At a time in my life when my sympathy is normally reserved for serious issues, I feel truly sorry for would-be Notre Dame football coach George O’Leary.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, O’Leary was pegged as the savior of the vaunted Notre Dame football team, only to resign days later when reporters discovered that he falsified his resume to include a non-existent master’s degree and football career.

The reason for my deep-seated sympathy for O’Leary is not that this “technicality” caused him to lose one of the most coveted positions in the sporting world. It’s not that he missed out on the opportunity to become an instant icon simply because he was careless. It’s not because he missed out on the chance of being the only coach of the Fighting Irish in recent memory with a obviously Irish name.

The reason George O’Leary is deserving of our sympathy is much more serious. He has now entered a dark and frightening place, a place from which, at present, there seems to be no escape, a place called – the Unemployment Zone.

The Unemployment Zone is a place that Northwestern students are becoming all too familiar with these days, and one that I can clearly see looming in my future, barring a miracle. And I am not alone. In this year of economic hardship, NU students are finding the job market a fickle and unforgiving mistress. It was not supposed to be this way.

Jobs were plentiful back in the good old days (only about two years ago, but it seems like a long time, doesn’t it?), when markets were booming and slapping a “dot-com” on the end of anything would instantly make you a millionaire. Legend has it that upon graduation, NU students were handed a diploma, a contract with a top consulting company, a $10,000 signing bonus, the deed to a Lincoln Park condo and the keys to a Volkswagen Jetta. These days, the situation is much different.

Today, Wall Street is reeling, and all a “dot-com” will make you is broke. As for the jobs, let’s just say they’re a little scarce. The consulting companies are not hiring, the notion of a signing bonus is laughable, Lincoln Park seems a long way away and at this point most people I know would settle for the keys to a bike lock. Today, students pine for the long-lost days of yore and fret about the days to come.

All of this has forced students to get creative. Fighting for the few remaining jobs seems like a losing proposition and more students are looking to grad school as a viable option. With promises of an economic upswing just around the corner, many students see any way to postpone their inevitable entrance into the job market by a few years as an opportunity too good to pass up.

All of which makes poor Mr. O’Leary’s story all the more pitiable.

He was there. He had the absolute dream job in his hands, and he let it slip away. Now he too, has joined the ranks of frustrated job hunters. Soon he will discover that Division I head coaching jobs at football powerhouses are a little hard to come by. But if he thinks that’s tough, I dare him to try consulting.