Fat Charlie Has the Blues

Charlie Weis is in the second year of a contract extension with Notre Dame that will pay him two million dollars a season. This does not count the money he’ll get from endorsement deals and speaking gigs.

He has brought pride back to Notre Dame football after crafting the offense for the three-time super bowl champion New England Patriots. But in counting his blessings, the greatest may be that he’s still alive.

In 2002, at age 48, Weis had gastric bypass surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. At the time of the surgery Weis looked like this:

After the surgery Weis became ill in the hospital, suffering from internal bleeding, and had to have emergency surgery to save his life.

Fortunate to be alive, with three Super Bowl rings, one of the most prestigious jobs in college football, and a salary to keep him filled with onion rings and clam cakes, Charlie took the only action available: litigation.

The trial clogged up the justice system in Massachusetts, first in February 2007, which ended in a mistrial when a juror, after several vivid descriptions of just what was removed from Weis to change him from an obese assistant professional coach to a plump college head coach, collapsed.

According to Charlie, based on “principle,” he continued with a second trial, further clogging the judicial arteries. This trial took place in July (you know, when college football coaches have nothing to do) and a stronger stomached jury came back with a verdict, for the defendants.

Charlie stated he knew winning was a long shot but was still surprised. There is a term for people who are surprised long shots don’t pay off: destitute.

Charlie said he thought jurors grew “bored” during the trial. Perhaps hiring John Madden as his council would have been more compelling: “See this, this is his small intestine, and here came the doctor with the knife: and bam! He ripped it out, but see over here, he’s nicked this artery. That’s really something the doctor’s coaching staff are going to have to look at during half time.”

Basically the trial boiled down to this. Charlie ate a tremendous amount without exercising, and just before training camp, where he was about to make young men run in the stifling heat until they vomited and begged for mercy, he elected to have surgery and have a backhoe remove blubber from his enormous gut. Something went wrong with the procedure that was done because you can’t just eat four Twinkies a sitting, you might as well go for the box, which required a second surgery. For this Charlie sued. If I’m on the jury I would have a hard time awarding someone who got big, fat, and lazy, had the money to get it surgically corrected, and then sued when the surgery went wrong.

Ah, yes, money well spent Big Charlie. I can see the doctor’s lining up to do a second surgery for you. Maybe Vinnie Boom Botz is available.

Charlie said if he had won he would have given the money to people, like him, who had special needs.

Being fat doesn’t mean you have special needs Charlie, unless the money was going to people who could only afford the cheese pizza and through his generous donations could get one with the works.

In the words of Dean Wormer “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son.”

And fat, litigious and stupid is no way to go through life Coach.

Lighten up Charlie.

Really.

Lighten up.