Kansas University football coach Charlie Weis on Tuesday spoke briefly via Skype with Bonnie Bernstein of campusinsiders.com about the recent dismissal of defensive end Chris Martin.
Until talking with Bernstein, Weis, who released Martin from the team Monday, had not spoken about the Martin situation except for two statements released by the athletic department, one on the day of Martin’s arrest and the other Monday.
Martin, a 6-foot-5, 260-pound junior-college transfer who played at Florida in 2011 and City College of San Francisco in 2012, was one of three men arrested on suspicion of robbing cash and marijuana from victims at gunpoint at a home on Camelback Drive on May 13.
Weis made it clear in his discussion with Bernstein that the former five-star recruit’s ongoing legal case was not the sole reason for his dismissal.
“He had some off-field incidents,” Weis told Bernstein. “And that wasn’t really the reason why he was released. He was given a list of stipulations. To stay in school while those legal matters are being resolved, he was given a protocol to follow, and he didn’t follow all of them so therefore he was dismissed.”
Asked to reveal the specific stipulations, Weis spoke only in vague terms.
“That’s not really public knowledge,” he said. “It wasn’t anything out of line. It was a very simple list of doing things the right way, and there were a couple of things that he didn’t do that were very simple things to follow.”
Weis’ history with Martin, which dates back to his early days of high school, has been well documented, and the second-year KU coach indicated he had hoped Kansas would be the place where Martin finally got his career on track.
“I felt that if anyone could help salvage him, I felt that that would be me,” Weis said. “It just didn’t turn out exactly the way I planned.”
