on a cure for this whacked disease. Until they find one, you might as well just get in the loopy spirit of things and play along.

Fortunately, there are current opportunities right here in Nashville, where a particularly virulent strain of speculative fever has struck the brains of fans and media. To share in the moment, we assembled a few of our committee of way, way insiders at the Scene Sports Desk at McCabe’s Pub and put together our own list of possible replacements for Woody Widenhofer. If you’d like to try the home version, try to figure out which of the names below have actually been dropped by the media or on fan Web sites.

♦ Gary Barnett. In protest for the way the BCS slighted his 10-2 team, the thinking holds that Barnett might be tempted to leave Colorado for Vandyland. He took Northwestern to the Rose Bowl, and his Buffaloes rolled up the most points ever surrendered by a Nebraska team. So maybe now he’s up for something really hard.

♦ Tony Dungy. The Tampa Bay coach may need a job next month, and the Commodores could make history by hiring the SEC’s first black head coach. And since he has drafted a slew of Vandy players in recent years, he has a certain kinship with the program already, right?