On Tuesday the University of Notre Dame dropped a bombshell on the sports world when they fired Irish football Head Coach Ty Willingham.

Willingham was one of only five African-American head football coaches in Div. I-A NCAA football entering this season and the first in Notre Dame history.

Willingham went to Notre Dame from Stanford where he turned the program around in 1995.

In Willingham’s first season with the Cardinals he helped them bounce back from a 3-7-1 season to go 7-4-1 in his head coaching debut season.

Overall at Stanford, he was 44-36-1 while leading Stanford to four bowls, including the ’99 Rose Bowl, in seven seasons.

Willingham will likely find a team before next year, and there are already rumors Washington is interested in him.

But there is no reason he should be leaving South Bend. Apparently the Notre Dame faithful thought Willingham’s two bowls in three years wasn’t good enough when Notre Dame Athletic Director Kevin White announced that the school didn’t like the direction the program was going in.

Bob Davie’s, Willingham’s predecessor, was 21-16 after his first three seasons when he was with Notre Dame while Willingham was 21-15 in his three years there, including a ten win season his first year.

Yet Davie contract was retained for the two more years, where he went 14-9, and Willingham wasn’t.

How can Notre Dame say that 21-16 was good enough to bring Davie back but 21-15 wasn’t good enough for Willingham? Three seasons is not long enough to judge a coach’s impact at a school.

Notre dame has to wait out to at least see all his recruiting take affect, and that takes at least four to five years.

And if Notre Dame didn’t notice, it was in Willingham’s fifth season at Stanford that he led them to the Rose Bowl, perhaps if Willingham were around for two more years he could have repeated that feat.

And there are already further rumors that Utah head coach Urban Meyer could be walking the Irish sidelines next season.

I would love to have the coach who turned around not only Bowling Green’s program but has also put Utah in position to be the first mid-major to play in a BCS bowl but not if that means you’re giving away a coach like Willingham.

Whatever the reason is that Willingham got fired, Notre Dame made a premature decision that threatens to set back a program Willingham was working to rebuild.