When it comes to Spygate, the portly head coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish is behaving like the portly German prison guard who typically opened his mouth only to insert macaroons into it.

Charlie Weis isn’t talking, at all.  Even though he specifically has been implicated this week by former Patriots video employee Matt Walsh as the man who ultimately received the fruits of the team’s efforts to videotape defensive coaching signals in an effort to figure out what the offense would be facing.

Notre Dame has denied a request to interview Weis on the issue.  Weis previously has refused to talk about Spygate, explaining that it’s not a Notre Dame matter.

But, as the Chicago Tribune points out, it is a Notre Dame matter if Weis’s ascension from the position of offensive coordinator in New England to head coach at Notre Dame had anything to do with the products of cheating.

How would that be any different than George O’Leary’s trumped-up credentials, which were irrelevant to his coaching abilities at Notre Dame but which nevertheless resulted in his departure only days after taking the job?  Athletic director Kevin White called O’Leary’s conduct a “breach of trust.”

This time around, White echoes the notion that whether Weis got ahead via cheating is “not a Notre Dame matter.”

Under that logic, nothing inappropriate that a head coach at Notre Dame did at any point in his life prior to arriving in South Bend would be relevant to his fitness to continue in the job, since it’s “not a Notre Dame matter.”

The mantra seems to be the result of careful planning the powers-that-be, who apparently have concluded that nothing good would arise if real questions were asked and answered regarding what Weis knew, when he knew it, and what he did with it.

And so Weis and White and anyone else connected to the program will continue to pretend that Spygate doesn’t raise real questions about whether Charlie indirectly trumped up his credentials through a system of cheating that presumably helped the Patriots — and thus presumably helped Weis.

But even though the Irish are circling the wagons in this regard, our guess is that Weis will face greater pressure to reverse last season’s steep decline of the program.  And we also think that, if/when Weis get fired, he’ll be compelled to fully explain his role in Spygate before anyone will hire him.

Unless, of course, Weis goes back to work for the Patriots.