Eric Hansen

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -  Charlie Weis plowed through the USC personnel report with the same monotone inflection he would employ for, say, Louisiana-Lafayette, which, ironically Weis’ Notre Dame football team may soon be in competition with for a bowl berth.

In Shreveport, La., of all places.

The fourth-year Irish coach plainly talked X’s and O’s about the fifth-ranked Trojans (9-1), lavished obligatory praise on opposing coach Pete Carroll and hinted at possible personnel changes that probably won’t happen Saturday night when the two teams clash in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

As if Weis were bathing in normalcy instead of stewing in an uncertain future.

But if it were a normal week, there really would be a piqued interest in how ND sophomore quarterback and native Californian Jimmy Clausen might stand up against the statistically best defense USC has put on the field in 41 years. And there would have been prodding about Carroll’s and Weis’ relationship back in their NFL days. Or just one question about USC leading rusher C.J. Gable.

Instead those curiosities were obscured by the bigger picture and the drama playing out inside it. Here is a glimpse at the more-pressing questions facing this program and its coach in a week that is anything but normal:

Will fourth-year head ND coach Charlie Weis survive to become fifth-year ND head coach Charlie Weis?
Saturday’s 24-23 dressing down by Syracuse did move the needle, and USC has the potential to do the same -- positively or negatively.

Can two games really be weighted that heavily in a four-year body of work?

Well, yes. Notre Dame first-year athletic director Jack Swarbrick has made it clear he is way more concerned with trajectory than the current snapshot of the program. But so regressing was Notre Dame in its loss to the Orange, without any real extenuating circumstances, it is hard to look at this Irish team as one that has significantly progressed since its season-opening escape of San Diego State.

Swarbrick, a media moth in his first few months on the job, has suddenly stopped talking -- to the talking heads anyway. Not necessarily a positive sign for Weis. He is apparently still talking to Weis, though.

When asked Tuesday if he had regular communication with the first-year athletic director about how the administration felt he was doing, Weis responded:

"Well, first of all, Jack and I meet every week, just like (former AD) Kevin (White) and I met every week," Weis said. "The difference is Kevin was an early bird, Jack's a night owl. So where Kevin and I used to meet at 5:30 in Monday morning, Jack and I meet at 6 on Monday night.

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"We've just been going along as is. The intent is to go out (to Los Angeles) and do all we can to beat USC, stay out there on the road and go out recruiting. That's what the plan is."

Plans can change, though. And if Swarbrick and the power brokers at Notre Dame decide to go in a different direction, don’t expect them to dawdle. If they do, recruiting suffers, Weis has to delay any changes he may want to make to the program, and rumors -- such as an alumni buyout -- grow legs, whether or not there is any real substance.

Bottom line: Unless there is a meltdown of epic proportions Saturday night in Los Angeles, the feeling here is Weis gets one more year to prove himself from a divided jury.

Will ND offensive coordinator Mike Haywood be the next head coach at Washington?
The finalist for the Houston job a year ago when he was also interviewed at Minnesota interviewed to be Tyrone Willingham’s successor in Seattle last week, missing part of last Wednesday’s practice and all of Thursday’s to do so.

If the timing seems odd, it was. If it seems unlikely Washington would hire someone with no head coaching experience and little play-calling experience, it is. If it seems that Haywood is lukewarm at best about Weis reining in the play-calling duties for the last three games of the regular season, read on:

"I’m a soldier," he said Tuesday night. "All I do is salute and march up the hill. Whatever I’m asked to do, I do. It’s just a great opportunity to be here at the University of Notre Dame and work for coach Weis."

Where will Notre Dame be spending the holidays this postseason?
It’s not a more difficult question than the last one, but a way more convoluted one.

The sanitized version, devoid of things like Sun Belt clauses and 7-5/6-6 rules is as follows:

If Notre Dame beats 30-point favorite USC, the Irish have two possible bowl destinations: Sun (Dec. 31, El Paso Texas) or Gator (Jan. 1, Jacksonville, Fla.).

If the Irish lose to USC to fall to 6-6 and Rutgers (6-5) falls to Louisville on Dec. 4, the Irish will end up in the Sun Bowl.

If the Irish lose to USC and Rutgers beats Louisville, then the Sun has to take a Big East team and bump the Irish.

Here’s where it gets sticky. The bumped Irish team becomes a free agent of sorts and has a chance to jump into a bowl in which a conference tied to that particular bowl doesn’t have enough bowl-eligible teams. The sticky parts are the Sun Belt clauses, the 7-5/6-6 rule, and ND’s late exam schedule (Dec. 15-19), which butts up against some of the early bowls.

Also coming into play are some regular-season games that have yet to be played -- in particular Oregon-Oregon State, Colorado-Nebraska and Arizona State’s and UCLA’s remaining schedules.

The most likely scenarios if all the above fell ND’s way would be the Emerald (Dec. 27 in San Francisco), Independence (Dec. 28 in Shreveport, La), Papajohns.com (Dec. 29 in Birmingham, Ala.) or the Texas Bowl (Dec. 30 in Houston).