Football coaches from time to time get embroiled in lawsuits over contract matters. But it’s not every day that a coach is the plaintiff in a medical malpractice lawsuit such as the one that Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis is pursuing:

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 record as he goes to trial next month in Suffolk Superior Court in his medical malpractice suit against two Mass. General 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 M. Ferguson and Richard A. 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 slated to begin Feb. 12.