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Hey Charlie, one parting shot deserves another

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Mark Kriegel

Mark Kriegel is the national columnist for FOXSports.com. He is the author of two New York Times best sellers, Namath: A Biography and Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich, which Sports Illustrated called "the best sports biography of the year."

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Updated Dec 8, 2009 3:44 PM ET
     
 
Following a tenure distinguished by losses to Syracuse, Navy and UConn, you'd think Charlie Weis would want to make himself scarce.
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But no. To commemorate his first week of unemployment, Weis appeared at a press conference on the Notre Dame campus Monday, endorsing the decisions of quarterback Jimmy Clausen and wide receiver Golden Tate to leave school early for the NFL. Now I'm all for student-athletes using the system before it uses them. But I have to wonder if Weis was the one to dispense objective advice. With $18 million still outstanding on his contract, Weis remains magnanimous enough to declare, "I'm not rooting against Notre Dame." He doesn't want his successor "to do worse than me so everyone says, 'I wish they would have kept Weis.' " (Something, I assure you, they'll never say in South Bend). Then again, what the coach says and what he means are two different things. When it comes to being passive-aggressive, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie couldn't do better than Charlie Weis. In this same transparently vindictive exit interview, posted over the weekend by IrishIllustrated.com, Weis was asked about USC coach Pete Carroll. He responded thusly: "Let me ask you this question: You guys know about things that go on in different places. Was I living with a grad student in Malibu, or was I living with my wife in my house? You could bet that if I were living with a grad student here in South Bend, it would be national news. He's doing it in Malibu and it's not national news. What's the difference? I don't understand." This remark, mind you, was given during an interview in which Poor Charlie was bemoaning the terrible toll the vicious, gossip-mongers in the internet media exacted from his family. "They beat my wife down and they beat my son down," he said." On Sunday, having already inflicted irreparable harm on the Carroll family, Weis apologized profusely and blamed — who else? — the media. It was a "totally subjective" conversation, said the naif who spent five years at the helm of college football's most intensely covered program. You wonder what Weis would be saying if not for his $18 million in ill-gotten gains. I mean, the Enron guys whined less. In a month or so, says Weis, he'll have another NFL job. He'll owe this one, like the last, to his benefactor and great good friend, Bill Belichick. "To this day, we talk every single week," he said. "We've always talked every single week. There are people in New England who say, 'There's a rift between Weis and Belichick.' We've never been closer because I've stuck by him. While all this stuff was going down in New England, there was one person who was sticking by him, and that was me." Did I miss something? Was Belichick hanging by a thread when Charlie saved him with a helping hand? If the me-and-Bill bit is vomitously self-serving, it's also predictable. Take away his association with Belichick, and what else does a guy like Charlie Weis have? Which brings me, in an admittedly roundabout way, to the point. My disgust with this pompous ass has led me to uncover the most overrated commodity in football, maybe all of sports: the Bill Belichick coaching tree. I cast no aspersions on Belichick here. He might be a creep, but he's a great coach, even if he did go for it on fourth-and-2. Still, the idea that his genius — if coaching acumen can be described in such terms — is contagious, is a fallacy. It doesn't rub off. I won't bother comparing the House of Belichick to those of Sid Gilman, Bill Walsh and Paul Brown. Suffice it to say that Belichick's coaching tree has borne less fruit than, say, the Jim Fassel tree. Oh, no? Consider that Fassel's coordinators with the 2000 Giants were John Fox, a head coach who has brought a team to a Super Bowl, and Sean Payton, a head coach who will. Actually, it was Bill Parcells who hired Payton from the Giants to run the Cowboys passing game. Once upon a time, Belichick was considered a Parcells disciple. But by 2004, Belichick had won three Super Bowls, which was three more than Parcells had won without him, and everyone looking for a new head coach just had to have one of Belichick's coordinators. At this writing, the most successful of them is Josh McDaniels, the wunderkind in Denver. His first season as a head coach has been a very good one. Then again, recall that Belichick's former defensive coordinator, Eric Mangini, was called "Mangenius" in his first season with the Jets. Fired after three seasons in New York, Mangini replaced another Belichick assistant in Cleveland. Romeo Crennel, who had preceded Mangini as the Patriots' defensive coordinator, went 24-40 in four seasons with the Browns. In keeping with this tradition, Mangini is now 1-11 in Cleveland. It bears mention that his quarterback, a Notre Dame alum named Brady Quinn, was enthusiastically endorsed by Charlie Weis.
Tagged: Navy, USC, Notre Dame

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