Charlie Weis Implies that Pete Carroll is Living with a Graduate Student; Carroll Sort of Denies It

Fired Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis gave an interview to rivals.com last week in which he seemed to strongly imply that USC head coach Pete Carroll was living with a graduate student in Malibu. Carroll, who is married and has three children and one grandchild, denied the report. Weis has since claimed that his comments were taken out of context and that he was merely trying to illustrate a point. Weis seems to think that as the head coach at Notre Dame, he was held to a higher personal standard than Pete Carroll is as the head coach of USC.

This is an excellent example of why Charlie Weis no longer has a job. As Weis is aware, Notre Dame is a Catholic institution, and some of the complaints about Weis that he referenced included that he swore on national television. If one wants to be head coach of a Catholic school, common sense says that one must understand that that type of speech will come under more scrutiny than it would at a state school in California.

While Weis has once again seemingly put himself in a difficult situation due to his poor choice of words, the way in which Pete Carroll addressed the issue is interesting as well.

In response to Weis' comments, Carroll said. "It's untrue, it's irresponsible and it's incredible he'd be talking about me like that."

Now, when public figures deny personal failures that they are accused of, it is always very interesting to read into the words that they choose. Carroll characterized Weis' comments by using two words: "untrue" and "irresponsible". He also used the word "incredible" to describe the fact that Weis was talking about him like that.

Generally speaking if somebody were accused of doing something that had absolutely no basis in fact, they wouldn't respond back that the accuser was 'irresponsible'. They also wouldn't say it was 'incredible' for the accuser to be talking about them. Untrue, yes, is a word that they would use, but generally that would be followed up with a sense of utter and complete disbelief, shock, anger and a desperate need to talk to the person or use any means possible to find out why they would say such a thing that had absolutely no basis in fact.

If Pete Carroll had heard, for example, that Charlie Weiss said he was responsible for robbing a bank in London, I doubt that he would say it was "irresponsible" for Weis to say such a thing. Much more likely it would be a response of utter disbelief, and perhaps a sense that there must be some kind of incredible misunderstanding.

None of this means that Pete Carroll is living with a graduate student. None of this means that he is cheating on his wife. But a a public figure, and one that lives off of university alumni support and to some extent from the support of the citizens in California, he must realize that he has to definitively address accusations, and really that's what they are, in a concise, definitive and upfront manner. If he chooses to use words such as 'irresponsible', then he will continue to be open to scrutiny, fair or not.

Source: ESPN.com news services, "Charlie Weis Takes Shot at Carroll", espn.com