Perception is everything. Perception is nothing.Process, not results. Results are all that matter.Truth is nothing, what you believe to be true is everything. The truth will be revealed.
Notre Dame is banking on the latter thoughts following a week that could have gone better for the Irish football program optically.
But there is the key word: optically. And in football, of all sports, how it looks is not always how it is. The oblong ball can bounce any which way.
Optically, thanks to one tweet from a national reporter, Notre Dame did not have or did not want to have the cash ready to buy Utah offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig out of his contract after interviewing him a week ago in South Bend, including a trip to an Irish hockey game. Optically, the athletic department worried more about a couple million dollars than landing head coach Marcus Freeman’s first choice for arguably the most pivotal position on his coaching staff. Optically, Notre Dame did not see enough value in supporting its head coach with no questions asked.
Logic disagrees with those optics, but in the current world of instant reactions and message boards churning out conspiracies 25 hours a day, perception can become reality even quicker than a lie used to travel around the world.
As soon as ESPN’s Pete Thamel tweeted on Monday that Ludwig’s multi-million dollar buyout was an “obstacle” to Notre Dame hiring him, something seemed off. Quite literally, this scribe’s first reaction was to assume someone was bluffing.
Ludwig’s may have been the largest assistant-coach buyout ever paid, but buyouts are common in the industry. There would be no principle of the matter for the Irish to overcome; it is standard operating procedure.
But there are also often negotiated, particularly when they increased by more than six-fold within the last month. Maybe Notre Dame was trying to pay a number closer to the reported $450,000 buyout Utah would have demanded in mid-January, and the Thamel report was one school or the other publicly digging its heels in.
Note: That scenario is not reporting. It is speculation based on the logic of the situation.
Or perhaps Ludwig himself was not certain when the buyout figure jumped and Notre Dame needed to navigate conflicting information. The number of people who actually know the true sequence of events is likely in the single digits, and Thamel is probably not one of them.
Regardless, the optics said the Irish were cheap. As misunderstood as endowments are, the fact that Notre Dame’s numbers in the 11 digits made those optics that much worse. (Note: Using the endowment to pay a buyout is fundamentally not how endowments work.)
Notre Dame director of athletics Jack Swarbrick obviously received a pile of emails upset with these optics. In something of a surprise, he replied, and multiple media outlets procured that email.
“During our discussion with a candidate for our offensive coordinator position a national reporter accurately noted that the candidate’s buyout in his current contract was an ‘obstacle,’” Swarbrick wrote. “Without seeking any clarification from us, some of the individuals who comment on Notre Dame Football concluded that this meant that Notre Dame was unwilling to pay the buyout. That is not and never was the case. … We communicated clearly in each and every instance that any offer we made would include our funding of their buyout with their current institution. To the extent the buyout was an ‘obstacle’ in the case of one candidate, that was true of a brief period of time only because of conflicting information that had been provided to us regarding the amount and mechanics of the buyout. However, it was an obstacle we knew could be quickly resolved.”
Logically, that makes far more sense than thinking Notre Dame would not spend on Ludwig. Set aside whether the Irish should allocate their funds in that manner, Occam’s razor says they would have.
But the perception, the optics, the messy public process apparently sucttled that opportunity during that “brief period of time.” If that time came as a result of a bluff — again, this is nothing more than a hypothetical — then that is the risk of a bluff. Sometimes the player across the table really does have the conviction of pocket aces.
If it came as a result of not crossing all the Ts and dotting all the Is in vetting, then therein is why the devil often lies in the details.
If it came as a result of miscommunications and subsequent worries from Ludwig, then all Notre Dame could have really done was ask, “Are you sure that’s the contract? Super sure? Are you positive?”
Most likely, it came as a result of Ludwig boarding a plane and flying back to Utah, because that is one thing we know to have happened. Somewhere in the air or back near the painted mountains, he reconsidered his choice and the attention being paid to it. That has been known to happen in these situations, certainly far more often than a buyout ruining a deal.
And then the Irish reportedly reapproached Ludwig one final time, also something that has been known to happen in these situations, certainly far more often than a buyout ruining a deal. He had soured on the possibility of joining the Notre Dame staff. For a coach who quite literally had never coached — and conceivably never lived — as far east as South Bend, the public anguish over his personal life may have been a turnoff all on its own. That would be hard to fault.
The uproar this week over the perception of how Notre Dame handled this hire has reminded the world of a few things.
First, obviously, just look at the name of this website: Irish fans are passionate. Swarbrick began his email by expressing admiration for the “misdirected” passion.
Secondly, our constant news cycle turns perception into reality, process into results, let truth be forgotten if it is not told immediately.
Lastly, perception and process do not matter in football. Swarbrick knows what happened in this mess. So does Freeman. The small handful of donors pouring seven or eight figures into the athletic department annually also probably have an understanding of what created that “brief period of time.”
They are the only group that matters in action. Swarbrick knows how Freeman should feel about the process, and those donors know where their attention should be focused.
How a team wins does not matter to a coach or to most of a fanbase, only that it wins. Losses are not pinned on offensive coordinators who the majority cannot name and even fewer recognize. They land on head coaches and athletic directors.
They are the core of the few people in this world who understand which assistants fit and which do not. Fans cheering for coaching staff hires are operating with, at best, a partial picture, because no reporters are sitting in interviews and meeting rooms to provide the complete view of who comes up with what ideas and who works well with others and so many other intangible thoughts.
Too much is unknown to grade these hires in the first place, let alone to grade the process behind a hire that never happened.
The only grades that matter long-term begin on Aug. 26 in Dublin. 189 days and counting.