The Kid Was Logging Plays for Tape/Game Review Later

Literally a Student Manager sitting there typing in the down, distance and the MSU defense so the coaches didn't have to do it later.  He should've been in the stands or anywhere other than the coach's box, yes. One of the coaches should've pulled him out of there to do it elsewhere, yes.  But it's also a 3-tier box and the kid was in the 3rd tier, with the coordinators down in the 1st tier, so it's not like the more senior guys knew.  This is routine data gathering that they give to a student manager to free up a coach.  He just sat in the wrong chair (clearly not knowing that wasn't okay).

Anyway, it's great fodder for the haters and the message board people.  It shouldn't be great fodder for you.  I'm sure this kid feels pretty badly about it, and I'm 1000% sure no one else at ND Football cares about this anymore (well, they shouldn't have to - but you never know - someone may force them to).

Here's Charlie's comments from the presser if you're interested:

Q. The whole thing about the laptop, do you expect to hear anymore about that, and did you find out more about exactly what happened there?
COACH Charlie Weis: Because I had to do the due diligence on this one last night. You know, when we go on the road, what we do is a student manager is assigned to just, from a defensive staff standpoint, because it's not on the offensive staff, okay, is assigned to type in on a laptop the down and distance in the defense. So when we come back here they can give it to (video coordinator) Tim Collins, and when they're dubbing the tape for the next morning, it will just it just reads across, 1st and 10, under, bear. Whatever it is.

Now, you're allowed to do that. But the one area where you're not allowed to do that is in a coaching area. It wasn't a coach doing it, but it was a student manager.

But their (Michigan State's) coaches box is a 3 tiered one where the main coaches sat on the first tier and GAs and those guys sat on the second tier, then there was a third tier.

So we had a guy up there that was putting in the down and distance and the name of the defense so when we came back he wouldn't have to stay up until 3:00 in the morning punching the stuff in.

To be honest with you, if he were sitting next to you in the press box, that's perfectly legal for him to do the exact same thing. So if we were at fault, it was for the fact that he was at the top of the three tiers (in the coaches booth) doing exactly that.

 

Q. Do you respond a delay do you report to NCAA?
COACH Charlie Weis: I'll say it to whoever. But I told them yesterday the same thing I'm telling you. Because at first, when an official came over to me, I said we're doing what? So I was talking to Haywood at the time on the headset. I said: Have you got a laptop up there? He goes no. I said to the guy who came over across the field, I said: We don't have a laptop.

Three minutes later I'm still talking to Haywood. Haywood said, hey, one of the student managers up top has a laptop. I said tell him to take the laptop and put it underneath his desk. Which he did. And he cooperated with anything that happened right there.

What I did, when I was walking off at halftime, I grabbed one of their coaches, I don't know which one, but I grabbed one of their coaches to tell them exactly what I'm telling you so that he knew exactly what I was telling you, because as I said, after the game, I was unaware that the student manager was inside the press box doing that, inside the coaching box doing that instead of outside the coach's box doing that.