SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Charlie Weis considered it, albeit briefly.

Leave Notre Dame. Return to the comfort zone of an NFL coordinator's job. End the abuse, the kind that led son Charlie Jr. to skip school for three days after the Irish's home loss to Syracuse.

"We talked about all that as a family, and we felt that we didn't want to leave that way," Weis said during a recent 35-minute interview with the Chicago Tribune. "That would have been the easy way out. That's not why we came here."

They came to set down roots and win football games. They did both immediately.

Remember that first season, 2005? Weis' team started 9-2 with three-point losses to Michigan State and USC.

Weis had no trouble winning. Everything else that comes with being Notre Dame's coach — "all the hats you wear," in Weis parlance — proved the greater challenge.

Weis, it turned out apparently, could not have been more poorly equipped to appease those other slices in the pie chart — school administrators, former players, alumni clubs and the media.

As an NFL coordinator, his success was judged on two numbers — points and yards. And he came from the New England Patriots, a Bill Belichick operation in which coaches barely emerge from their caves long enough to attend practice.

Belichick assistants don't meet with reporters or mingle with the public; they watch film. It's a different world from the college game.

It seems that Weis now sees a bigger picture, but he's reluctant to acknowledge that.

Take the issue of visiting alumni clubs. Shortly after Weis was hired, top Notre Dame administrators, including then-athletic director Kevin White, encouraged him to focus on the team rather than his dozens of speaking requests.

Victories would make the alums happy, not handshakes. So Weis made a point to attend the annual Rockne dinner in Chicago, and nothing else. "I didn't find out a problem existed until Year Three," he said.

Coincidentally, Weis had more time for meet-and-greets after Year Three. A 3-9 season meant no bowl prep in December, and the NCAA had forbidden head coaches from visiting high schools that spring.

After Weis sought his advice, Notre Dame President Emeritus Rev. Edward Malloy suggested he visit the seven clubs that had won Alumni Association awards. He visited 11.

"The only problem was that a lot of people thought I was being a little hypocritical," Weis said, "that I was doing it just to appease them. 'Weis is trying to exonerate himself of all sins.' That really wasn't the case.

"I do enough other things wrong on my own. But those major ones I was innocent of, even though I was perceived guilty."

The other major one, to which Weis referred, regarded whether former players could attend practice.

Weis said he had an "open avenue" for former players, but he instituted a complicated policy that was poorly communicated to monogram winners.

Thursday practices were open, but former players had to give an administrator 24 hours notice and wear a credential. If a former player or VIP wanted to attend practice on a different day, he had to be accompanied by White, university President Rev. John Jenkins or deputy athletic director Stan Wilcox.

Wilcox and White now work at Duke University. Weis last year hired former Irish All-America running back Reggie Brooks and made him the football program's liaison to the Monogram Club.

"Too many times," Weis said, "miscommunication can lead to problems that don't need to exist. We now have a better mechanism to resolve issues before they become issues."

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said that in his eight months on the job, he hasn't seen any issues — or any problems with Weis' comportment.

"What I've observed is uniformly positive," he said. "He's a guy who does a million small favors, or courtesies, for people. He was one of the first people to call (women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw) after that tough loss (in the NCAA tournament). And he reached out to call Father Jenkins after the controversy with President Obama."

After asking Weis to return this season, Swarbrick told him his first priority is to win football games.

"Don't focus on trying to modify people's perceptions of you," Swarbrick told him.

Weis won 19 games in his first two years. Any grumbling by alums would have been muffled by joyous renditions of "Cheer, Cheer for old Notre Dame."

But then Notre Dame went 3-9. And last season was arguably more deflating, especially a five-game stretch during which the Irish lost in four overtimes to Pittsburgh, got shut out at Boston College, barely beat Navy, blew a 23-10 fourth-quarter lead to Syracuse and failed to get a first down against USC until the final play of the third quarter.

Weis' critics bubbled to the surface. They sought reprisal for an array of sins. Weis had booted a beloved former Notre Dame administrator from practice. He cursed at a former player during a meeting. There were unpleasant incidents at businesses in South Bend.

Weis came off as arrogant and foul-mouthed to many in a "60 Minutes" piece. And he picked fights with the media, claiming they had "taken advantage" of Irish players in the wake of Tyrone Willingham's firing.

Weis swears he didn't read the newspaper rip jobs or listen to the nasty insults hurled his way in Notre Dame Stadium after the loss to 2-8 Syracuse.

"I have tunnel vision," he said. "Not that I don't care about what's being said, but I don't listen to it. I don't read it. I don't watch it. I don't go online. I don't do any of those things."

Emphasizing that point, Weis added: "After the Syracuse game, I'm worried more about my kid having a breakdown."

Weis said that he and wife Maura decided it would be better for Charlie Jr., a sophomore at St. Joseph's High School in South Bend, to stay home from Monday-Wednesday following the game.

"He must have had 50 kids come over to the house during those three days who said, 'Hey, Charlie, we've got your back. We've got you covered. We're worried about you,' " Weis said.

"By the end of the week, he had come out of it. And then we go to USC and it starts all over again. I sat with him Saturday after the (USC) game and said: 'You're going to school on Monday.' "

Weis reassured his son after the 38-3 loss to USC, all the while not knowing whether Notre Dame would dismiss him.

"I thought there was a chance," he acknowledged, "I can tell you that Saturday night's sleep was not the best I've ever had in my life."

The next morning, Weis told school officials that he needed an assurance before he visited recruit Shaquelle Evans, a receiver from Inglewood, Calif.

"I said: 'I have to be able to look him in the eye and tell him I'm the football coach,' " Weis recalled. "They said: 'That's what you should be telling him.' "

Notre Dame fueled speculation of a buyout by waiting three more days to announce that Weis would return in 2009.

But if Weis was bruised by the final two months of the season, his team didn't reflect it. The Irish dominated the Hawaii Bowl, beating the hometown Warriors 49-21 as quarterback Jimmy Clausen pitched a perfect game — 22-for-26 with four dropped balls and five touchdowns passes.

Then Weis beat out USC to sign Manti Te'o, a linebacker from Hawaii rated among the nation's best defensive players.

"That combination has fueled everyone's tank," Weis said.

A program saturated in misery now has momentum as its April 18 Blue-Gold game nears.

"What you want to do is establish personnel where you're competitive on a yearly basis," Weis said. "At Notre Dame, you don't want to have ebbs and flows like what has occurred."

Reminded that three losses marked a bad season under Lou Holtz, Weis replied: "You want to get to the point where that is a bad year."