You Don’t Know Chuck
Seriously, Chuck says, you don’t know me unless you’ve met me.
And given that most people haven’t met Chuck (except me), he’s talking to the majority of the fans/haters out there when he says this. It’s an interesting interview, taken from a more personal angle than most.
“And it’s probably the biggest, I don’t know if it bothered me the most, just the thing that I don’t understand the most, is all these people have an impression of you. They’ve never even met you. I mean, they’ve never even talked to you.”
In a way, I get it. And I have to admit Charlie’s right: people don’t KNOW him. They haven’t met him, they don’t hang out, and they don’t get the full picture of who he is. And I really agree that the public’s opinion should be much much less about WHO Charlie is, and much more about HOW he coaches. Of course, some of that is intertwined, but it’s up to the fans and the public to delineate the difference. The haters often focus on his weight problems, his jersey-ish style of speaking and scream, cry and whine foul. FOUL they say! The ND fans are often close to, if not quite, as bad.
But at the same time, Coach, that’s the nature of the beast. You’re in a public job with a public jury, and so people will certainly form an opinion about you - and quickly. I mean, I can pretty much tell you with utmost certainty that our President is a moron. And I’ve never come close to meeting the guy.
FYI: The reporter is blind.
Point is, if Charlie does something illegal, or even shady, feel free to call him out. But don’t hate the player, hate the game!
Yes, the way he says some things is less-than-sophisticated. His mastery of PR is far from ‘there’ yet. But that doesn’t make Charlie Weis a bad guy, it makes him a questionable public speaker. Don’t pull the guy down as a person until you tell me he’s doing some Urban-esque type stuff. At that point, anyone’s fair game. But I don’t think you’ll ever see that kind of thing out of Charlie. After all, he cares…
“I think that anyone that works with me will probably tell you that there probably isn’t anyone who’s more caring than me,” he said.
And that quote right there sums it up for Charlie, on both sides. I do believe the guy cares about people. From the stories and from my personal interaction with him, I believe that he really does care about his family, friends, players, and the fans. But somehow, he manages to say it in a way that makes him sound like a pompous ass.
But don’t crucify him for the jersey-ish, less-than-eloquent talk. It’s the thought that counts, people!
Related Posts:
