A few weeks ago, I was contacted by author Derek Johnson. I was asked if I would like a copy of his new book, Bow Down To Willingham (subtitled: How White Guilt Enabled A Secretly Malicious Coach to Destroy the Once-Mighty Washington Huskies.) My curiosity was already encouraged back in April when I had first heard about the book, so naturally I responded back and here we are.
I was interested in seeing how this book and its author related to Notre Dame fans in this affair. I was both surprised and unsurprised at the book and its findings. Because this is a Notre Dame Football website, my “review” will mainly be from that vantage point.
In many ways, Mr. Johnson vindicates Notre Dame’s dismissal of Tyrone Willingham. Throughout the book, a vast majority of the material came from interviews with former players at Washington that were there during the Willingham era. The common themes that came from those players were:
- Ty’s arrogance.
- Ty’s inability to communicate clearly.
- Ty’s lack of effort in recruiting.
- Ty’s lack of coaching.
According to this book, he lost the team very early, and never showed them much for their efforts. His lack of actual coaching in practice was a huge topic that seemed to bother everyone. They spoke of him practicing his golf swing at practice and talking about Tiger Woods more than X’s and O’s.
Overall, this book describes how poor of a coach Ty Willingham actually had been. Grounds for anyone to be fired- regardless of race.
Speaking of race…
Willingham’s tenure and firing from Notre Dame was as racially charged of a topic as we have seen in college football for quite some time. The book does nothing to dismiss that fact, nor does it give it any credence. The situation at Washington, however, suggests that Willingham was hired solely on the grounds of the color of his skin as well as why he was given an “extra” year to coach for Washington. This is in contrast to what Notre Dame did.
Notre Dame hired a coach who was “successful” at another academically elite school in the FBS, and when he was found to be lacking on the football field he was fired quickly. Nothing about the ND hire/fire even smelled of race other than the fact that Ty was the first black head coach at the school in its history. According to this book, Willingham was to be propped up as the showpiece for just how “progressive” Washington was going to be. The book also suggested that the media backlash from the ND episode slowed down any process that would have caused the firing of Ty at Washington.
Towards the end of the book, the author really hammers down on the race issue and even uses Bush/Obama comparisons. I felt that those type of comparisons were unnecessary and that the material from the players and the actions of the Washington administration were enough to prove his point.
I recommend that readers of Subway Domer read this book. If nothing else, it gives us vindication of a Notre Dame firing that caused a lot of media witch-hunts on the University.
There is a major problem with college football as it pertains to minority head coaches. There aren’t nearly enough of them. That is fact. What is also fact, is that Willingham doesn’t deserve to be one of them.
