How do you win at every level in football and remain invisible? That’s the question Charlie Weis must have been asking himself for the last couple of years.

The former New England Patriots offensive coordinator is the Rodney Dangerfield of football coaches – in fact, he actually resembles Dangerfield a little, which might account for his being overlooked for so long. Rumor has it that he even underwent plastic surgery to improve his image with NFL front offices. If so, he should have gotten a better plastic surgeon, and National Football League executives should have understood that beauty is only skin deep.

The biggest winner in the post-Super Bowl shuffle is Notre Dame, where Weis will be coaching next season. Trust me: Give him a season to turn things around at South Bend, and he’ll be looking like Angelina Jolie in a blue-and-gold windbreaker.

Everything Weis has touched has turned to gold, from the Colonials of Morristown High in New Jersey to Tom Brady’s right arm.

In 1993, Weis was given the unglamorous job of tight ends coach for the Patriots. The following season, Ben Coates set an NFL record for receptions by a tight end with 96. In 1995,Weis was shifted to running backs coach; Curtis Martin was subsequently named Rookie of the Year after rushing for 1,487 yards and 14 touchdowns. The next season, the organization bumped him sideways again to coach wide receivers; Terry Glenn caught 90 passes to set an NFL record for rookies.

Did I forget to mention that in 1990, Weis was one of Bill Parcells’s most important assistants with the Giants, a defensive coach and assistant special teams coach who helped design and implement the strategy that contained the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV?

Defense, special teams, tight ends, wideouts, running backs – how many facets of football do you have to master before somebody offers you a big job? The Jets were the first to catch on, employing Weis as their offensive coordinator from 1997 through 1999. After scoring just 279 points in 1996, the Jets scored 348 in their first year under Weis and 416 in 1998.The last time the Jets had averaged more points per game was when Joe Namath was quarterback.

In 2000, after doing everything except wear a “Will Head Coach For Food” sign, Weis returned to New England as offensive coordinator. Bill Belichick has received ample credit for the defensive genius that won the Patriots their Super Bowl rings, but Weis deserves equal time for building a championship offense. When Dick Rehbein, the New England quarterbacks coach, died in 2001,Weis did double duty as offensive coordinator and QB coach, inheriting an unheralded sixth-round draft pick named Tom Brady. Is it just a coincidence that Brady has become the most successful young quarterback in NFL history? If so, it’s amazing how coincidences follow Charlie Weis around.

Another big coincidence will happen at Notre Dame this year. The 10-year slump that has plagued the Irish really isn’t anything new – those of us old enough to remember Ara Parseghian will now be witnessing Notre Dame’s third resurrection in the last four decades.

Notre Dame has never wielded the recruiting clout of USC, Oklahoma, Nebraska, or Michigan, or at least it hasn’t since Frank Leahy stepped down in 1953. They need someone to come along every decade or two and, well, wake up the echoes, fire up fans and alumni all over the country, and revive the tradition.

Weis, a Notre Dame graduate (the first to become head coach in more than four decades), is the man. His resume is far more impressive than that of Urban Meyer, who for some strange reason was regarded as the top candidate before Weis. For that matter, Weis is far more qualified to revive a big-time college program than was USC’s Pete Carroll, a relative failure in the NFL who says he likes the college game “because you don’t have free agents and a salary cap.”

Yet mainstream sports commentators have had a field day dumping on Weis and Notre Dame since the deal was announced. A typical wisecrack was from Jason Whitlock on ESPN’s “Sports Reporters,” in December: “I can’t decide who’s being dumber, Notre Dame or Weis.”

Well, Notre Dame has been a little dumb. The Irish chased their tail for several years be fore realizing that the kind of coach they needed was one who could revamp the entire program and give it a 21st-century offense. It was Notre Dame that changed football before World War I by popularizing the forward pass, but in 2004 Tyrone Willingham was still trying to beat Southern Cal with a high school offense.

This season, for the first time since Joe Montana graduated, Notre Dame is going to take the field with a progressive, high-powered offensive scheme. The quarterback Weis inherits, Brady Quinn, is at least as talented as Tom Brady, and, according to Weis, more advanced than Brady was as a junior at Michigan.

Last year, Notre Dame got just about 30% of its passing yardage on first down. In contrast, opponents gained about 40% of their passing yardage against the Irish on first down. Willingham let opponents shoot first while he tried to play catch-up, a strategy that resulted in the Irish allowing 281 yards passing per game on defense to just 218 for the offense.

Weis’s first priority will be pass-blocking offensive linemen rather than the smaller run blockers favored by Willingham. Finding wide outs will be the second priority now that Notre Dame’s fastest receiver, Matt Shelton, has graduated. Weis already has a fine tight end in senior Anthony Pasano, who averaged 13.6 yards per catch.

So how dumb is Charlie Weis? Better we should ask how dumb the NFL ownership is for not having bid wildly for this man’s services years ago. If Weis had taken the advice of the sports press, he’d be content to collect Super Bowl rings in New England, stay in Belichick’s shadow, never talk to the press without his boss’s permission, and turn down a salary estimated at three times what he made with the Patriots.

Notre Dame is no longer considered the glamour job that it once was, but few NFL coaching jobs offer more in the way of overall income, exposure, and prestige. Time will tell whether Weis is more successful than former New England defensive coordinator Romeo Crenell, who will become the new head coach for the Cleveland Browns. But for now, I like Weis’s chances of winning more than I like Crenell’s. For that matter, I like Weis’s chances of winning better than I now like Belichick’s.