Tale of Tape: Davie Is in Serious Trouble

Bob Davie sits in his office, the office of a serious man, an office with dark wood and a big desk and not much light. He is watching the tape of a highlight show ESPN is planning to broadcast. It features the finest moments, the biggest plays, the best hits, the most extraordinary runs, the most special passes in all the tremendous games between Notre Dame and USC.

It is a tape Davie, the Notre Dame coach, plans to show his 2-3 team as it prepares to play 2-4 USC today. “This game will always be special,” Davie says, so softly it seems he might be speaking to himself. “Always.”

Davie will try to fire up his team because that’s what a Notre Dame coach does. Davie watches film, over and over, late into the night because this is what a Notre Dame coach does. He goes to practice every day, stands tall and straight, and conducts himself seriously and throws himself intensely into every drill, every exercise, every bit of minutia involved in Notre Dame football.

“It’s funny,” Davie says. “If someone told me five years ago that two games into a season, the media would have me already fired and be naming my possible successors, I don’t think I could have handled it.

“Now, I just go day by day. I go to practice, I plan for the games, I do my job and I move on to the next day. What else can I do?”

Blue and Gold Illustrated, citing two sources close to the football program, said that a decision already has been made by the athletic board that Davie will be fired at the end of the season. When asked for his response, Davie said that if this were true, he would chuck practice and take his wife to the U2 concert. Laughs were had by everyone.

“What can I say?” Davie asks. “I guess we’ll find out if the story was right when the season is over. But the season is by no means over.”

Maybe it’s not. But if you took a poll at today’s game, the results probably would show that the fans think Davie’s Notre Dame career is over.

The South Bend newspaper has quizzed Jon Gruden, coach of the Oakland Raiders, about his desire to return. Gruden spent some of his formative years in town when his father was a Notre Dame assistant, working for Dan Devine. Gruden didn’t exactly say he wasn’t interested.

Jacksonville Jaguar Coach Tom Coughlin has been mentioned as Davie’s successor. Green Bay Packer Coach Mike Sherman’s name has come up. That one hurts.

“Mike’s probably my best friend in the business,” Davie says. “I called him this week and asked him to let me know if he gets my job. I told him he’ll probably know before I do.”

Davie was kidding. A little.

Quarterback Carlyle Holiday, who replaced Matt LoVecchio before the Texas A&M; game three weeks ago, has what some think is the hardest football job in the country. He says that is wrong.

“I would never want to be the Notre Dame head coach, ever,” Holiday says. “Maybe when I was, like, 68, and wouldn’t have to care what people say. But until then, never.”

“The Irish can’t come from behind, because they have no offense. How much longer can this go on in Notre Dame football? It has become a big joke. Please tell me how Coach Davie could stand at midfield with [Texas A&M;] Coach [R.C.] Slocum after the game and have a big smile on his face?”

Paul R. Siebel, Norwood, Ohio.

This was part of one letter in the Oct. 15-31 issue of Irish Sports Report, a special pullout section of the South Bend Tribune.

All the letters were negative.

“Coach Davie, it is time to wake up. Any team that plays Notre Dame has no problem getting ready for us. After all, we continue to run the same old plays. ... Come on, coach, let’s start playing Notre Dame football like we used to on Saturday afternoon. Only then will we hear the echoes and the rumbling of the Four Horsemen.”

Bill Madden, Canton, Ohio.

The good old days. It is one reason being coach at Notre Dame is not easy.

“I don’t read anything,” senior offensive lineman Kurt Vollers says. Vollers, from Whittier and Anaheim Servite High, says he avoids the Internet, the Notre Dame message boards and chat rooms, ignores newspapers and talk radio. “When you play for Notre Dame, even if you win, people will complain. You know, stuff like we didn’t beat West Virginia badly enough.”

The Irish started 0-3 this year, the first time the Fighting Irish have done that. “So this gives us a chance to be the first Notre Dame team ever to go from 0-3 to a bowl game,” Davie says.

In his fifth year as Notre Dame coach, Davie is 32-22. That’s not terrible, but not one of Davie’s teams has challenged for a national title. Davie seemed to have saved himself last season by leading the Irish into a bowl championship series game, the Fiesta Bowl. But Notre Dame was manhandled by Oregon State, 41-9.

The magnitude of the defeat, the way the Irish were totally outclassed, negated all the good will from getting BCS-qualified.

And then to begin this season, the Irish lost to Nebraska, 27-10; lost at home to Michigan State, 17-10; lost at Texas A&M;, 24-3. The quarterback was changed but the feelings of fans haven’t. Beating Pittsburgh, 24-7, and a mediocre West Virginia team, 34-24, hasn’t impressed many people.

“It won’t be me who ever says Notre Dame can’t be the Notre Dame of the past,” Davie says.

But after USC, Notre Dame must play at Boston College, host Tennessee and Navy, then end the season at Stanford and at Purdue. A 3-8 record wouldn’t be a shock.

Finishing 3-8, that’s not something Davie considers. There is no time. It is time to leave his office and go to practice. That is all the coach at Notre Dame can do these days.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com