When Charlie Weis Got the Last Check from Notre Dame, He Celebrated with a Coors Light

Until last December, Charlie Weis was still one of the best-compensated coaches in college football, making $4.6 million, and he didn’t even have a job. Notre Dame and Kansas had both fired him with so much left on his contracts that both schools were paying Weis more to stay away than they were paying guys actually coaching the team.

The Kansas check was nice and all. But the big one was from Notre Dame, and it was personal, and when the last one arrived, Charlie pulled out a Coors Light to toast the occasion, as described by Tommy Tomlinson for ESPN.com.

"Kansas is still paying him through the end of this year, $208,333 a month, but that’s not a big event in the Weis house. The money from South Bend was a big event. It always arrived right before Christmas. Charlie and Maura always held a little ceremony. Last year, when the final payment of $2.1 million came in, they did it one last time. Maura got a glass of wine. Charlie got a Coors Light. And they raised a toast to old Notre Dame."

The story goes into detail about Weis’ beef with Notre Dame, but it doesn’t really matter. They fired him, he didn’t think he was treated right, they owe him a bunch of money, whatever.

The real reason this story exists is that Charlie Weis doesn’t have a job, and wants one. So he gives somebody a bunch of access, and tries to come off like he’s not as bad as everybody says he is.

"“I’m tired of people who don’t know who you are and they think you’re an a*****e,” Charlie Weis says."

That’s the first line of the story, and the drama unfolds from there. It’s pretty good. There’s a lot of detail, some score-settling, a scene of Charlie evaluating quarterback prospects as if he’s putting together a tryout tape. There are the mentions of the time Charlie said he’d give Notre Dame a “decided schematic advantage,” and when he called his team at Kansas “a pile of crap” before the season even started.

"“Despite the fact that I grew up in New Jersey, I swear more than some other people do, and [I’m] borderline rude and obnoxious and sarcastic, and those things like that, I always felt like I was a good person.”"

Consider that his cover letter.