When Winning Becomes the Only Virtue -- Notre Dame and Football Culture

By Colman McCarthy

Charlie Weis, the University of Notre Dame’s head football coach, describes himself as “an obnoxious sarcastic guy” and “a jerk.”

This came to light when CBS News, via “60 Minutes” on Oct. 29, celebrated Weis for returning Notre Dame to its winning ways on the gridiron. The 300 lb. coach was shown prowling the sidelines during games and practices while shouting vulgarities at his cowed players, yelling at referees and berating assistant coaches.

Fawningly, the “60 Minutes” interviewer gushed that Weis is “a great teacher and motivator.”

Really? It’s acceptable to be a boorish vulgarian browbeating a group of college kids? It’s acceptable to be a loudmouth slob who believes that on the football field he’s always right and everyone else is wrong?

Apparently the priests who run Notre Dame shower blessings on that kind of low-grade boorishness. Sensing that glory days are here again, they have lavished Weis with a 10 year contract worth a reported $35 million. Charlie’s a winner, and at Notre Dame what could be godlier? The university president, Rev. John Jenkins, hails Weis for “his values and commitment to excellence.” Translation: Charlie has a free pass to behave any way he likes so long as he keeps winning. Victories mean that happy alums keep sending checks to keep the Golden Dome ever golden. Bowl and merchandise revenues will remain strong, TV contracts lucrative and the school’s green-garbed leprechaun mascot will prance around the sold-out stadium whipping up the boozed fans to belt out the “cheer. cheer for Old Notre Dame” fight song

I wonder whether the university’s good Holy Cross fathers would allow, say, English professors or theology professors to be vulgar obnoxious jerks in the classroom the way Weis is on his turf? Would they extol professors who bellow obscenities at a student for turning a late paper? And to carry on this way not only repeatedly but boastingly. The answer is no. Not even the protections of tenure would allow such abuse for long.

So why the double standard? Again, it’s the coffers. University officials say that football lucre under winning coaches pays for scholarships for needy students, it covers the expenses of non-money making sports like swimming and golf, it creates school spirit. When asked by the CBS interviewer about Weis’s foul language, Rev. Jenkins, knowing that a winning football coach is both a cash cow and a sacred cow, laughed it off: “Charlie’s a New Jersey and he speaks very directly.”

It’s the old cop-out: the end justifies the means. Is that what Notre Dame, a university with pretensions to greatness, should stand for? Is football, a violent and vicious game in itself, to be not only sanctioned but revered because the dollar payoffs are large?

I’ve made more than a dozen visits to Notre Dame over the years, coming away each time energized by its many professors, administrators and students who keep their ideals ever high. Many of them, I suspect, are silent dissenters who look on the football mania as only that: an irrational madness to be endured every autumn, a gaudy but hollow ritual so ingrained that a football coach can shamelessly brag about his crudeness because he knows that producing touchdowns means he is untouchable.

Way to go, Charlie.