Charlie Weis-ism Moves to Kentucky

There's a specter haunting Kentucky, the specter of Charlie Weis. Weis is the football coach that Notre Dame hired away from the NFL to replace the unpopular black coach Tyrone Willingham. Breaking traditions of giving its coaches 5 year windows of opportunity, Notre Dame fired Willingham after Willingham failed to sign enough five star recruits and muddled through a 6-5 season deemed intolerably mediocre. Weis was supposed to be the miracle worker who jump-started the return to no. 1 and he did well for a couple of years with Willingham's recruits. But Notre Dame is now no. 1 as in the being the single worst team in the NCAA Bowl Sub-Division. They're 1-8, they're offense is so bad it might be ranked 111, and Willingham's "mediocrity" looks like an unattainable goal right now.

Billie Gillespie, the men's basketball coach at the University of Kentucky, looks a lot like Charlie Weis this morning. Like Weiss, Gillespie was brought in to replace an unpopular black coach who wasn't satisfying fan demands to get to the Final Four every year. Like Weiss, Gillespie was heavily hyped as a "24-7" basketball coach who wasn't married, didn't date, and had the fastest texting thumbs in the recruiting universe. Armed with a couple of high-profile freshmen, Gillespie was supposed to get UK back to the promised land fast.

But UK lost to mid-major Gardner-Webb by 16 last night and they looked badly out of joint doing it. All of a sudden, they look closer to the bottom of the wilderness than the promised land. All of a sudden, the much hyped Gillespie looks a lot like he's in a very bad place--just as bad as Charlie Weiss.