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Posted by at 01:01 AM on November 11, 2005
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He saw ND in his image, and he said: It was good
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Rick Morrissey
In the wake of the news

November 4, 2005

In the beginning, when Charlie Weis created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. Then Weis commanded, "Let there be the forward pass." And he was pleased with what he saw. That was the first game.

Then Weis commanded, "Let there be a Dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places"--and it was done. He was going to name the Dome "sky," but then he decided to name it "Notre Dame." Evening passed and morning came--that was the second game.

By the seventh game, after creating the sea and plants and animals and football players and four-receiver sets and brush-cuts, Weis rested. Well, first he signed a new 10-year contract because he was seven games into his career at Notre Dame and it was obvious to everyone that he was Coach For Life and, you know, why not make it official?

Then he rested.

Seven games, a 5-2 record, a No. 8 ranking and now he's beyond Devine. He's divine. Wow.

One of the best things about Notre Dame and the people who love the school is their bottomless reserve of belief. Whether Weis is a great coach isn't really the issue, although he seems to be doing a fine job in his first season with the Irish. The only thing that matters is that Notre Dame believes it has blown on the embers and brought Knute Rockne raging back to life.

Seven games, and everyone is positive he's not Gerry Faust or Bob Davie or Tyrone Willingham. But it's more than that. Seven games, and he is being received as if he were Frank Leahy or Lou Holtz or Ara Parseghian. You get the feeling that if he were to start wearing green lederhosen, so would Notre Dame alums.

Already there is a legend being built up around Weis, and everything he does is being inspected for deeper meaning. He got a haircut at 4:45 a.m. one day, and the faithful pondered what it denoted. Punctuality? Determination? Something more profound? That he believes there's no such thing as a bad boy and that baby seals are people too?

The reason for the new contract, Weis and the school say, is to head off negative recruiting. It wouldn't have been long, they say, before other programs started to whisper to high school players that Weis was a short-timer at ND, that he'd jump at the first whiff of an NFL head-coaching job. Thus an extension that runs through 2015.

Weis seems sincere about his desire to stay at Notre Dame a long time, but who knows? It's not as if the coaching profession is filled with people oozing loyalty.

If recruits are naieve enough to think a contract extension ties Weis to South Bend, they might want to look at all the coaches who pledged allegiance to schools and then bolted. Start with the patron saint of bolters, Gary Barnett, and work your way down into the slime.

There's something about Weis that inspires belief. He's the Rudy of coaches. He was a backup center in high school and didn't play football while attending Notre Dame. Most of the coaches who come from that type of background are deemed cerebral. Somehow, Weis has sold the idea that he's as tough as they come and that it would be wise not to cross him.

He already has alienated some people around campus. What says "football coach" more than that?

It's hard to remember a coach who has captivated a college as quickly as this one has. Part of it is that fans dearly want what Notre Dame used to have, which is to say, a regular shot at a national championship. Part of it is that Weis evokes a different time and place. His approach to losing is zero tolerance, and people like that.

Some things can't be explained, and this devotion to Weis might be one of them. Could he turn out to be The One? Of course. But, again, the important thing is that people want to believe in Weis, just as they wanted to believe in Willingham and Davie. The difference this time is that they've set a land-speed record rushing to embrace Weis.

He opened his Notre Dame career with a victory over a ranked Pitt team that turned out to be rank. The Irish beat a decent Michigan team. They lost by three points each to Michigan State and No. 1 Southern California.

It's a good thing the Irish aren't undefeated and ranked No. 1. Notre Dame would be paying Weis through the year 2075. Unless, of course, he decided to end the world before then.

rmorrissey@tribune.com

Copyright (c) 2005, The Chicago Tribune

Posted by at 06:03 PM on November 04, 2005
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Amid speculation that NFL teams would woo Charlie Weis back to the professional ranks, Notre Dame has extended Weis's contract through 2015. Senior Associate Athletics Director John Heisler sent this e-mail out to students this morning.

October 29, 2005 //FOR 11:00 A.M. RELEASE//
WEIS EXTENSION

NOTRE DAME, Ind. - University of Notre Dame head football coach Charlie Weis has signed a new, 10-year contract to continue as coach of the Fighting Irish program through the 2015 campaign.

Weis, who is in his first season at the Irish helm in 2005, signed an original six-year contract (that took him through the 2010 season) when he was hired on Dec. 12, 2004, as Notre Dame's 28th head football coach. This new agreement - that takes effect with the 2006 season -- adds an additional five years to that commitment.

