Chicago ? There had been so much hope on so many fronts three years ago.

And that’s why, when Notre Dame fired Tyrone Willingham on Tuesday, there was a distinct feeling something had been lost, something more than football games, something as concrete as bedrock values and as elusive as a handful of smoke.

An opportunity had been lost for both Willingham and a school that used to be a college football power but hasn’t been for a long time. Too bad. This doesn’t come close to matching the George O’Leary fiasco, but it’s distasteful nonetheless. You can look at Willingham’s ouster as the progress we have made in this country — that a black coach can be sent packing just like a white coach can — or you can look at it as a crying shame. Willingham was the first black head coach at Notre Dame and the first head coach at Notre Dame not allowed to fulfill the length of his first contract.

If someone had told me a year ago Willingham would not finish his contract, I would have said there was no way Notre Dame would have the gumption to treat a black coach differently than it had treated all its other coaches. But that was naive thinking.

Notre Dame is Florida, only without as much winning.

Willingham’s downfall was three games this season: home losses to Pittsburgh and Boston College and a humiliating 41-10 loss Saturday at No. 1 USC. The thinking was that if a Notre Dame team went 6-5, there must be something seriously wrong.

That thinking, the thinking that Notre Dame is supposed to be more than it is, led to Willingham’s firing. It’s the same thinking that has created ridiculously difficult schedules for the Irish. It’s the same thinking that makes fans and alumni think national championship every year.

Tuesday proved how desperate things have become at Notre Dame, a school trying to conjure up a past that doesn’t exist anymore.

And it proves that a coach needs to be more than a coach, especially at Notre Dame, especially when he doesn’t win the vast majority of the time. Being a guy who couldn’t light up a room full of morticians hurt Willingham’s cause. He didn’t like rubbing elbows with the alumni. The alums had needed elbow patches sewn onto their sport coats after dealing with Lou Holtz.

Willingham was supposed to be what Bob Davie wasn’t, which is to say he was supposed to be Holtz — successful and, if possible, charming. But successful most of all. Willingham went 21-15 in three years, not acceptable by the standards of Notre Dame, a school that has eight national championships to its name.

But this is also a school that hasn’t won a national title since 1988. This is a school that hasn’t won a bowl game since the 1993 season. That’s not a coaching problem. It’s a problem of misguided expectations.

College football has changed, and Notre Dame, in many ways, has not. High school players have many more quality programs to choose from than they did when the Irish were regular contenders. Notre Dame, to its credit, has not loosened its rigorous academic standards to allow better athletes into school. It continues to play a killer schedule despite a smaller player pool from which to choose.

Unfortunately for whoever is coaching the Irish, the expectations have remained so high that breathing is difficult.

This isn’t a Bob Davie problem or a Tyrone Willingham problem. It’s a Notre Dame problem.

It’s what happens when a school chains itself to the past and refuses to budge.