THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

All due respect the The Clash (Should I stay or should I go) , you gotta have somewhere to go first. And as of this hour, Charlie Weis is still the head football coach at Notre Dame. And Brian Kelly is in his UC office, breaking down game film for the Bearcats next opponent: Hawaii.

The tossed oranges hadn’t been picked up, the last student hadn’t left the field, the last UC player hadn’t showered Saturday before collegefootballtalk.com and national radio talk shows began floating this scenario: if Notre Dame loses big at Southern Cal, Weis is out. Enough big check writers with Notre Dame connections were willing to pony up millions just to get a moving van to back up to old Charlie’s house. Oh and by the way, Notre Dame has already begun courting the Messiah In Clifton, Lord Kelly, or so these reports would have you believe.

If you’re a UC fan, you’d have to be in complete denial today if you didn’t accept the fact that Brian Kelly is now the ‘hot’ coach. The “It coach” in college football. And there is a ton of internet buzz that has Notre Dame ready to hire Kelly. All it has to do first is fire Weis and write a check to him for $12 million. Maybe they could see Nancy Pelosi for a bailout.

If you’re the Notre Dame athletic director, do you really want to pull the plug on another head coach? Remember, this is the school that would never fire a coach, ever. But then along came Gerry Faust, later Bob Davie, later Ty Willingham. Notre Dame, Touchdown Jesus, where principal had always trumped dollars had become just another Division One football factory trying to appease alumni and boosters.

If you’re a Notre Dame alum or booster, don’t you have to ask yourself this question this morning: if my school is so good, if my football team is so fabled, how come my school can’t get it right when hiring a football coach?
And if you’re Brian Kelly, who’s got it $1.5 million dollars a year ‘good’ in Clifton, don’t you have to ask yourself: exactly when did Ty Willingham or Bob Davie get stupid?

Because they were pretty smart, successful coaches before they landed in South Bend, ‘flavors of the month’ like Kelly might wind up being.

Look, I don’t know if Notre Dame is going to launch Charlie Weis. He’s apparently ticked off some alums and boosters with his brashness. And he’s lost a lot of games for a guy who’s supposedly delivering all of these great recruiting classes.

But if I’m the Reverend John Jenkins, the Notre Dame school President, how do I justify in this economy, accepting a check for $12 million dollars from a group of my big shot donors to pay a coach to go away?

How do I sell that to my faculty of 780 professors, who wouldn’t get 12-cents from a booster to go away? Where’s this guy’s conscience in all of this?

And don’t give me ‘this is big time college football and it happens all of the time”. No, this is Notre Dame, not Oklahoma, Miami, Florida or some other factory. And correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it the Reverend John Jenkins who signed off on the big contract extension that Weis got last season? If Jenkins OK’s a $12 million dollar deal that will run his coach out of South Bend, what does that say about Jenkins and his decision making ability?

I have no idea if Notre Dame is going to fire Weis or if Kelly would be interested in replacing him. My gut tells me Kelly is staying put. But if he is interested in Notre Dame, here’s the first thing I’d do in the negotiating process. I’d tell my lawyer to get the same kind of buyout that Weis is allegedly going to get. Because the way things are going in South Bend lately, Kelly’s going to need it.