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• Suiting his reputation as an Xs and Os guy, Weis spent nearly the majority of the preseason preparing solely for the opener against Georgia Tech, including installing a version of West Virginia's spread-option offense specifically for since-departed QB Demetrius Jones.

When neither the plan nor the quarterback worked in a 33-3 loss ... it was back to the drawing board for Week 2, complete with a new QB (Clausen) and a whole new plan for the players to learn. Jones wound up transferring, while Clausen and Evan Sharpley have shuffled back and forth ever since.

"[Starting Jones] was how we felt was the best chance we had to win the first game," said Weis. "But as we settled in, Jimmy was playing the best for us in practice and deserved to be the guy. And then when it got to the point where he was a little worn out, he no longer was as good as Evan being on the field."

Between the on-field battering he's taken and the constant yo-yoing with Sharpley, Clausen's already fragile, freshman confidence is presumably shattered.

• While Weis has said on numerous occasions that "I probably adapted more this year than I have in my whole coaching career," and that he's not "being closed-minded about my approach to football," there's been little evidence that Weis has tailored his strategy to the unique nature of his squad.

The most obvious example was his now-infamous decision to pass on a potential game-winning field goal attempt against Navy. While it's true kicker Brandon Walker was no shoe-in to hit the 41-yarder (he'd missed six of his previous eight attempts), it's more puzzling why he would put faith in a struggling quarterback (Sharpley) playing behind an ever-shaky line to magically convert a fourth-and-eight play.

"It was going against the wind, and in practice he couldn't make it from there," Weis explained afterward. "That's why we didn't kick it from there. That was a pretty simple one."

Notre Dame wound up allowing one of its national-worst 49 sacks on the play and eventually lost in triple overtime, ending a 43-game winning streak against the Midshipmen.

A program stain

To his credit, a purportedly humbled Weis has not hesitated to accept the blame for Notre Dame's woes, criticizing his own job performance on multiple occasions.

"Rather than sit there and make excuses and talk about the volume of numbers in the upper classes, you just have to say you didn't do a good enough job of putting them in a position to win," he said after the Navy game. "I take all the responsibility."

Weis, however, is one of the few vested parties who will not pay a price for this disastrous season. He will still pocket his $3 million-plus for what has essentially been a year of on-the-job training.

Meanwhile, the 80,000-plus spectators who pack Notre Dame Stadium every week -- many of them traveling great distances to be there -- have wasted untold dollars and energy supporting a woefully prepared team, not to mention the immeasurable humiliation their university has suffered. Lord only knows how much money NBC has lost on its investment.

And while Weis may "know I'm going to be here for a long time," as he recently proclaimed (the fact that he's sitting on the potential top-ranked recruiting class for 2008 certainly provides some job security), it's safe to surmise several of his assistant coaches will soon be unemployed.

''I'm still feeling we're way too inconsistent in how we play," he said after last week's loss. "Therefore ... you have to evaluate the teacher and the teaching to see why [we] aren't progressing.''

It doesn't take a football savant to evaluate Weis' performance this season: He gets an F. If this were high school, he'd have to repeat a year before advancing.

Unfortunately, there are no mulligans in college football. The stain of Notre Dame's 2007 season will never be erased.

The only potential positive is that maybe now a few athletic directors might give pause before throwing money at the next hot NFL name.