Charlie Weis began his first full day as Notre Dame’s football coach with fiery enthusiasm and fighting words, stirring up the passions of more than 200 students who arrived at the Joyce Center at 6 a.m. to welcome him to campus.
“I appreciate that you’re here,” Weis told the crowd that had gathered in the basketball arena. “I think you’re a little sick.”
Weis was named Notre Dame’s new football coach in mid-December. But because he was also finishing out his tenure as offensive coordinator of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, Monday marked his first full day of work in South Bend.
He kicked it off with a bang, deftly balancing brash confidence with more measured promises.
Weis addressed everything from competitiveness to credentials to a certain rival from California that has recently dominated Notre Dame.
“We need to get back to those kids wanting to come to Notre Dame because Notre Dame is the place to go. Because right now, Notre Dame is only an option,” Weis said. “Right now, Southern Cal is a much better football team than Notre Dame is.”
But he promised that would change.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but we’re not going to be 6-6 (the record of the 2004 team) for very long,” he said.
And the Irish would not continue to be dominated by USC, which has won the last three meetings between the two teams by 31 points each.
“[USC coach] Pete Carroll, he’s a friend of mine, but he’s never really done great against me,” Weis told the cheering crowd.
Weis insisted he took the Notre Dame job because it was the only job he wanted. He said he had been one of two finalists for the New York Giants’ coaching vacancy following the 2003 season. That job went to Tom Coughlin.
“That crushed me at the time, because I’d never interviewed for a job in my life and not gotten it,” Weis said. “[New York Giants owner] Wellington Mara called me up on Friday. I said `You had your chance.'”
This season, Weis said, he was the leading candidate for the Miami Dolphins’ head-coaching vacancy until he took the Notre Dame job.
For the moment, his job is as much a sales position as a coaching gig.
“Right now, I don’t even have the players convinced that what I’m trying to sell to them is worth having,” Weis said.
But now that he has snagged the title of Irish head coach, Weis, a 1978 graduate of Notre Dame, said he doesn’t intend to leave until his 11-year-old son, Charlie Jr., has graduated from the university.
Weis added that Notre Dame’s daunting 2005 schedule, with four of its first five games on the road, will merely be a challenge, not a roadblock, to its goal of returning to championship form.
“We could lose to every team, and we could beat every team,” he said. “I intend to win more than we lose.”
It is precisely that promise that prodded so many–mostly male–students out of bed early Monday.
Freshman Colleen McQuillan, one of only a dozen women in the crowd, said she was there at the behest of her father, Jim, who graduated from Notre Dame in 1979. Jim McQuillan got to experience a national championship in 1977 as a student.
“My brother (Patrick) is a senior, and he never got it, so my dad’s praying,” McQuillan said. “Maybe by the time I graduate.”
