He may have "gotten it." But it meant fuck-all on the field.

Weis had success his first two years because all the pieces were in place for him; a quarterback who had a good arm and was coachable, 2-3 wide receivers who played at a very high level their junior and senior years, a veteran tight end who could catch, a running back who was a solid receiver out of the backfield and an offensive line talented enough to allow the plays to develop.

Once he had to build a team from scratch, he was fucked.

Plus he was a bona fide arrogant asshole with numerous documented episodes of him shitting on alumni and fans alike.

You can tell it's gotten really bad that we're to the point of being nostalgic for Charlie Fucking Weis.

Sorry but Weis basically had 2 recruiting classes (last Davie, first TW) and then the 2 recruiting classes that were the equivalent to the death penalty were juniors and seniors in 2008. Blaming CW for that is simply stupid. He had one year with his recruiting classes - and it wasn't a good year, but it wasn't 4-8 either. He was a significantly better in-game coach than our current head coach. I'd go as far as to say Charlie Weis saved Notre Dame football. Nobody of significance wanted that job seeing TW put the program in a deep ditch. I completely agree that Charlie had his drawbacks, and some were significant, but much of what happened to him is not his fault. And need I remind you who's recruits almost completely dominated the field for BK's 12-0 season? So if you want to rip Charlie's attitude, fine. If you want to rep his last year's on-field product, fair. But to refer to him as you did above is just dumb and completely lacks perspective or appreciation of where TW left the program, which was on the side of the road in a ditch to die. Its just too bad ND couldn't have hired a better follow up to him than we have.

I just threw up in my mouth.

completely bare or hurting for depth.

But he did bust ass when targeting truly
elite 5* players. (Floyd, Tate, Teo, Clausen
Crist, to name a few.)

He (or, probably more accurately, his agent) knew our feckless leadership would be so punch drunk by our near victory over USC that they'd give him whatever he wanted -- a full seven games into a five-year contract.

I'm sure Swarbrick took up where White left off when negotiating Kelly's most recent extension.

he's convinced his boss of the same.

Starting, on, 100 years ago, we have had the following coaches who indisputably wanted to be here and weren't a threat to leave (Rockne's occasional game of chicken with the collars is of course noted for the record)

Harper
Rockne
Anderson
Layden
Leahy
Devore
Kuharich
Parseghian
Devine
Faust
Holtz
Weis

The exceptions to this rule are
Davie
Willingham
Kelly (see Eagles, dalliance with)

That's why we had to give him the monster extention.
And Rockne did more than play chicken. He signed a contract with Columbia.

Not only did I know this personally, he echoed it in a recent interview when Charlie, Jr was in the news.

It was a very good interview on Sirius College radio.
He was asked about things he would change. At Kansas, nothing... he told them it would take 6 years and he was fired in year 3 at 2-2.

At ND: "That's the biggest regret in my life. I didn't want to go anywhere else. It is my Alma Mater. I love the place. I still have a home there and a charity there and they will stay there and I will live there. My biggest regret is I put guys together on the staff that really didn't know each other well and I didn't manage that well. It's all on me. I learned a lot from that and regret what happened there but at the end of the day, that's on me."

I wonder if he was holding the Coors light that he boasts about drinking every year that he gets paid by ND despite no longer coaching there?

Weis was 6-22 there. Since he left, KU has gone 4-40.

At least he realizes how he screwed up at ND. It's impossible to tell if he's to blame for Kansas, since that program has been screwed up since Mangino was fired.

I don't think he would've jumped for any raise to any team. But for the right team and the right number, who knows. Although I think that number would've had to have been really big in those first couple years. He was really happy and he had a great family setup for his daughter's foundation. It wouldn't have been an easy sell. But he certainly maximized his position. And, while he made a comfortable salary, it wasn't deemed to be outrageous in his first two years. The number of guaranteed years, however, was outrageous. While I don't doubt that an extension would've had a positive recruiting outcome, that large of an extension was not necessary to quell the rumors.