In his first season with the Irish in 2005, Weis has led the Irish to a current 5-2 record that has earned his team rankings this week of ninth in the Associated Press media poll, 10th by USA Today (the coaches' poll) and Harris Interactive, and 15th in the Bowl Championship Series standings. The Irish already have defeated three ranked opponents (AP poll) on the road - posting wins over 23rd-ranked Pittsburgh, third-rated Michigan and 22nd-ranked Purdue.

To this point in the season, this '05 Notre Dame team represents the highest-scoring Irish team in modern history at 37.9 points per game. Quarterback Brady Quinn (in only seven games) already has broken the Irish single-season record for touchdown passes with 20, including a single-game record six against BYU. Quinn has played a key role in the Irish currently averaging 340 passing yards per game, far above the all-time Notre Dame season average of 252.7 from 1970.

Meanwhile, wide receiver Jeff Samardzija ranks second in the country with his 11 TD receptions, including at least one in a Notre Dame-record seven straight games to start 2005. Wide receiver Maurice Stovall set a Notre Dame single-game record of his own versus BYU with four TD receptions.

"In a very short period of time, Charlie has clearly and impressively demonstrated the ability to take the Notre Dame program where we all want it to go," said Notre Dame athletics director Kevin White.

"Whether you talk about on-field results, off-the-field understanding of the Notre Dame athletics and academic culture, recruiting, public relations, or any other area, Charlie already has indicated that he possesses the abilities to position our program to compete at the elite level of college football.

"We're excited that Charlie wanted to extend his commitment to Notre Dame, combined with the University's interest in furthering its relationship with him. All of us are enthusiastic about what the future holds for Notre Dame football with Charlie Weis as our head coach. We're confident that we've got the best coach in America ensconced at his alma mater for the remainder of his career."

Said Weis, "Since the first day I arrived at Notre Dame as head football coach, one of my primary goals was to be able to see this job through to the time my son, Charlie, would graduate from the University of Notre Dame and to stay in this position until I retire. By restructuring this contract, adding an additional five years, this allows me to accomplish that goal. Maura, Charlie, Hannah and I are very happy to become a permanent fixture in the Notre Dame community."

Posted by at 11:44 AM on October 29, 2005
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The following article is from the October 29, 2005 issue of the South Bend Tribune.

'THE best team he ever had'
Some people might be surprised at Charlie Weis' impressive start as Notre Dame's head coach. But not the men he led to a New Jersey high school state title 16 years ago.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL: GAMEDAY

By JEFF CARROLL
Tribune Staff Writer

Charlie Weis was two games into his head coaching career and already he was in danger of losing the support of his players.

Weis had been hired a few months before at Franklin Township High School in Somerset, N.J., a few miles away from his hometown of Middlesex. Though his sideline career stretched backward a decade, with stops at Boonton and Morristown high schools followed by a six-year stint at the University of South Carolina, Weis always had been in an assistant role.

Never before had he been tested in the job of head disciplinarian.

But on the day of his second game in charge, in the fall of 1989, with his team coming off an easy victory in his debut, Weis faced a difficult situation. Chris Boyd, his starting middle linebacker and tailback, had missed a class the day of the game.

Boyd presented multiple threats out of the backfield for opponents, leading the team with 53 yards rushing and 41 yards receiving in the opening victory, and scoring the touchdown before halftime that put the game against Somerville High out of reach.

Weis suspended Boyd, a team elected captain, anyway.

"I practically had a mutiny on my hands," Weis recently recalled. "They said, 'Oh, who does this new guy think he is? He's coming in and he's benching one of our main guys. We're gonna' lose the game. What are we gonna do now?' "

By halftime, Weis' Franklin Warriors led 50-6. The mutiny had been put down, the leadership crisis averted.

Though Weis was an accomplished NFL offensive coordinator, it had been 16 years since he had been a head coach at any level before he was hired at Notre Dame this season. Sixteen years since he arrived at a New Jersey high school, was handed the keys to a proud program gutted by graduation, and molded it into a champion in one season ... then left for bigger things.

Replacing a legend

Times had been good at Franklin under coach Len Rivers. The Warriors won two central New Jersey state championships in the 1980s, including most recently in 1987. But with most of the key players on that team gone, Rivers had left for Montclair High School. An apparent rebuilding project awaited the new coach.

That left Franklin athletic director Pat Dolan with a challenge of his own -- replacing a local legend.

Dolan, a 1957 Notre Dame graduate and two-year starter for the Irish at tackle, remained in touch with former ND teammate Dick Lynch. At the time, Lynch was working as a broadcaster for the New York Giants, a job he still holds for WFAN-AM radio.

