Only those closest to Charlie Weis were supposed to know. The Notre Dame football coach, then offensive coordinator for the Patriots, checked into Massachusetts General Hospital in 2002 under an assumed name.
Embarrassed by his chronic obesity, Weis planned to undergo gastric bypass surgery and quietly return home the next day, avoiding public attention.
Instead, complications developed. Weis nearly died. And now, almost five years later, he faces the prospect of every detail of his long battle with obesity and his bypass ordeal becoming public as he goes to trial this week in his medical malpractice suit against two physicians.
With Patriots quarterback Tom Brady expected to appear as a star witness, the case could draw national attention as Weis tries to prove that the doctors, Charles Ferguson and Richard Hodin, acted negligently in leaving him so close to death that he received the Catholic sacrament of last rites.
Weis has altered Notre Dame’s spring football schedule to accommodate the trial, which is to begin Tuesday.
Weis, 50, who declined a request for an interview, sought the procedure after watching a DVD of Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, in which he helped guide the Patriots past the St. Louis Rams for their first championship. He weighed nearly 350 pounds.