Friday at 4: Angst over Notre Dame’s hiring, or not hiring, an offensive coordinator is ‘misplaced’ at best

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.

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