Lynch's son Richard was at the time a varsity tennis player for the University of South Carolina. In early 1989, Lynch visited his son in South Carolina, also using the occasion to drop in on an old football friend, Gamecocks head coach Joe Morrison.

On Feb. 5, Morrison, 51, died suddenly of a heart attack while exercising. Beyond the initial shock of seeing a seemingly healthy, strong head coach cut down, the assistant coaches were left jobless. Lynch was aware that his friend Dolan was searching for a new coach.

From being on campus, he also was aware of a young, energetic member of Morrison's former staff who just happened to be a fellow Notre Dame graduate.

Lynch worked both ends, encouraging Charlie Weis to apply for the head coaching job at Franklin, and endorsing him to Dolan. On Lynch's recommendation, the AD granted Weis an interview as head football coach and English teacher.

"He just presented his case very well," said Dolan, now retired. "We thought that it was a natural fit." One thing that impressed Dolan, beyond the Notre Dame connection, was Weis' willingness to institute the run 'n' shoot offense, the multiple-receiver setup that was taking the NFL by storm and beginning to trickle down to lower levels.

But Weis, who was more comfortable running a defense than an offense, wanted an experienced, successful offensive mind to implement the system. He contacted Joe Stinson, another finalist for the job.

"I had a foundation in the run 'n' shoot at South Carolina, and he was a run 'n' shoot guy," Weis said.

"It didn't really seem attractive," said Stinson, who was somewhat miffed because he felt he had lost out on a job he deserved because of politics. "I honestly thought it was insulting to ask me to come down and be an assistant, but this is where I got to like and respect Charlie.

"I wouldn't have done it for anybody else. He was a very likable kind of guy. He was very unassuming."

Selling his Weis-dom

Weis and his staff were replacing a New Jersey coaching legend in Rivers. Adding to that difficulty, Rivers had endorsed one of his assistant coaches for the job. Weis and Stinson had some selling to do to earn their team's trust.

"He came out of nowhere, definitely," said Louis Solomon, the quarterback of the team.

For one thing, the system put in under Weis was a complete overhaul of the I-formation run by Rivers.

In 1988, Rivers' last season, the Warriors had run for 2,259 yards as a team, and attempted just 63 passes for 274 yards. The season before, Rivers' second-to-last, Franklin rushed for 3,455 yards while attempting just 36 passes all season.

And Weis wasn't stepping in for someone whom the game had passed by. Rivers' teams went 21-1 in his final two seasons.

"We were a little skeptical," Solomon said. "We didn't quite know what to expect.

"We had a different offensive system coming in, a different defensive system. There were a few guys that were leery about what we were going to do."

Weis immediately ingratiated himself to the community, organizing a benefit softball tournament for athletic trainer Ed Flemming, who had died of cancer on June 26.

"I realized that this guy must have been something different, something a little special," Weis, who had met Flemming just once, told the Newark Star-Ledger then.

The Franklin players decided to dedicate their first game to Flemming. Beforehand, Weis told them that if they were going to dedicate a game to someone close to them, they had better play like they meant it.

The Warriors beat Somerville 48-7, with Somerville's only score coming very late in the game after Franklin already had built a 48-0 advantage.

"Charlie used to say, 'We're not gonna feel for those guys,'" recalled Joe Bradwell, a lineman on the team. "'We're out here practicing hard. If they're not practicing as hard and they can't stop you, that's on them. We're not gonna worry about the score.'"

The following week brought Boyd's suspension.

"There was some unrest, definitely concern as far as what was going to happen," said Jamal Wade, a receiver and defensive back." 'Is this a precedent for the rest of the season?' I think it was justified looking back now that he did suspend Boyd. Luckily, we were able to move past that."

A 68-6 victory over Bridgewater East eased the tension. Solomon threw for 376 yards and six touchdowns.

If Weis' players hadn't bought into the new system before, they had now, having outscored two opponents 116-13.

The fast start also allowed the newcomer to instill his form of discipline without too much resistance. The Franklin players were used to a heavy hand -- the former coach, Rivers, was nicknamed "The Chief" after his no-nonsense approach.

But Weis, according to Wade, took organization to a new level that more closely resembled the college game he was used to.

"Nothing against the prior coach before him, but we didn't have that focus where we'd look at film -- I mean, really look at film," Wade said. "Coach Weis implemented that."

Though Weis built pride for his new system by distributing "Run 'n' Shoot" T-shirts -- "Here it is 15 years later, and I still have those Tshirts," says Wade -- he established a road dress code that banned such casual wear. And he held himself to the same standard.

