The game is officially sold out. Some standing room only tix will be on sale on Tuesday.
So, what’s the word on the team residing in a state that looks something like a dripping, spent phallic representation?
The same but different. While Pitt has a new coach who is considered long on personality and inspiring players, but short on actual game coaching; ND’s new coach is considered an X-O guy who has needed to prove himself in the personality/charisma department.
Obviously both coaches will need to prove themselves again on the field with what they do, but for now everyone around the program believes in Coach Charlie Weis and what he has done with the attitude of the team.
No, the only thing Weis, a 1978 Notre Dame graduate, seems concerned about at the moment is changing the attitude of the entire program. He’s a demanding coach in the mold of Lou Holtz — minus the endless bluster — who won’t settle for anything less than restoring the Fighting Irish to national prominence.
“It’s a fair question if you’re worried about what people are thinking,” Weis told reporters during media day in South Bend, Ind., earlier this month. “I’m not really worrying about it. Mind you, the object is to win as fast as we can.”
Weis inherits a program that finished 6-6 last season.
It has been 16 long seasons since Notre Dame won the last of its 11 national championships — equaling the longest draught in school history from 1950-65.
The master plan under Weis is based on instilling faith.
“The first message we’re trying to teach the players is, ‘You have no chance of winning if you believe you’re not going to win.’ If you have games you’re already thinking, ‘Well, this team is a lot better than us,’ you really have no chance.
“If you go into a game thinking anything other than you’re going to win that game, you can count on losing it,” Weis said.
“The sooner we can get more people thinking that way, the better our chances are,” he added. “There are not many games where I’ve looked at the schedule and said, ‘Well, we’re losing that one.’ I’ve tried not to do that.”
In fact, that was the overwhelming theme of stories today on Weis and the Domers.
But Charlie Weis needed more than four Super Bowl rings and a proven playbook to win over his new team.
He needed to push. He needed to teach. He needed to inspire.
And, perhaps most important, he needed to relate.
Maybe it’s the outgrowth of the “one voice” theory from Bill Belichick that Weis is adhering to that creates a uniformity of stories. I’ll have some more thoughts on that theory later in the week, from someone who got to observe it in action in Cleveland under Belichick.
The players, of course, in their interviews are positive, but it is already causing media people to look for tells —
When the subject turns to Charlie Weis, as it always does, Notre Dame football players offer variations on the same reaction.
A chuckle suggests their responses will be edited for sensitive tastes.
Then maybe darting eyes, or a thumb and forefinger tracing the corners of their mouths, some kind of tic to buy time.
Wary, weary expressions developed over three weeks of the Weis treatment, a persistent drumbeat of criticism and instruction and perpetual unhappiness with their performance, as promised.
“It’s hard to describe,” serves as a common throat-clearing remark from Notre Dame football players asked to explain the tactics and intensity of their new coaching staff.
Goading questions about comparing them with their predecessors go nowhere — they have been trained — but their words reveal more than the usual preseason anticipation.
Exhaustion and excitement on their faces illustrate their current state of mind.
Sounds like the first couple weeks while dating a crazy chick. But then, I may just be projecting.
