I am back from my trek to South Bend, Indiana for our first signing with Notre Dame Head Coach Charlie Weis. My journey began yesterday morning when I flew to Chicago to catch a connecting flight to Notre Dame. The plane to South Bend is really small but it is appropriate considering the size of the airport. South Bend Airport is exactly like the one from that old show "Wings'. (Remember that show? NBC, Thursday nights?) I finally arrived at Notre Dame at about 4:30 Tuesday afternoon. The signing was scheduled for about 8:00 PM (after the team's practice) and was to take place on the loading dock next to the team's locker room. It took until almost 7:45 to finished unpacking and setting up all the helmets, mini-helmets and footballs.
Coach Weiss arrived on time and began to bang out the signing. I really enjoyed the two hours that I spent with Charlie. We talked about pretty much everything from Springsteen to the Yankees to Rutgers to the NFL. It turns out that we know a lot of the same people from the time he spent with the Giants as well as some of the Patriots players from when I did the team signing in 2005. The highlight of the signing was, by far, when Charlie spoke on the phone with a new recruit. It was pretty cool to hear Coach Weis speak to an excited High School senior. We also spoke about Weis' foundation Hannah and Friends. Coach has dedicated so much to helping special needs children. I urge you all to check out the website and try to help in anyway possible. It is such an important cause. We finally finished our marathon first signing before 10:00. Thanks to the help of some of Charlie's guys I was able to complete the pack-up pretty fast. We got some awesome product signed including Notre Dame Wheaties boxes and Play Like A Champion Today posters. I also got two incredible photos signed in both 8x10 and 16x20. I flew back to New York this morning but, due to the weather, did not make it back until a few hours ago.
I think , at this point, I am a little bit desensitized to some of the experiences I have at this job. This experience was not one of those. It was really incredible to walk through the locker room at Notre Dame and ever more amazing to spent some time with someone like Coach Weis. I am already looking forward to our next signing which is towards the end of December. Next time I am planning on staying a bit longer so I have the opportunity to check out the field and campus.
The next post will be on Sunday after our first signing with Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina. I will never forget Molina's game winning homerun against the Mets in Game 7 of the NLCS. We will be getting some great photos signed from that game as well as World Series baseballs. I will be sure to ask Yadier how my heart is doing after he ripped it out a few weeks ago. One thing for sure though is that the kid is a big game player. We are all excited about having him as an exclusive.
Enjoy the weekend and be sure to check back Sunday night.