Remember that song they used to sing on Sesame Street? "One of these things is not like the other things...."

Well, my colleague Jim Owczarski sent me this Yahoo! column on potential replacements for Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis, who will likely be fired at season's end. The list in this paragraph stuck out like a sore thumb:

"In pursuit of the hottest up-and-coming coaches - Cincinnati's Brian Kelly, TCU's Gary Patterson, Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald, Stanford's Jim Harbaugh, Georgia Tech's Paul Johnson, etc. - Notre Dame will be the best option out there."

Wait a minute, here. Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald? The guy who is 15-17 in Big Ten play during his four years in Evanston? The guy who lost to Syracuse this year? The guy who barely beat MAC dregs Eastern Michigan and Miami of Ohio?

No offense, but I don't see how Fitz measures up to the other names on that list. Both Kelly and Patterson have their teams undefeated and ranked in the top five in the nation. Johnson's Georgia Tech squad has just one loss and likely will win the ACC. Harbaugh isn't quite at that level, but his Stanford team did hang 55 points on USC.

I don't see how Fitzgerald compares. He beat Iowa, which was undefeated at the time (and probably overrated). However, Fitzgerald has never done better than 5-3 in the Big Ten in any season. He's never won a bowl game. Notre Dame can't possibly think he's the right guy, can it?

"One of these is not like the other things...." SING IT, COOKIE MONSTER!