Walters: Time for Charlie to give up some control

— The message struck me like a slap in the face.

Rain fell heavily in the East Lansing night in 2006. After one quarter Notre Dame trailed Michigan State 17-0 as a hostile crowd fed on the bedlam. High above the field, inside the Spartan Stadium press box, I opened the email and read this simple sentence: “The fat guy can’t coach.”

Gazing far down below and across the turf to the Notre Dame sideline, I took my first honest look at Charlie Weis. Here was a guy who had somehow climbed from the Notre Dame student section to being mentioned in the same sentence with Ara and Lou. This was akin to going from being a spectator at Cape Canaveral to becoming commander of the space shuttle. 'Who is this guy?', I thought. Had he fooled everyone?

Eight days earlier the Fighting Irish had been the No. 2 ranked team in the nation. On the eve of Notre Dame’s home game vs. Michigan, two of its best and most colorful players, best friends and heroes of the renaissance, Jeff Samardzija and Tom Zbikowski, endured a quick photo shoot for a Sports Illustrated photographer. If the Irish were to beat the No. 11 Wolverines the next day, surely there would be a story on the two. Perhaps even a cover.

Michigan won, 47-21.

Now, looking across Spartan Stadium at the man with the 10-year deal, a Domer whose own Notre Dame gridiron story was even more incredible than Rudy’s, I began to wonder. What was closer to the truth, bluster or brilliance? Or was Charlie Weis a bit of both?

I thought of Steve Belles. A former back-up quarterback and special teams standout on the 1988 national championship team, Belles is now the head coach at Arizona’s premiere prep football program, Chandler Hamilton High School. Belles may not have a Super Bowl ring, but he is a Notre Dame alumnus who won a state high school championship as both a player and a coach, as well as a national championship with the Irish. Did Belles, I wondered, have any less impressive a resume than Weis?

The Irish staged a remarkable comeback to beat Michigan State that evening, and the legend — or myth — of Charlie Weis was preserved for the time being. Since that night, though, they are 16-17. After four seasons the same questions haunt anyone who cares about Notre Dame football: Who is Charlie Weis? Can he coach?

Notre Dame and Weis renewed their wedding vows on Wednesday. The four-year marriage has fallen upon rocky times of late, but in the end they chose to stay together for the reason that most married couples do: for the kids.

“It has a host of implications,” first-year Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday evening, referring to the celebrity with which the decision to retain Weis was made. “It has implications on recruiting. Our current student-athletes were walking around on eggshells. You want to relieve them of that.”

The kids. The Notre Dame starting lineup boasts a nucleus of 10 freshmen and sophomores, the ripening fruit of back-to-back top-10 recruiting classes in 2007 and 2008. The incoming class may not be quite as spectacular, but one or two instant five-star players in key positions, such as running back Cierre Wood (verbal commitment) of Oxnard, Calif. and outside linebacker Manti T’eo (undecided) of Honolulu, is all they need.

Has Charlie Weis met expectations as a head coach the past two years? If he had, do you think his boss would need to release a statement assuring outsiders that an employee in the midst of a 10-year contract “will continue as head football coach”? 

Weis and his staff, however, have excelled in terms of recruiting. That is why Swarbrick said, “I am confident that Charlie has a strong foundation in place for future success.” That is why he remains the head football coach at Notre Dame.

The first decisive act of Swarbrick’s tenure was not retaining Weis so much as it was resolving this matter swiftly. By doing so, Swarbrick put a stop to the speculation. He ended the “How big is the buyout?” parlor game. He reassured the kids ... those already on campus and those who are considering joining them.

This much we have gleaned from four years of observing Weis: He is highly intelligent, blessed with gigabytes of memory storage within that cranium of his; he cares; he is a workaholic; his job comes before his health and his slumber; the closest thing he has to a hobby is watching even more film; and he can recruit. Lord, can he sell Notre Dame to 17-year-olds (or, in Jimmy Clausen’s case, 18-year-olds).

But can he coach? Can he lead? What answers would his current players give to that question, if truly they could speak candidly? And how many prep players being recruited by Notre Dame, blue-chip recruits who have watched their suitor drop four of their past five games, are wondering the same thing?

You cannot dismiss 2005. Weis and his staff did an outstanding job in his inaugural season prior to the Fiesta Bowl. The Irish won nine of 11 games, the only two losses coming 1) in overtime and 2) in the final moments to the nation’s No. 1 team. Even the most vitriolic critic of Weis’ must admit, whilst uttering the name “Ty Willingham’s recruits” under his breath, that Charlie completely turned the program around that season.

Since then? Notre Dame has lost a lot more games and the program has been a lot less fun to be around. In 2005, Samardzija gave a post-game interview to NBC sideline reporter Lewis Johnson that was so brazenly enthusiastic, so effortlessly genuine, that even Mark May might have smiled at his zeal.

Those days are gone. Players now must sift between what they honestly feel and what they are permitted to say every time they open their mouths. Freshmen are completely off-limits to the media. Notre Dame, with the highest graduation rate of any FBS school, does not trust in the intelligence of its freshmen to deal with the media while almost every other FBS school does?

That’s not just an insular fourth-estate gripe. That’s a symptom of a greater ill plaguing Weis’ tenure: an absence of spontaneity, of joy, of freedom. How does Weis expect leaders to emerge from his roster if he treats his players like children?

Everything is too micro-managed. In his statement Swarbrick said, “We are examining every aspect of the program and will make changes wherever we think they are needed."

Here are a few minor suggestions:

Two sets of digits as we close. The first is 41-3. That was the score, after three quarters, of Notre Dame’s 2006 contest with Penn State. The Nittany Lions looked hapless that afternoon, their head coach Joe Paterno, nearing 80 years old, appeared on his way out.

Two years later, the Nittany Lions, with five starters who also started against the Irish that day in South Bend, are 11-1 and headed to the Rose Bowl. The Fighting Irish, as cluelessly as they played in 2007 and as listlessly as they performed the second half of this season, are nearing a bountiful era.

Of course, how many other coaches, provided Notre Dame’s talent, would build a better football team than the one Weis and his staff have constructed? The short answer is “many.” However, Notre Dame has already fired three head coaches (Bob Davie, George O’Leary and Ty Willingham) this decade. Another quickie divorce would not only destabilize the program, it would move it past embarrassing to full-on Zsa Zsa status.

The second digit is simply 1. One, as in the number of 100-yard rushing games Irish running backs had this season. Armando Allen gained 134 yards in a September win vs. Purdue, and that accounts for this team’s lone 100-yard game. Twenty schools finished with a worse rushing offense than did Notre Dame this season, but nine of them had more than a single 100-yard rushing game from an individual.

Most of the schools that failed to post a single 100-yard rusher were synonymous with this season’s FBS laughing stocks: Washington, Washington State, UCLA and SMU. It doesn’t matter the size of your playbook if you cannot run the football. You don’t have to have a Woody Hayes offensive mentality to appreciate that.

Doug Flutie, speaking on ESPN’s "College Football Live" on Wednesday, noted that the Irish often seem physically overmatched against their opponents. That was a kind way to put it. I’ll add this: I’m still waiting to see an Irish player in the Weis era with bigger guns — and more heart — than his first quarterback.

Can the fat guy coach? Charlie Weis will have at least one more season to answer that question.