The Weis Perception: Take Your Pick

First of all, I want to apologize in advance for not writing anything about this weekend's game. I will be down in Blacksburg watching Virginia Tech beat the snot out of Kent State. In addition to that, it seems that finding the game on TV will be difficult in and of itself. This is my meager replacement for my usual writing.

Last night I was thinking a lot about how good Charlie Weis is as a coach. I've voiced concerns in the past based on what I see and what I read in the media. However, I think that I have been believing too much of what I read, too much of the numbers. I saw something last night that really woke me up to this. If you want an example of how someone can slant statistics, look at these two statements.

Charlie Weis has yet to beat a team that finished the year in the top 25.

Charlie Weis has lost four games in two years, three of which came to "great" teams (USC, Michigan, OSU), and three of which came by relatively small margins (USC, MSU, OSU).

Now, I'm not saying Michigan this year is a great team. And I think that, at that point in the season last year, MSU was playing slightly above their ability (but the way they finished the season was way below their ability). But OSU was arguably the second best, and perhaps the best, team in the country at seasons end last year and USC was definitely up there.

This sort of brings the argument of how a strength of schedule should be determined to the forefront. Do you use the ranking, general perception, and record of the team you play at the time you play them to determine how worthy of an opponent they are? Or do you use their "status" at the end of the season? Both have their merit. However, the latter fails to account for the fact that a defense going against Weis can be perfectly demoralized for the rest of the season after he and Quinn are done with them (just ask Purdue last year).

Additionally, people talk all the time about how Weis is winning with Willingham's players and how he shouldn't be given credit for winning with those athletes. Well, last time I checked, Willingham never put together a dominating offensive performance against anything that even resembled a decent defense and he was routed in several games (USC three times) while Weis has only one big loss to his name. I really wouldn't even consider that a blowout and especially not a one-sided loss due to coaching (you simply can't win a game with 5 turnovers). So Weis took essentially the same players and turned 0.500 teams into 9/10 win teams. How, you might ask? He never loses to someone he shouldn't lose to.

So you can view it however you choose. Go Irish.