Weis Quotes: No Excuses

Sorry guys, I had to get some of these out. They are too good/profound to miss.

"For the first two weeks, I walked around with a clipboard. The coaches wore the usual coaching gear; I was in my usual business attire, wearing a shirt and tie. I was not leading the drills. I was just trying to learn the players. What I saw was that they were in crummy shape. What I heard was their bitching about how tough it was or yelling at a teammate who screwed up rather than helping him through a particular drill. It was just complain, complain, complain. There were excuses all over the place.For two weeks, I didn't say one word. I just took notes. On Monday night, before the third Tuesday of conditioning drills, I got all of the players together in a meeting room. I told them, 'Starting tomorrow, things are changing. I will not be in a shirt and tie. I'll be in sweats. I'll have a whistle. And things are changing.'That was all I said. Then I walked out of the room.The next day, they were mine. The clipboard was gone, as was the tie. I had a whistle around my neck and I was unmerciful. I was ruthless. I was on them and on them and on them and on them and on them and on them, from the time I blew the whistle for the start until the time I blew it for the end. I was killing them verbally, criticizing everything they did. To the ones who kept bitching and complaining, I said, 'Why don't you just quit? Just quit.' I planted the seed, figuring that if any players were going to walk away, that would be the time they were thinking about it.I kept the pressure on the entire off-season. There is a famous sign posted outside our locker room in Notre Dame Stadium, on the stairway leading down to the tunnel to the field. In blue letters on a gold background, it says, 'Play Like A Champion Today.' In March of 2005, before we left the locker room for the first practice of spring ball, I looked at that sign. Then I turned to the players and said, 'See that sign? I have a problem with that sign. We're not going on the game field today. We're going over to the practice fields. You should play like a champion every day, not just on Saturdays when you walk out on that game field.'I tried to run off as many of them as I could because if they weren't going to buy into the team, I wanted them gone. We started out with eighty-five kids. About seven or eight quit right off the bat. I didn't care. I was prepared to go into the season with fifty if I had to. By the time we got to training camp in the first week of August, we were into the low seventies. We could have had more guys quit, but a couple rallied themselves."

"The players also do a good job of policing themselves. The boss can't handle all of the problems. Sometimes the problem has to be handled by the team, not the head coach. In '05 I received a request through the leadership committee to make bars off-limits to players on Thursday night, as well as Friday night, before a Saturday game. In college, Thursday night is a big drinking night, and there were members of the committee who thought it was hurting the team's ability to be prepared and ready to go on Saturday. I went along with the request until there was one issue during the year that happened on a night other than Thursday or Friday. After that, the players weren't allowed to be in bars on any nights during the season.I give them the noose and let them hang themselves. I'll start of giving them some freedom. As soon as they give me the opportunity to tighten the noose, I tighten it...and I tighten it again...and again...and again. I try to treat them like men, not like kids, because I let them dictate how tight I'm going to make the noose."

"As the head coach, you're the CEO. Everyone is looking to you for leadership and guidance on and off the field. For example, I will never have a beer or any other alcoholic beverage in public. If I don't know somebody, I will not drink with him. When my staff's out, that doesn't hold for them. I'll take my assistant coaches out to a restaurant for dinner, and if they want to have a couple of drinks, they can do so. I can't. I'm setting the example. If you can't set the example and you're setting the rules, there's a conflict. There's a contradiction."Everything you do and say as a head coach starts with putting pressure on yourself. My feeling is, once I've taken the blame and put the pressure on myself, I feel free to 'spread the wealth' in private. I always take the blame publicly. Behind closed doors, it might not be exactly the same."

"This two-minute drive reminded me of Tommy Brady. There are a lot of similarities between Brady Quinn and Tommy Brady. Confidence. Leadership. Intelligence. Arm. By the way, they're both 'pretty boys.' I've seen all of the quarterbacks in the NFL in recent years. With the exception of Tommy Brady and Peyton Manning, you'd be hard-pressed not to want this kid, more than any other quarterback, on your team."