No, I didn’t miss the rumor/bombshell that came out of Charlie Weis’ sit-down with five hand-picked media members. I think the story has been pretty well chronicled around the interwebs, and for the sake of everyone involved, I don’t feel like I have that much to offer.
Here’s what I will say:
I’ve got no idea what the context of Weis’ comments were, but I will say that it was pretty stupid to even make the comments. Whether you’ve got a problem with it because he broke “guy code” or you think he gut-lessly slandered his arch-nemesis on his way out of town, I think this is a situation where Weis probably felt far too comfortable with media members he considered more like friends than working journalists.
I don’t know Tim Prister, but he’s a graduate of Notre Dame and has a few more decades covering the Irish than I do. But I’ve got to believe there was a pretty big error in judgment by him to be the only one of the five reporters present to post those controversial comments.
Here was Prister’s mea culpa after he pulled the Weis quotes from his story:
The five reporters and Charlie Weis were discussing Internet rumors Saturday when a question pertaining to Pete Carroll was asked. Comments were made that were, in my opinion, on the record, and corroborated by another reporter in attendance as on the record. However, Coach Weis, later in the day, indicated that they were not on the record and were taken out of context.
Before talking to Coach Weis later in the day, I took the comments at face value and reported them after transcribing the interview and presenting it in its entirety (the question-answer part) before any of the other reporters presented it.
Shortly thereafter, I was contacted by Coach Weis and asked to remove the comment because it was an off the record statement taken out of context. We took the necessary measures to remove it because of the miscommunication, but a national story still contained the comment. The reason it appeared on our site and no one else’s is because we were the first to report it. The other reporters were asked not to use it after our story appeared and prior to them publishing their stories.
I regret the miscommunication and in no way intended to misrepresent the comments made by Coach Weis. I was one of five reporters asked to this gathering and in no way would I intend to disparage or misrepresent Coach Weis.
Again, I have no idea what was said during the 90 minute media session. When I saw this all start to shake down late Saturday night, I didn’t know how to cover it, as I was completely shocked that Weis would say something like that. That said, I’ve got to believe that there had to be some context to these quotes by Weis, and that somehow, Prister missed something.
(The rumors weren’t what bothered me. They aren’t new by any means, and as someone living in the heart of USC country, I’ve heart them before. But that’s all I’ve known them to be, strictly rumors. The fact that someone would put them in print was what shocked me.)
It sounds like Weis did his best to clarify his remarks and apologize to Carroll, and the one person who should decide whether this is over or not, clearly wants it to be.
“I talked to Charlie and he wants to set the record straight,” Carroll said. “He apologized profusely for being represented wrongly. I’m not commenting anymore.”
A week after Tiger Woods got taken down by salacious extra-marital affairs, it’d be a devastating blow to college football if these comments turned out to be the 2:30 am car crash that sparked a TMZ witch hunt.