By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Lane Kiffin and Charlie Weis Jr. were at Chuck’s Fish restaurant in downtown Tuscaloosa after the 2014 season.
And deciding what he would order was not the biggest challenge ahead for Weis – then a 21-year-old student manager for his dad’s football team at Kansas interviewing for a job with Kiffin.
Kiffin, who was then coming off his first season as Alabama coach Nick Saban’s offensive coordinator, was looking for a new lower level offensive assistant. And he was told that Weis, the son of former New England Patriots’ offensive coordinator and Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis, was a boy “genius” and had a photographic memory.
So Kiffin gave Weis his driver’s license and one of his credit cards.
“You can have these for three minutes,” Kiffin said.
Then he took them back and started asking questions.
“What street do I live on,” Kiffin asked.
Weis got it right.
“What is my credit card number,” Kiffin asked.
And Weis got it right, and so far has not made any charges with it.
But Kiffin wasn’t done. The next day, he asked for the expiration date on the credit card.
Weis got that one right, too.
“He could remember all of it,” Kiffin said Thursday at an LSU press conference.
“I don’t think I have a photographic memory,” Weis, who is in his first year as LSU’s offensive coordinator and fifth straight in that role under Kiffin, said Friday at a press conference at LSU after a morning practice. “I think I have a pretty good memory.”
And he thinks well on his feet under pressure, as an OC must.
“The job was on the line that night,” he said. “I had to memorize that right there and find a way.”
Weis got the job and learned offense in 2015 and ’16 under Kiffin as the Crimson Tide won the national championship in ’15 and played for another one in ’16.
“Coach has just been a great mentor to me throughout my career and always guided me, and it’s been great,” Weis said of Kiffin. “He has corrected me in the things I need to do better, and he tells me things I’m doing well.”
When Kiffin took the head coaching job at Florida Atlantic, Weis went with him, but left after only a few weeks to coach under new Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian, who was at Alabama in 2016 as an offensive assistant.
Kiffin was able to hire Weis back in 2018 as his offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for two seasons. But when Kiffin got the Ole Miss job before the 2020 season, he did not bring Weis with him. And Weis landed as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at South Florida for two seasons before reuniting with Kiffin at Ole Miss as his offensive coordinator and chief play caller.
Weis joined Kiffin on the plane out of Oxford, Mississippi, to LSU on that Sunday, Nov. 30, without having to take another memory test. This time LSU and Kiffin had to pass the test as Ole Miss made a counter offer for Weis. And LSU gave Weis a new, more lucrative contract before he stayed at LSU.
“That whole saga and everything that went down, it feels like put about 20 years on my life,” Weis said.
Weis remained Ole Miss’ offensive coordinator through three playoff games after Kiffin went to LSU as did other assistant coaches from Ole Miss who accepted new jobs with Kiffin at LSU. All the while, they also kept returning to LSU to help Kiffin recruit and get ready for the 2026 season.
“So, I’m just so happy to be here now,” Weis said. “Fired up. I love our players. That’s the main focus right now.”
Weis is excited about being at LSU, which he called “a dream place to be with the coolest environment in all of sports to go play in.”
He added that the thought of playing here as the home team “kind of gives me chills.”
But that’s not the main reason he stayed at LSU.
“Number one, coach Kiffin,” he said. “I mean, he believed in me at a very early age, and probably a lot of people wouldn’t have taken a chance on a young coach. And he did. And so, I do feel I owe a lot to him for my career and the places that he’s hired me. That’s the number one factor.”
That and the fact that he passed the test.
“I remember the restaurant we were at in Tuscaloosa,” he said. “It was Chuck’s. And so, he handed me his credit card and ID. The job was on the line, so I had to come through.”
Be the first to comment