Charlie Weis still has a job, even if he thinks he doesn't deserve it. Urban Meyer has one, too, and he's planning on keeping it as long as the welcome mat stays out at Florida.

That shouldn't be a problem for Meyer because his team plays for national championships. Notre Dame doesn't anymore, and that almost surely means Weis will be out of work in the very near future, just like the coaches who went before him.

It's not totally Weis' fault, though he did himself no favor by declaring when he was hired that going 6-5 just wouldn't cut it. He was going to take the Irish back to the glory days of old, and school administrators were so certain that he would that that they tore up his contract midway through his rookie season and gave him a rich new one.

So now he'll most likely be fired, even if his team somehow manages to stop the Stanford running game and give him a final win on Saturday. Weis himself said he would have a tough time arguing against his dismissal because in five seasons he hasn't done what he said he was going to do.

Based on expectations alone, firing Weis isn't such a bad idea, even if Notre Dame has to eat millions of dollars of his inflated contract. It doesn't matter that those expectations may no longer be realistic at Notre Dame, because Weis understood what they were when he signed on for the job.

The expectations for the new coach will be just as high. Athletic director Jack Swarbrick believes — as do many Notre Dame alumni — that the Irish should be competing every year for a BCS game, and competing every few years for the national title.

Unfortunately, the best coaches in the country don't seem to believe it. And that could keep Notre Dame on the same coaching carousel the university has been stuck on since Lou Holtz rode off into the sunset after the 1996 season.

Meyer almost fell over himself Monday in declaring he had no interest in the position he once called his "dream job," saying he would remain at Florida as long as they wanted him. If that wasn't enough to convince everyone he wasn't going anywhere, star quarterback Tim Tebow put an exclamation point on it.

"I don't think he'll be at Notre Dame," Tebow said. "I don't think that's anything he'll do now. I don't think he'll do that ever."

Meyer has no reason to, especially since he spurned the job when it was open last time in favor of Florida. He's won two national titles there, and was rewarded with a new contract before the season that pays him $4 million a year.

The other big name coaches are also snug with their huge contracts. The lure that Notre Dame once may have had has long since been tempered by the reality that a lot of jobs now pay big money and a lot of teams are on national television each week, just like the Irish.

Notre Dame doesn't get the automatic first pick anymore just because Knute Rockne was once the coach and Touchdown Jesus looks down over the home field. If it did, it would have landed Meyer instead of settling for Weis, and everyone would have lived happily ever after.

The question now becomes, who would be an upgrade from Charlie Weis? Is there a coach who can roll the calendar back and restore Notre Dame to its rightful perch near the top of college football's hierarchy?

Could be, but he's going to be hard to find. Based on experience, the No. 1 requirement should be that it's someone with credentials as a major college head coach because on-the-job training hasn't worked well in South Bend.

That means luring someone from another program, which is how it's done in college these days. Though Les Miles is probably available after botching the end to LSU's last game, anyone else would have to be convinced they can win despite the schedule and the school's insistence that recruits can read and write.

There's no doubt the brand still carries some cachet. Even after many down years, NBC still gets decent ratings for its investment in the university's home games and pollsters automatically rank the Irish every time they win two consecutive games.

There's still opportunity in South Bend. The right coach can win there.

What's not so certain is whether Notre Dame can land the right coach.

Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org.