Charlie Weis Optimistic About 2009
June 15, 2009 – 11:30 am by Michael Bean
There hasn’t been much to be happy about for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football program in recent years. Some will point to their drubbing of Hawaii in last year’s Hawaii Bowl – the first Notre Dame Bowl victory in well over a decade. But it was still a very unimpressive season for Charlie Weiss’ bunch. It may be now or never for the former New England Patriots offensive coordinator. His recruiting classes have been good – now it’s time to deliver on the field. Weiss joined 1070 The Fan in Indianapolis to talk about the upcoming season.
On Notre Dame’s 49-21 victory over Hawaii in last year’s Hawaii Bowl, their first bowl victory since beating Texas A&M in the 1994 Cotton Bowl:
“It certainly set an optimistic tempo for the whole offseason. I think when you play that well in the last game of the year, all it can do is do good. Whether it be recruiting, or more importantly, the offseason workouts in to spring ball in to summer vacation – I mean, I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve talked to in the past couple of weeks that in the past summertimes, they avoided me like the plague. But I’ll talk, see, or send a text to 20 guys a day. This team’s really excited, and I think the springboard was that Bowl game.”
On some of the violations going on around the country and his thoughts on running a clean program:
“Well, I think there’s a couple of factors that come in. Obviously we didn’t write the book on how to do things the right way. But we try as best we can to try to do things the right way and it minimizes the amount of problems you end up having, especially major ones. You know, that being said, when you’re dealing with 100+ 18-22 year old kids that are very impressionable by outside forces, you know I think control of a lot of situations has to be handled pretty strongly, and you know, try to stay on top of it as much as you possibly can, because you never know what could end up happening.”
Listen here to Weis on 1070 The Fan in Indianapolis
Tags: 1070 The Fan, Charlie Weiss, Notre Dame Fighting Irish
