CHICAGO — In a hotel elevator hours before the most portentous game of his embattled football coach’s tenure, Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick noted the quiet week he’d had, what with the raging fan inferno and his practically booby-trapped e-mail inbox.

Imagine the hazmat suit Swarbrick will don following the Irish’s loss to No. 8 Pittsburgh, another underwhelming Saturday in another troubling November for Charlie Weis. Still, a day after that gut shot, Swarbrick adhered to his stance of waiting until season’s end to pronounce judgment.
“Let’s let it finish out,” Swarbrick said Sunday. “We said at the beginning of the season that we wanted to be in contention for and in the discussion of the (Bowl Championship Series) bowls, and for a while we were. But we didn’t stay in contention as long as any of us would have liked.
“It’s not like you don’t evaluate during the year; you evaluate all year. But my practice is to make sure I’ve got the full season’s worth of information and then conclude the evaluation.”
There will be much to discuss. The latest deflation saddled Weis with the same overall record as Bob Davie (35-25) and made Notre Dame 0-for-its-last-8 against top 10 teams under Weis’ watch.
Were change afoot or not, it would seem to behoove administrators to work quickly and decisively. But Swarbrick currently doesn’t see reason to veer much from last year’s timeline, when he met with Weis on the Tuesday after a season-ending evisceration at USC.
“I thought from a perspective of timing and communication, last year’s process worked well,” Swarbrick said.
Another element that won’t change: The irrelevance of Weis’ buyout. It wasn’t an issue as the Irish stumbled to a 6-6 regular season in 2008. The latest report pegs the buyout at $18 million, but regardless it’s “not a factor” again in 2009, according to Swarbrick.
“The only way to make these decisions is in the context of the program and the student-athletes,” Swarbrick said. “You have to isolate on those things, because that’s what matters. The other issues are things you work with, you figure out one way or another.”
Meanwhile, Weis’ usual Sunday news conference was canceled, the given reason being a late arrival home from Pittsburgh. Though it’s unlikely he would have added much to his myopic focus from the night before.
“You only can play the next game,” Weis said after Saturday’s game. “You can’t worry about the game you just played, or the game two games away.”
Really, it’s what comes after these two games that matters, anyway.