He's all right. He's great in press conferences - engaging, respectful, answers questions thoughtfully. Absolutely nothing like his mentor. The problem has never, ever been with Weis himself. It's with the access he allows to the people around him. And the fact that everyone from the offensive coordinator to the walk-ons are scared to death of him and coached on what to say. It should be a trip to have Mike Haywood calling plays now. When Darius Walker was rushing for 1,300 yards, if you asked him a question about him (Haywood is the running backs coach/offensive coordinator), he would answer, "All of our running backs ..." without fail, every time.
If I'm not mistaken, they even answered the same way about Brady Quinn! ("All of our quarterbacks ...")
Last year, defensive coordinator Corwin Brown, known as a recruiting tour de force out there on the street because he's such a huge extrovert, wouldn't even tell us if he was going to coach from the sideline or the press box three days before Georgia Tech. He said he didn't know. "He probably thought I'd get mad at him," Weis said a couple days later. It's mentally exhausting playing word chess with those guys.
I always wonder how tight Weis' "domineering" (his word from yesterday) makes the players and assistants on game day. As in whether the media stuff is merely a symptom of the culture around the program. It's like only one person is allowed to have a personality - Charlie himself. Some guys realize that you can be engaging with the media and not give away the farm - Sam Young, the left tackle, Pat Kuntz, the nose tackle. But those guys are few and far between.
Are there some times Charlie doesn't "get it" when it comes to dealing with the media? Sure. The quarterback secrecy was an absolute fiasco last year - look how it turned out. And his opening monologues about the opponent are snooze button time. I think even Pete Carroll cracked on him for it a couple of years ago ("Guess I don't have to talk about us - I listened to Charlie and he covered it all"). They pulled this cutesy thing a couple of years ago before Michigan where everyone was instructed to answer any question with "We're going to concentrate on our fundamentals and techniques." Then they got embarrassed on Saturday.
But, for the most part, he's pretty jovial. He would never - never, ever - pull a Mike Gundy. The hard thing about covering Notre Dame is the paranoia from everybody else. I'm sure it could be worse, though, than having Web hits roll up like a pinball machine every time you put "Weis" or "Clausen" or "Irish" in a headline, though. You have no idea how huge and rabid the fan base is until you're in the eye of the storm.
