Charlie Weis: My Kind Of (Expletive)

Prior to my one-on-one sitdown with Charlie Weis last month, I couldn’t make any kind of reasonably fair read on what he might be like. As a New England Patriots fan, I knew I respected his coaching pedigree – and I generally dug the way he carried himself at press conferences and the like over the past three seasons.

After roughly 45 minutes of just me and him in a room, I still won’t pretend that I really know Charlie – but I feel like I can at least make my guesses sound slightly more educated. At the risk of being way off base (and possibly having my ear Tyson’d off as a result), I’ll take a stab.

There was actually a quick back-and-forth between John Amos and Bruce Willis in the middle of “Die Hard 2,” of all places, that seems to keep popping into my head every time I try to start describing my thoughts on Weis...

Willis: Guess I was wrong about you, you're not such an (expletive) after all.
Amos: No, you were right. I'm just your kind of (expletive).

Of course, that dialogue didn’t necessarily follow my thinking to the letter – I can’t really say that I thought Charlie was an (expletive) before, at least in the traditional sense. Besides, Willis also admitted he was wrong about something, and I could never bring myself to do such a silly thing. But the general premise is there...

Charlie Weis might actually be an (expletive). But he’s my kind of (expletive).

The people that aren’t around the Notre Dame football program on a regular basis – whether it be fans (usually opposing) or national media folk or whoever – often form opinions of Weis based on some combination of his physical appearance, quick soundbites, hearsay or the team’s performance.

As a result, the rapid-fire summary is that Weis is a) an arrogant jerk; b) a lousy coach; c) both. Sometimes, there’s a bad fat joke tacked on.

That summary isn’t so much a caricature as it is plain wrong. People who meet the man, though, tend to figure that out more often than not.

“There’s so many people that have an opinion of me as a person that have never met me,” Weis told me, “that when they meet me, they’re almost caught off guard that it’s the same person. And I don’t understand how that happens. I just don’t understand it.”

In a world of logic and reason, it shouldn’t happen. Unfortunately for Charlie, we don’t live in that world. People – all of us, to some extent – make snap judgments about others, fair or not (usually not), and if you’re in the public eye, it’s even worse. It’s a soundbite world, whether we like it or not (I don’t).

As fate would have it, few figures in the sporting world are as public-eye’ish and snap-judgment-friendly as the head football coach at the University of Notre Dame, the job which Weis happens to hold.

So is he an (expletive)? My take is that Charlie can be an (expletive) when he wants to, but it’s usually for the right reasons. He may quickly dress down anyone taking shots at his children – or the children of his assistant coaches – but who’s the (expletive) there...Weis, or the adults who can’t pick on someone their own size?

He’s been known to fire a little barb back at a reporter if he feels a question has already been answered or doesn’t need to be – but who’s the (expletive) there? Ask a stupid question...you know the rest. Sure, some people might resist the urge to hit an easy mark – but really, what fun is that?

Is it easy to mistake Charlie’s New Jersey sarcasm for (expletive)-ishness? Sure, if you’re the target. Personally, I think it’s pretty funny most of the time – even after I teed myself up perfectly for him during the one-on-one.

I sort of presented the idea that while we in the press “know” Charlie Weis the football coach, we might not necessarily “know” him as a person beyond the occasional my-wife-dominates-at-home anecdote. Naturally, Weis took the ball and ran with it, offering to answer any question I had, then providing a surprisingly detailed itinerary of his plans for the coming weeks.

“I could tell you, you want to know what today is?” he started. “I’m meeting with media until 12 o’clock. I’m meeting with Mike Haywood from 12 o’clock to 2 o’clock. I’m meeting with a (professional involved with the program) from 2:00 to 3:00, then I’m going to watch my kid’s high-school baseball game. That’s today.”

He went on like that until we had pretty much the entire month of May draped in sarcasm. And I had no response. Sure, I suppose I could have tried cutting him off at any time...but he was on a roll. It was fun – certainly not malicious. And I got sucked in.

Lesson learned? Charlie is extremely quick-witted, and not afraid to eat up 7 or 8 minutes of your allotted interview time with nonsense just because your question was funny to him. The joke was on me, for sure, but I couldn’t even be mad. He dunked home a ball that I lobbed right up to the rim without even thinking.

Some might call that being an (expletive). I don’t. The only issue for me was that I wouldn’t have been willing to eat up that much time on one jab. I prefer the quick-strike, one-line-you-can’t-come-back-from approach, but both can be effective, as I learned firsthand. The style works for him.

But does occasionally toying with people who aren’t as smart as you make you an (expletive)?

Apparently, when you’re losing, everything makes you an (expletive). Taking the time to meet with terminally-ill kids? When you’re winning, “Pass Right” segments run on loop for weeks. When you’re 3-9 and doing the same stuff, you’re not focused on your job. In a BCS year, alumni don’t care if you speak to them – you’re busy turning the program around. When you’re losing, forget it. Talk to alums and you’re not working hard enough. Blow off the Domers for your job and you’re antisocial.

So in 2005, Charlie was a breath of fresh air, the type of no-nonsense, cocksure coach the Irish had desperately needed. Two years later, he was the biggest scumbag in football.

The funny thing is, I don’t think Weis really changed one bit this whole time – it’s just the perceptions of the people around him that have. He hasn’t made excuses at all for 2007 – he’s just shaking it off as part of what he has reportedly called a five-year plan all along in private. He’s just as confident as he was when he took the job, just as genuine and just as single-minded.

“I’m either doing something for Notre Dame, or something for my family or with my family,” he said. “And that’s all I do.”

If that makes him an (expletive), so be it. But he’s my kind of (expletive).