"Always in the game, he had a shirt and tie on," Wade said. "Coach Rivers would come out with a sweatshirt and sweatpants on. Coach Weis wore a shirt and tie."

Weis required his players to sign in when they arrived at school in the morning. He apparently didn't want football players darting in just under the morning bell.

"If school started at 7:30, we're talking 7:15," recalled Rodney Wilkerson, now Franklin's defensive coordinator. "They wanted to make sure all the football players were in school, on time, every day."

But he also had fun with the players. Among the usual roll call of classic football drills, Weis ran a celebration drill at practice. When a player scored a practice touchdown, every other player on the roster had to sprint from wherever he stood to the ballcarrier. The drill ended when everybody had touched the man of the moment.

Franklin actually performed the drill in the season's first game before Weis, recalled Bradwell, thought better of it.

No slowing down

Weis' team kept right on rolling through its regular season. The Warriors put up 532 yards of offense in a 50-12 Week 4 victory over North Hunterdon. In that game, they showed they could still cram the ball down a team's throat if need be, compiling 293 rushing yards.

Franklin was 8-0 when it reached its state semifinal playoff game against Watchung Hills, another blowout victory at 42-6.

But the next game would bring the only blemish of the season for a team that spent time near the top 10 in the USA Today national high school poll. On Thanksgiving weekend, in a non-playoff game, Franklin fell 16-12 to Morristown, Weis' old school. To this day, many of the players feel they failed to get up for an inferior opponent.

After the game, players from Ocean Township, Franklin's opponent in the following week's Central Jersey Group III championship, circled the field.

"Ocean came onto the track and said, 'Don't cry, 9-2 is OK,'" Bradwell said. "Weis said, 'You let them come and disrespect you like that?' That's all he really needed to say."

The next week, Franklin defeated its tormentors 39-15, securing the second championship for the program in a three-year span.

In a relatively easy victory, the only dicey moment came when kicker Okang McBride shanked a kickoff. Luckily for him, it was recovered by Franklin, which parlayed it into a touchdown.

"Coach would have got on me," McBride told the Bridgewater Courier-News. "When it went off the side of my foot, I thought, 'Oh, my God, what have I done?'"

It would be the last game Weis would ever coach there.

A quick in-and-out

The same connection that helped bring Weis to Franklin helped him find the exit after just one season. Dick Young, the Giants announcer, helped hook him up with a job on the staff of coach Bill Parcells. Weis already had been earning experience in his free time doing part-time scouting work for the Giants.

Weis was hired as a defense and special teams assistant before becoming Parcells' running backs coach the next year. That came as a surprise to Stinson, who had handled 100 percent of the offensive coaching and play-calling for the 10-1 Franklin Warriors.

"I knew he would be successful," Stinson said. "I never knew it would be on offense. He had no feel for it back then.

"I bet you he studied nonstop. I bet the offensive package is something he evolved himself because he learned the (heck) out of it."

Stinson took over the job at Franklin and won another title in 1990.

"We didn't like to hire a new head coach every other year," said Dolan, the AD. "Charlie, for his own purpose, it was the right move. He has certainly been one of the best minds in football."

Weis served as an offensive coordinator in the NFL for seven years, including for all three of New England's Super Bowl victories, before leaving that game for Notre Dame.

"The first couple years, he didn't forget where he came from," Stinson said. "There were a lot of players who thought he might have called me when he got this (Notre Dame) job. I wouldn't have taken it, but that would have been a nice tribute.

"I have all the respect in the world for him. He's the prime example of hard work."

Weis didn't bring up his Notre Dame diploma with his Franklin team, but in hindsight, players can remember telltale signs of Weis' background. For example, he brought up then-No. 1 ND's comeback victory against USC as an example of perseverance. He would sprinkle other parallels to Notre Dame throughout the season.

The players just thought he was a fan.

Occasionally, ESPN or another national news outlet will talk about or graphically post a condensed version of Weis' coaching résumé. Often, players from the 1989 Franklin team have noted, the list of his coaching stops skips straight from the University of South Carolina to the New York Giants. They know better.

"I e-mailed (ESPN personality) Steven A. Smith to say, 'We know Charlie is doing well and everything,'" said Bradwell, "'but we're the best team he ever had.' "

Posted by at 11:40 AM on October 29, 2005
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An article by Pat Haden:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9841532/

Posted by at 11:38 AM on October 29, 2005
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Hilarity from The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/42106

Posted by at 01:16 PM on October 27, 2005
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