“. . . keep your filthy hands off of it.”

Prior to one game in September of 1967, Frank Howard gave his team the now-famous speech, “If you’re going to give me 110 percent, you can rub my rock. If you’re not, keep your filthy hands off of it.”

it’s the dome. we have issues with playing football with a roof over our heads. maybe we feel claustrophobic. maybe that’s why we played scared. maybe that’s why noone on our sidelines was excited. maybe i’m about sick of making excuses for my team. there really is no excuse to not play with passion. if you’re not excited about being on the field, get off. if you’re not excited about being the coach of a college team, quit. if your not going to play to win, please don’t play to pad your stats. i felt like and it sure looked like the clemson tigers were just going through the motions. noone was hustling. noone was playing to the crowd to get them excited. we didn’t get pushed around by a better team, we just got pushed around. there was a total lack of effort. the coaches looked like they were in a daze. what  happened to the kind of coaches i had growing up? they would have been screaming and jumping up and down and somebody would have got fired up or would have been riding the bench. last but not least, what in the world are you doing when you’re down by 24 with 5 minutes left and you’re calling 5 yard bubble screen plays. what, what, WHAT? the only thing i can think of is that someone is trying to make the stats look better than they actually are. every year for 2 or 3 years we have had letdowns and the coaches have used our stats to show that we are progressing so as to take the heat off of themselves. well why don’t we just play to win and call plays that will enable us to win? that would take the heat off. even if we lost, it would be easier to take if we were at least trying.