Irish in reality show, not the old movies

No school has a better football tradition than Notre Dame. No school has a thicker media guide. No school has more athletic folklore. No school has more devout, passionate alumni, not merely on the subject of its football program, but on just about anything else that has to do with that institution in South Bend, Ind.

And no school supporting a major athletic program more desperately wishes to portray itself as above the fray. The way a lot of people in South Bend see it, there is Us, and there is the Riffraff.

Of course, the truth is that Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy, and the Hollywood '40s Notre Dame don't exist any longer. Notre Dame really is just like everybody else, only more so, as the school proved yesterday when football coach Tyrone Willingham, hailed as a savior only three years ago, became the second Notre Dame coach in succession to be fired long before the expiration of his contract. (We'll kind of gloss over the George O'Leary fudged-resume embarrassment on the grounds that such a thing could have happened to anybody.)

The time has come for the people at Notre Dame to stop acting as if they, and their school, are special. They aren't. The issues that drive Notre Dame's athletic program are the same ones driving everyone else at that level. Those issues are money and victories. Notre Dame lost any high moral ground it may have possessed when it broke away from its collegiate brethren to sign that exclusive contract with NBC. Notre Dame could not resist the money grab. Fine. It was looking out for No. 1. We can all relate to that. But from that point on, Notre Dame had no right to pretend it was any less expedient than anyone else.

Once upon a time, Notre Dame really had distinguishing principles in the conduct of its athletic affairs. No one was more hopelessly out of his element than Gerry Faust, but the Notre Dame administration honored its five-year contract commitment to this guileless man, even though everyone knew very early in the process that a huge mistake had been made. That decision wasn't very pragmatic, but it was honorable, and it surely separated Notre Dame from the pack.

Let the record show that Notre Dame first got on the slippery slope with the hiring of the oleaginous Lou Holtz, who did provide the school with another national championship (1988), but not without a price. The one thing we could always say about Notre Dame was that the players were very representative of the university, but Holtz brought some people to Notre Dame who caused problems for the administration. News concerning Notre Dame players had always been confined to the sports page, but some of the Holtz recruits found their names published a bit closer to Page 1, and not because they were winning Rhodes Scholarships or taking home 4-H ribbons, if you get my drift.

Well, OK, that happens to everybody. Which is precisely my point.

It's the decision-makers themselves who are proving to be no different from the norm. They can preach academic achievement all they want, but the coach had better win, and win big. It is a clear concern that Notre Dame has not won a national championship since 1988, nor even won a bowl game since 1993. That's another thing. If you're old enough, you recall the long stretch when Notre Dame was haughty enough to spurn all bowl invitations. Now, 6-5 record and all, it eagerly grasps an invitation to the Insight Bowl. That's what everyone else would do. Which is precisely my point.

Notre Dame cannot claim to be special when Bob Davie is let go one year into a five-year contract extension and Tyrone Willingham is fired three years into a five-year contract. Does Notre Dame have a right to sever its relationship with Willingham? Absolutely. If a sober decision was made that this man just wasn't getting it done, and would never get it done, then what you do at that level is cut your losses and move on. Notre Dame has done something any comparable institution would do. Which is precisely my point.

Something else is going on at Notre Dame. Willingham is the apparent victim of alumni wrath as much as anything else. Notre Dame alumni are vocal and powerful, and they have an organ in which to vent called "Blue and Gold Illustrated," a nonsanctioned publication that allows Notre Dame alums worldwide to pass public judgment on all Notre Dame athletic matters. And in the world of Notre Dame alumni, nothing angries up the blood, as Satchel Paige might say, than a football coach who does not meet their standards.

Throw in the Internet, and you have a very formidable force.

So what? This is the kind of pressure that could bring about a change at any big State U. Why should Notre Dame be any different? Which is precisely my point.

Some of these Notre Dame alums cannot accept that, perhaps, times have changed. In their minds, it's still 1927 or 1953 or even 1988. In this scenario, Notre Dame is a perennial Top 10 team and it surely isn't losing four straight to -- ugh -- Boston College. They cannot accept that all those kids from all those inner-city Catholic high schools don't necessarily grow up dreaming about playing for the Fighting Irish. Perhaps they have a hard time believing that there are those among us who don't believe that spending four years in South Bend, Ind., is a treat, or that, if it really matters, you can't get a very nice education somewhere else.

The Notre Dame coaching job was always difficult, but now it is absurdly so, because, while so much has changed in

the world at large, the expectations remain ridiculously high. Notre Dame still loves to preach. Willingham was hired, according to athletic director Kevin White (as related in the media guide), because "To the people of the NCAA he is a man of integrity and to the recruiting gurus he's among the very best at attracting talent even when maintaining the highest SAT scores in the nation. He's a disciplinarian whose players love him." But he's 21-15 in three years and the alums don't love him. He remains a man of integrity, but the results aren't there. He won't even have a chance for a complete recruiting cycle to play out. He's a decent man, and he bailed out the school three years ago just by showing up in their hour of extreme need following the O'Leary fiasco, but business is business, and he has to go.

Now, if that school would look in the mirror and see the same take-no-prisoners institution everyone else sees, Notre Dame can stop pretending it is something it no longer is and can set about resuming residency in the Top 10.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com.