John Walters

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - This time, he took the elevator.

Charlie Weis always exits press conferences at Notre Dame’s Isban Auditorium stage right. Slowly, deliberately, he heads toward an aisle along the right wall. Painstakingly he climbs the stairs, taking each step with both legs -- the way an elderly person or a pre-schooler might -- before ascending to the next. At the top of the stairs, he exits out a door leading to the coaching staff’s 2nd-floor offices.

Weis exited Tuesday afternoon’s press conference in such fashion, without the aid of crutches or a cane. This just three days after having torn both the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and medial collateral ligament (MCL) of his left knee in a freak accident during Saturday’s victory over Michigan.

“I went off Codeine yesterday,” he told a few writers then, masking the pain and discomfort as best he could.

On Thursday night, after addressing a handful of media members following practice, Weis exited stage right again. This time, however, he walked out the door of Isban into the lobby. The grimace as he walked, his left leg immobilized by a brace, was evident. He passed through another door and then stepped into an elevator.

It was the first concession he had made all week to the pain that he feels.

Earlier, someone had asked about Weis’ status for Saturday afternoon’s game at Michigan State. “I’m going to be on the field on game day,” Weis replied. “When the game’s over, I’ll be in a lot of pain.”

Weis’ most physically excruciating days in South Bend have been in many ways his finest hour as Notre Dame’s head coach. That the Irish are 2-0 thus far certainly helps the perception of Weis from afar. Perhaps last year’s 3-9 season, the worst in Notre Dame’s long and storied history, really was an anomaly.

This week, though, for the first time since arriving from New England four years ago brandishing that quartet of Super Bowl rings, Weis is something of a sympathetic figure. And the stoic, even stubborn manner in which he has dealt with the injury is an overt way of telling detractors that right now at least, the team’s welfare comes before his own.

Of Weis’s pre-existing medical condition, you are likely familiar with the generalities if not the details. A botched gastric bypass surgery six years ago has left him with limited neurological sensation in his lower extremities. In his autobiographical book “No Excuses” Weis writes of having “only 50 percent movement in my right foot and 80 percent in my left foot.”

Because Weis has never been falsely modest (or even modest, some would say) about his football intelligence, because his physical limitations were somewhat self-induced (he has called the decision to have the surgery “probably the biggest mistake of my life”), because he played even less college football than Rudy, and because he is the football coach at Notre Dame...for all those reasons, Weis attracts more hostility than just about anyone in college football. America has a surfeit of middle-aged, overweight guys who never played the game who wonder, “How come that guy got the job and not me?”

Notre Dame travels to Michigan State on Saturday, to the most hostile stadium the Fighting Irish encounter. Two years ago the Spartan student section resounded with chants that, well, would make a Holy Cross priest blush. On Thursday night Weis was asked how his young team would react.

“There are certain players that really like hostility,” Weis said as a smile crossed his face. “Certain players that are getting used to it, thrive on it.”

Is Jimmy (Clausen) a favorite target of opposing fans?

“He’s second in line,” Weis said with a grin. “He’s like Avis, he tries harder. You’re looking at Hertz right here.”

But even the most ardent Irish — and Weis — detractors should find it hard to fault Weis for how he has bore his cross this week. At halftime of last Saturday’s game, not 20 minutes after he’d been injured, Weis entered the locker room and his first words were to his team were, “Don’t you be worrying about me.”

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