I was made a believer, too, a sudden convert on the morning of Feb. 3, 2005, when Weis sat before a circle of writers at the Super Bowl and started talking more trash on his way into college football than Steve Spurrier talked on his way into the pros.

Tyrone Willingham should've never been fired, in my opinion, and the venomous emails challenging my Irish Catholichood for printing it suggested a vast legion of clueless/heartless Golden Domers disagreed. How dare I criticize a storied, faith-based university for using its first African-American coach to rescue it from the George O'Leary mess before discarding him faster than administrators had ever fired anyone in the same job?

But when I started listening to Weis, a blameless beneficiary of the Willingham wipeout, he sure sounded like a guy who'd win a lot of football games. He was three days away from another championship as offensive coordinator of the Patriots, as the maker and molder of Tom Brady, and his confidence -- no, his arrogance -- was as subtle as a fullback dive.

Someone wanted to know how Weis would compete with all the heavyweight programs that were pounding Notre Dame on the recruiting trail.

"First of all, they've got to learn about us," he said. "Now let them try to stop a pro-style offense. Let's see how they're going to do. They've had their advantage, because I came into recruiting late.

"But now it's Xs and Os time. Let's see who has the advantage now."

Three seasons later, Weis would trade a large piece of his lavish contract to secure that advantage. Working on a deal worth some $30 million, Weis is 22-15. Willingham was fired for going 21-15.

He's almost tied with Ty, and that isn't what Notre Dame bargained for. The same board of trustees that overruled then-athletic director Kevin White in dumping Willingham decreed that a 5-2 record in Weis' very first year was reason enough to extend the coach's deal through 2015, at megastar wages.

Notre Dame's elders lived in fear of some desperate NFL owner raiding their campus and stealing Charlie away. And why not? That pre-Super Bowl morning in Jacksonville when Weis was talking big and loud about waking up the echoes, it sure seemed the Giants had made a mistake in hiring Tom Coughlin instead of him.

The Giants represented Weis' dream NFL job, and his alma mater, Notre Dame, represented his dream college job. At the end of 2006, with the Giants on the brink of firing Coughlin, it came as a small surprise that Notre Dame didn't extend Weis through the next appearance of Halley's Comet in 2061.

But then Coughlin won the Super Bowl over Weis' former employer, this while Charlie pieced together a true season for the ages. He became the first Notre Dame coach to lose nine games in a single year. He lost six straight games at home when no other Irish coach had ever lost five in a row.

Navy snapped a 43-game losing streak to the Irish on Weis' watch. The Air Force ripped him at home, too. Weis was responsible for a rare double dip, falling by the same 38-0 score to Michigan and Southern Cal, the loss to USC marking Notre Dame's worst home defeat in more than half a century.

Weis was 1-9 before finishing with victories over Duke and Stanford. Yet at a time when he should've been humbled to his core -- right after USC beat Notre Dame more thoroughly than Anthony Davis ever did -- Weis was still speaking in arrogant tones.

Asked if his program had bottomed out, Weis said, "I'm going to answer that very cautiously, because I don't want to be called sarcastic using New Jersey rhetoric. So let me just say people better enjoy it now, have their fun now."

Weis was promising payback, threatening to unleash a holy terror on the BCS bullies who'd blackened his eye. He was going to end up a Notre Dame legend, damnit, right there in the wedge with Rockne and Rudy.

One way or another, Charlie Weis was going to prove himself worthy of Grantland Rice's prose.

Time and TV ratings -- down 37 percent -- ultimately softened his stance. "You have to evaluate the teacher and the teaching to see why you can't progress," Weis admitted.

Or as his former boss, Bill Parcells, once said so famously, "You are what your record says you are."

Even Weis had to concede he was part of the problem in South Bend. He was an offensive guy, and last season's offensive line allowed 58 sacks.

And when times were relatively good in Weis' first two years, thanks largely to Brady Quinn, the Irish were outclassed in the bowls by Ohio State and LSU. Nobody suggested that Notre Dame had the better talent in either game, but the great coaches are said to be at their best when they have more than one week to prepare.

Weis guaranteed he'd deliver when it came to Xs and Os, and he did not. So he sat down with Bill Belichick before the Patriots beat the Giants to punctuate their perfect regular season and eventually made a stunning announcement:

Weis would no longer call Notre Dame's plays. He was handing off those Xs and Os to Mike Haywood.

"I think that some of the creativity that comes in offense sometimes gets stymied when you have a domineering head coach that happens to be an offensive guy," Weis said.

There's a difference between domineering and dominating, and Weis was hired to be the latter. He's got a highly regarded recruiting class to work with this year, and a sophomore quarterback, Jimmy Clausen, who was supposed to be the Next Big Thing.

Weis desperately needs a fast start, and a commitment to forgetting the recent past. "We're not saying one word about last season," he pledged.

It's not just last season -- the Irish have lost nine consecutive bowl games. Weis just happens to be the one who swore he'd reverse the trend.

So far, the coach has done little to add to the mythology of Notre Dame football, and a lot to harden the myth of his own genius.