Weis Media Days Transcripts

[CalHawk]

http://www.big12sports.com/fls/10410...nsas072412.pdf

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Charlie Weis from Kansas.

COACH WEIS: So let's get Penn State out of the way so you don't have to ask any questions.

My feelings on that is that no one wins. Everyone loses. There's no winner in that situation. So I prefer not to take any further than that. It's not a good situation and no one won. There's no winners there, and so let's move on from there.

THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. Just following up on that a little bit, obviously you've taken a lot of the transfers from other schools and what not. Have you given a look at Penn State's roster at all or anything like that yet?

COACH WEIS: Yes.

I'll elaborate just a tad. So I think that, first of all, you have to be respectful to Coach O'Brien and the people who are trying to make good of a bad situation.

But, at the same time, the rules are the rules. And there's several players that, when the dust settles, when the dust settles, I think there will be several players that entertain the thought of going somewhere else, especially the way it was presented to them.

So I think that any program that didn't do homework prior to this decision coming out, you know, was behind on that one.

Q. Charlie, just curious about your perceptions of the coaching fraternity you joined here in the Big 12, any coaches that have reached out to you or any of them that you knew from before you came to KU?

COACH WEIS: Well, I'm already friendly with a few of the coaches in this conference. I've been friends with Mack for quite some time. And Tommy Tuberville, we went to visit the troops together years ago and spent a lot of time over there.

Getting to know a lot of people. Actually one of the guys who I have the most respect for is Coach Snyder, and all the people of Kansas will be mad at me for having respect for Coach Snyder, but I was always a big fan of his.

So it's fun and refreshing to get to know some of these other guys better. But the bottom line is: You want to go beat them; you don't want to go become their buddies.

Q. Just a few months ago Dayne Crist was still deciding whether or not he was going to attend Kansas. You go through spring football and here he is today a captain and a representative of the team at Media Days. A lot of the questions that have been asked of other coaches have been of veteran leadership and who has been leading in the offseason.

Can you talk about that process with Dayne gelling with the team so quickly and so obviously earning their respect in a short period of time?

COACH WEIS: Well, obviously Dayne and I have known each other since going back to early high school days when we first got involved in the whole recruiting process. But I think that when he came here, it really wasn't about me selling him on me. Our relationship is wonderful. It was whether or not he thought that he could come in here and be competitive or not.

So he spent the whole time with the offensive line. Shows you he's a very intelligent young man because he wanted to know whether or not he thought that the offensive line would give him an opportunity.

And I think that he's such a natural leader that it was easy for the players to follow and the skill players. But I think that if you haven't won over the offensive line, I think that's a great place to start.

I was also happy when the team voted for captains that it was a close vote between him and Tanner, because I thought that if there was no one on the existing team that the players thought highly of, that would have sent an awfully bad message to me that no one, none of the previous teammates, were respected or revered, and I think I was very happy the way that all turned out.

Q. You spent a year with the Kansas City Chiefs, and obviously it's in the same area as Lawrence and all that. Has that helped at all or anything like that, just being somewhat familiar with the KC metro area and being able to recruit and all that kind of stuff?

COACH WEIS: To be honest with you, it's one of the reasons why I took the job. I personally really enjoyed my time with the Chiefs. I had some -- we had some family issues. Most people know I have a daughter with special needs and she had a couple of really tough situations occur in the one year we were there, so it caused us to move out in a short time frame, which wasn't my intent when I first got there.

But once we got everything settled and got my daughter kind of settled and this job presented itself, it wasn't a lack of familiarity with Kansas or the Kansas City area. It kind of encouraged us to go ahead and take this job and take this opportunity and see if we can't take a losing program and make it -- turn it into a competitive, winning program.

Q. Coach, you just talked about Dayne and his adjustment to town. We haven't heard a whole lot about Anthony McDonald, Mike Ragone, the other Notre Dame guys. Do you have any update how they're adjusting and kind of getting along in town?

COACH WEIS: My blockheads? Yeah, both these guys really like being here. They're doing well in school, which was always a little bit of a concern when you're bringing in fifth-year guys. You want to make sure, hey, look it, anyone that's taken a fifth year somewhere else for anyone who hasn't figured this one out yet, they're doing that to enhance their value to play on Sunday. That's why they're doing it.

They're not doing it because they want to go to another school all of a sudden. They want to go somewhere that gives them an opportunity to enhance their value on Sunday.

So both Anthony -- Anthony's behind Manti. Well, that wasn't looking too well. And Ragone, he would have been behind Tyler Eifert. And if he went back, that wasn't looking too well either. Because if you picked the two best players on that team that they came from, that's who they were behind.

So I think that these guys are looking forward to the opportunity to compete to be on the field on a regular basis. And that gives us a lot better chance.

Q. What is it that's going on at KU and Lawrence that made you think you could -- this is a job you could turn around and a program you could build into a winner?

COACH WEIS: Well, that's a very, very good question. So let's look at this objectively.

You're sitting down in Gainesville. You get offered this job. So what do you do? You look at your two closest competitors, proximity-wise, your two closest competitors. So you look at Kansas State and you look at Missouri. How are they doing?

Q. Very well.

COACH WEIS: So I'm looking at it like you. I'm saying, okay, the two schools that are in the closest proximity are both doing fairly well.

So then my job was, once I took the job, is let's figure out why they're doing fairly well and see if we can't close the gap on them quicker than they would like us to.

And you look at what both those programs are doing, solid, winning programs, I think that that's one of the reasons that gave me reason for optimism, because there's no reason why you can't have a third one into the mix and become more competitive.

Time frame, I can't give you, but I can tell you there's already two teams doing it, okay, which tells you that it obviously can be done.

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