Charlie Weis Wanted To Leave Notre Dame

Turns out the dislike was a two-way street

By EAMONN BRENNAN

Updated 11:30 AM CST, Mon, Apr 13, 2009

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After a disappointing 2008 season -- another in a stretch of such seasons with Charlie Weis at the helm -- Notre Dame's athletic department seemed to decide the time was right to be rid of their bumbling coach. After all, ND is a bigtime football program with a national audience. That audience expects success. Year after year of 6-6 and 7-5 won't do, no matter how big Weis' negotiated buyout, right?

Wrong. In the end, Weis was too expensive for Notre Dame to fire, and he kept his job, quality be damned.

Now that we're a few months removed from the process, it appears Weis wasn't quite so ambivalent himself. Despite his public protests, Weis is now admitting that in private he considered leaving South Bend too. Why didn't he? You can probably imagine this answer: he just has too much integrity and will and all that stuff that you say to make you look good in a newspaper profile:

"We talked about all that as a family, and we felt that we didn't want to leave that way," Weis said during a recent 35-minute interview with the Tribune. "That would have been the easy way out. That's not why we came here."

Rahh! Charlie Weis is back, baby. And he's here to just win, and to take no prisoners, but to also take names, and other assorted coaching cliches! Whatever it takes! We won't lie: If we were Weis, we would have made like Chrysler and taken the buyout. But that's what makes us losers, and Charlie Weis a winner who wins. Forever.

Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger who has an impeccable record in NCAA 09. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.