Notre Dame is at it again. It’s a fiasco that has become commonplace in South Bend and even more so in college football over the past decade: the dreaded coaching change. Many are welcomed with open arms and some are left with question marks but they never lack controversy, especially at Notre Dame.

Charlie Weis has failed to set the bar much higher than his predecessors - Bob Davie and Tyrone Willingham - and the only real standard he’s set is the for salary as the head coach at Notre Dame. The Irish are 1-10 against teams that have finished the season in the top 25, a shameful mark considering the type of players he is supposedly bringing into the program. Weis will most likely have to win out in order to keep his job and, with Pittsburgh, UConn and Stanford left on the schedule, it seems like a mighty tall mountain for this Notre Dame coaching staff to climb.

With that in mind, we look forward to this offseason and start to ponder who would be next in line for the head job at one of the nation’s most storied programs. Unlike 2005, when the Irish only had two solid choices for the position - and were totally outmatched against Florida for Urban Meyer - this year’s search will includes four worthy candidates, all of whom have turned their current programs into viable contenders, in two cases for a national championship.

Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald, Boise State’s Chris Peterson, Stanford’s Jim Harbaugh and Cincinnati’s Brian Kelly are all young coaches that have proven themselves on the college level in a reasonably short period of time. Each of these men will be up for every high profile college position over the next few years.

Peterson seems content at Boise State but has to be frustrated by the inability to get his program to a BCS title game regardless of what they accomplish throughout the season. Peterson is 44-4 in his four seasons with the Broncos and is on the verge of his second undefeated season. He has won 10 or more games in each year and has turned Boise State into a legitimate contender. There is a ceiling at Boise State though, and we may watch Peterson hit it this season if the Broncos are once again left out of the BCS discussion because of their schedule.

On the flip side, Peterson has seen the not-so-smooth transition from Boise to BCS second hand through the eyes of former Broncos and current Colorado coach Dan Hawkins’ eyes. Hawkins left Boise for what he thought were greener pastures only to find the task of raising a big time program from its ashes as an extremely daunting task and one that nobody, especially Peterson, currently envies. With that freshly planted in his mind, it would probably take the perfect situation to tear Peterson out of Boise’s firm, yet comfortable, grasp. Notre Dame is far from the perfect situation.

Harbuagh is in a similar position. Although he wasn’t handed the keys to a well-oiled machine like Peterson, Harbaugh has set his own standards and is currently reaping the benefits of his work. After leading the University of San Diego - whose beautiful campus and decent facilities enabled Harbuagh to build a contender in a short period of time - to back to back 11-win seasons, Harbaugh took the job at Stanford, a program that was 6-17 in the previous two seasons under Walt Harris.

With 15 wins in his first 2+ seasons with the Cardinal, Harbaugh will have won more games at the end of this season than Stanford’s previous two coaches combined in five years. Even with the ridged recruiting standards in Palo Alto, Harbaugh’s program has the ability to become a serious contender in the PAC-10 for years to come. He already has a very good quarterback - freshman Andrew Luck - to build around in the immediate future, something that doesn’t come around too often and has to be taken advantage of.

He will always have the ability to land one of the top quarterbacks at Notre Dame but it might not be worth it for Harbaugh to leave Stanford at this time. He hasn’t even come close to reaching his ceiling with the Cardinal and the best is yet to come in for Harbaugh out West. By flirting with Notre Dame, it will benefit Harbaugh more in negotiations than anything else. Harbuagh’s dream job is at his alma mater - the University of Michigan - and it has to be in the back of his head that the Wolverines job may be open sooner rather later if Rich Rodriquez can’t turn the program into a contender within the next year or so.

Fitzgerald is in a completely different situation than the rest of his brethren being considered. He is already at his alma mater but has turned them into a solid program in a solid conference. He will never have the opportunity to lead Northwestern to a national championship though, due to the Wildcats’ recruiting standards, facilities and the competition within the Big Ten. While turning your alma mater into a contender is admirable, Northwestern hasn’t won a bowl game since 1949 and has only been in the Rose Bowl once since that time, in 1996.

Given the opportunity to take over a program rich in tradition, while recruiting from a larger pool of athletes, you would have to imagine Fitzgerald would run with it. The door would always be open to return to Northwestern especially if he handles the situation with class, something he has never lacked during both his playing and coaching career. Fitzgerald would have to hop on board if offered the job and he will probably be seen as Notre Dame’s insurance option throughout the hiring process.

Kelly is in a situation at Cincinnati where, after this season, he may have peaked. If the Bearcats win out they will be the undefeated Big East champion and might finish behind TCU in the BCS poll. We don’t know if that would happen for sure but they are currently behind the Horned Frogs at this point in the process and it would be an unbelievably tough pill to swallow if it were to pan out that way.

Joe Schad appeared on the show this morning and here’s what he had to say about the Kelly-to-Notre Dame scenario: “I think it’s very similar situation to what you saw a few years ago with Urban (Meyer) and Notre Dame can’t make the same mistake they made with Urban. They can’t let Brian Kelly get away. They can’t let him go anywhere else. He is the new model, the new version of Urban Meyer. He’s young, he’s proven and he’s already won more bowl games at Cincinnati than Notre Dame has won in the last sixteen years. This is ‘The Guy’. This is the guy they have to get. I think he wants to be there, and to be honest with you I think it’s going to happen.”

Coming from an insider, those are pretty heavy sentiments regarding the Bearcats head man. Kelly has Midwest routes and has turned recruiting into an art form at the University of Cincinnati. With their budget and limitations, Kelly has turned the Bearcats into the best team in Ohio, a thought most would have laughed at five years ago when the Cincinnati was playing in Conference USA against the likes of Memphis and East Carolina.

Kelly would probably be the ideal man for the job and is probably in his last season with the Bearcats regardless of whether or not he’s coaching at Notre Dame next season. A few other big time jobs may open up in the offseason and Kelly would be hard pressed not to seriously consider them as well.

The wild card in this whole process is a National Championship coach in Gainesville. While we think he would be foolish to leave the Sunshine State - where you ask high school superstars to play for you instead of convincing them like cold weather schools have to - Urban Meyer might find it intriguing to bring the Irish back to the top of the food chain in college football.

We, as men, have a natural instinct to ‘save’ things. We grow up wanting to become firemen, police officers and Spider Man because heroism is looked upon so graciously in our country. Notre Dame owes it to their fans and boosters to do everything in their power to lure Meyer away from the Gators, even if it is all in vein. A third National Championship coupled with the loss of Tim Tebow might give Meyer an itch to embark on a new challenge and attempt to right the ship at Notre Dame. We think Meyer would be bordering on insanity if he took the job but Notre Dame has to give it a shot.

All of this talk might be irrelevant if Weis can win his last three games and give the Notre Dame faithful a reason to believe the program is on the rise instead of stagnantly accepting mediocrity, but we think the odds of Lou Holtz returning to the South Bend sidelines are better than that happening.

It will be another interesting offseason for the Fighting Irish as they make news for the wrong reasons for the third time in twelve years. Right or wrong, whatever decision they make is sure to be entertaining.