No Excuses: One Man's Incredible Rise Through the NFL to Head Coach of Notre Dame

A Jersey guy who had dreamed of being a TV sportscaster, Charlie Weis studied football under two of its greatest all-time strategists: Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick. He was hired as an assistant on the New York Giants staff in 1990, and the team went on to win a championship his debut year. Following Parcells from the Giants to the Patriots to the Jets, Weis flourished under his mentor's relentless pressure and exacting standards, and was eventually named the Jets' offensive coordinator. When Parcells stepped down, Weis returned to New England to join the new Patriots coach-his friend and colleague, Bill Belichick-and together they built a gridiron dynasty that won three Super Bowls in four years. Weis's genius for designing offensive schemes that would befuddle even the NFL's best defenses was legend-and in December of 2004, it led him to what had once been a pinnacle of the football world: head coach at Notre Dame. In the long shadow of his predecessors-giants like Knute Rockne, Ara Parseghian, and Lou Holtz-Weis was expected to miraculously turn around his alma mater's once-storied but hopelessly stumbling team. And he did. Charlie Weis's story is one of courageous struggles on and off the field-his private tragedies, his medical traumas and near-death experience, his breathtaking victories-told with inspiring honesty, illuminating insight, and No Excuses.