As he has moved from NFL offensive coordinator to college head coach, the job of motivating his players, first-year Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis said, has multiplied.
“It takes quite some work when you’re dealing with 100 different kids,” he said. “It’s not like we’re dealing with twice as many in this locker room than I’m used to dealing with, and I used to only have to deal with half of them because I only had to deal with half of the 50 guys that we had [at New England]. That’s the only ones I was really dealing with, and I was still following [Patriots coach] Bill [Belichick’s] lead. So it’s quite challenging, especially in the time frame that you have to work with them.
“The team takes on the personality of the head coach. And good coordinators, which I felt that I was a good, loyal coordinator, do not try to one-up the head coach. That’s what’s happened here. My coordinators do a great job of taking the message that I have here and pressing it to everyone.”