Weber's twisted road to Final Four a victory for underdogs

Leading up to the Final Four on Saturday, Gregg Doyel will be filing on each team that will be playing in St. Louis. The first installment is on Illinois coach Bruce Weber.

The guy on the other bench is impeccable. Rick Pitino of Louisville is a self-made coaching millionaire, regal and bold, with the perfect suit and killer hair. In another life, he could have been Donald Trump.

Illinois coach Bruce Weber? He could have been Charlie Brown.

Bruce Weber has Illinois in the Final Four in his second year as coach. (AP)

As a kid, Weber's nickname was Dirt. He speaks in a high-pitched squeal that sounds as if he gargles with Clorox thanks to childhood polyps on his vocal cords. Doctors twice tried to remove them with laser surgery, finally gave up, and told Weber's mother to make sure Bruce didn't go into a business where he'd have to yell.

So here's Weber in a business where he's always yelling, and worse, after he's done yelling, he has to go on television and talk about it. That's why Weber is a walking Wal-Mart, with throat lozenges in one pocket and tea bags in another, along with honey and lemon drops and anything else that will coat his ruined vocal cords.

If you're not rooting for Bruce Weber this weekend at the Final Four, you must like Louisville ... or you like no one. But how can you not like Weber? He's unavoidably likable, and not in that sycophantic way that most powerful men are liked.

You know how it is. If you like an impervious chunk of marble like Trump or Pitino, it's an affection based on envy. You might not really like Trump or Pitino. But you sure would like to be Trump or Pitino.

Weber is different. Different from Pitino, different from North Carolina's Roy Williams and Michigan State's Tom Izzo -- the other two coaches in this weekend's Final Four -- and different from most coaches who reach college basketball's pinnacle weekend. He's not likable because he's powerful. He's likable because he's so ... likable.

Watch Weber before a game, when he shakes hands with the opposing coach. He's embarrassed to be there, the center of attention, and scurries back to his bench as quickly as possible. Most coaches then pay their respects to game officials, joking and schmoozing in that insincere way that makes your skin crawl. Not Weber. On his way past the officials, he holds up a hand and gives a stiff wave, like Forrest Gump.

Weber is square like a kitchen window, and just as transparent. He'll never get fired for embellishing his resumé, because he knows no one would believe it. Weber, a Milwaukee native, attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee because he hoped to play baseball there. He was lumpy, a catcher -- of course. By the time he got to campus, the school had dropped baseball. He then hoped to play basketball, but the school was moving up in class from NCAA Division III, and Weber wasn't good enough. He took a basketball class taught by one of the team's assistant coaches but couldn't get onto the team, not even as a warm body for practice.

"It was pretty fruitless," he says.

So was coaching, for nearly two decades. Weber's first two jobs, as a volunteer assistant at Milwaukee-area high schools, didn't pay a cent. His next job, as Gene Keady's last assistant at Western Kentucky, paid $2,000. That was 1980, and while money was different in 1980, it wasn't that different. Weber made $2,000, which meant doing without certain luxuries at home. Like the heater and air conditioner. He ate one meal a day, a habit he keeps to this day.

Weber followed Keady to Purdue in 1981, where he became the youngest assistant in the Big Ten. For that, the 23-year-old prodigy earned $4,000. Again, no heater for the Weber household -- and it gets cold in West Lafayette, Ind. Food stamps helped Weber eat.