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Wow. Didn't see this coming. It appears Jon Tenuta is headed to Notre Dame - as an assistant position coach (most likely LB or Secondary). It appears he's going to replace none-other than a retiring Bill Lewis (small world). I guess holding the Irish to 14 points one year, then completely obliterating them the year after (held to 3 pts + 9 sacks)looks pretty good to Charlie Weiss.
However, the obvious white elephant here is that Tenuta appears to be taking a demotion, which almost assuredly means a substantial paycut (probably a 50% cut if you ask me). How is it possible that a guy who consistently put top 25 defenses on the field at a school that ties your arm behind your back before you even get on the field (recruiting, academics, etc), not able to land a DC job somewhere else? Of course we don't really know what JT was offered and by whom.
Now, I already speculated on why he hadn't landed somewhere already here. Key possibilities:
- Personality
- "My way or the highway" approach
- High risk D strategy
- He burned his bridges by ratting out Les Miles to Kirk Herbstreit (not confirmed) and is being black-balled as not trust-worthy. Pure speculation there.
One thing is for sure - if Charlie Weiss wants people like him around the program, those two foul-mouthed, yelling, emotional, gruff guys should mesh just fine.......... ooooorrrrrrrrr NOT!!
I am thankful we had Jon Tenuta represent our program. He did a nice job for sure. However, in a strange way, he went from the coach I wanted to lose the least - to a guy I was indifferent about losing (after we lost him of course). I won't be all rah-rah about the new guy until I see his work on the field, but the psychology of watching a guy we all held up in our minds get knocked down a few notches somehow makes losing him easier to swallow. Strange the way our minds work.
What is interesting is that we may never know the truth about the circumstances around his leaving GT in the first place. We are led to believe he was offered the DC job by Paul Johnson, but we really don't know if it had strings attached or a timeline attached.
Oh well. I can say this much. It won't have any impact on my rooting against Notre Dame. I didn't like them before and I still won't like them now.