Four Letter Words

I’m not a big fan of four letter words. That’s not to say that I don’t occasionally use them, because, alas, I do. But I’m still not a big fan of them.

One four letter word as of late is especially offensive to me … QUIT.

So this is a story about a young man who got his feelings hurt. You see, he made a recruiting trip to Notre Dame with his fellow High School comrade Jimmy Clausen, and felt virtually ignored by then-head coach Charlie Weis & company, and can’t seem to let it go. So this past Saturday, after USC beat Notre Dame … after being GIFTED 14 points on two Notre Dame turnovers in the red zone … several of their players decide to tell the media that Notre Dame quit.

“At the end there, when they didn’t call those timeouts, they just quit,” USC linebacker Chris Galippo said. “And that’s what Notre Dame football’s about. They’re not anything like USC.’

Wow.

I may not be overly happy with the performance of the Notre Dame football team this year, but QUIT is not the word that I would use.

So let me get this straight, because we did not call any timeouts in the last 6:43 minutes of the game, suddenly we’re quitters, and THAT is why we lost? Oh no (dripping with sarcasm), how could we not use our timeouts?! That HAS to be why we lost.

Never mind the fact that, hello, we GIFTED USC 14 points. Or that USC came out running up the middle all over us. Or that we just plain seem to be unconditioned compared to the likes of Michigan and USC. But we’re quitters because we did not use our timeouts.

Come on boys … open up the dictionary and find a bigger word than that.

I personally think that this Notre Dame team is WAY more talented than their record shows. They just need to learn to stop beating themselves, and learn to rotate players better (this is for you coaching staff) so that our guys don’t seem so gassed in the 4th quarter. Just think … if Kelly would have given Gary Gray a break in the 4th Quarter of the Michigan game and put in Lo Wood’s fresh legs … maybe we would not have missed that pivotal tackle and would have BEAT Michigan.

Okay, I digress, back to the word quit. So after all of this quitting nonsense is sputtered out by Mr. Galippo, Mr. Mark Tyler, and Mr. Curtis McNeal … Lane Kiffin has to come in and do some back peddling.

“Apologies were flying across social networks and the phone lines Monday as USC linebacker Chris Galippo and Coach Lane Kiffin tried to ease any hurt feelings over comments made after the Trojans’ 31-17 victory over Notre Dame on Saturday.” (Los Angeles Times)

“If I offended anyone with my post game comments Saturday, I do apologize,” Galippo tweeted. “I have great respect for their players and their program. It was a great game by both sides. Time to focus on Stanford.”

“On behalf of our football program, I apologize for Chris Galippo’s statements after the game. I’ve addressed this with Chris and he is remorseful,” Kiffen said in a statement. “I also called Coach (Brian) Kelly to personally apologize. As I said to the media immediately after the game, I thought Notre Dame played extremely hard throughout the game. It was another classic rivalry game and we feel fortunate to have won.”

Okay, now that I’ve gotten THAT off my chest, let’s look ahead to Navy.

Last year we played Navy on the road and got our behind handed to us. After a 35-17 route over the Irish last year, Navy heads to South Bend and Notre Dame is ready to show the world that we will not be beaten again in our house this season. In order to do that, though, our defense is going to have to make a bigger showing this weekend than our offense. With the loss of Kapron Lewis-Moore last weekend, the trio of freshman: Stephon Tuitt, Chase Hounshell and Aaron Lynch will need to step up and handle the Navy run game. We will see on Saturday whether or not the Irish have the mental fortitude to shake off a loss like the one last weekend against USC, and focus on the task at hand.

Okay boys ... LET'S GO IRISH!

Cheers!