UConn 33, Notre Dame 30 (Overtime). That's it. Don the hoods, light the fires, lead Charlie Weis down the long, spiral stairway to the dungeon beneath the Golden Dome and do what must be done. Might as well get on with it.

Athletic director Jack Swarbrick said this week there would be no decision on Weis' fate as Notre Dame head coach until after the Irish's season finale next week at Stanford, but it seems almost inhumane to leave a man bracing for the inevitable blow, as Weis will be if the situation remains "undecided" through the coming seven days.

Obviously, the thing is decided now, if it wasn't already: This loss means ND has dropped at least five games in three consecutive seasons for the first time in more than 20 years, and has no chance to finish in the final polls. The best-case postseason scenario, a consolation trip to the Gator Bowl, is out of the question, leaving another unsatisfying, third-tier bowl bid at best. Navy has two wins in South Bend in three years after a record 47-year drought in the series. Irish seniors went out in their final home game with a loss to an unranked, sub-.500 Big East also-ran, just as last year's seniors went out with a humiliating loss to Syracuse that initially unleashed the anti-Weis jackals. Weis has the worst winning percentage in Notre Dame Stadium of any Irish coach since 1975 -- "even worse than Gerry Faust," as the sympathetic NBC commentators noted immediately after the game, just before reluctantly agreeing on-air that Weis must be finished for falling woefully short of expectations with every conceivable advantage this year.

It's over; the only question is whether Swarbrick will wait until after the pointless finale to drop the ax, as promised, or go ahead and be done with it over the next two or three days.

When he was hired in December 2004, Weis assumed Tyrone Wilingham's chair with the swagger that would turn critics against him in short order when he composed his own epitaph: "You are what you are folks, and right now, you're a 6-5 football team. That's not good enough for you, and it's certainly not good enough for me." Weis had it all this year: An extremely experienced, talented team built entirely from his own highly-ranked recruiting classes, reared entirely in his program and staring down an usually favorable schedule that seemed to scream "10 wins." Instead, the Irish are a 6-5 football team for the second year in a row, headed for 6-6, and that's certainly not going to be good enough to keep Weis around into December. At the latest. It's been real, coach.