Agree with Rhode Irish that thread is truly terrible. The worst thing about it being that someone could call a bunch of terrific athletes from Notre Dame who gave it hel.l for us for their careers as people who "suck". The arrogance of criticizing an NFL athlete is boggling enough. When one adds name-calling Notre Damers on top of it ...
My brother who was a great lineman at VT always told me to calm down when hearing some of that sort of crap. He said most of those people have "never taken a snap" and aren't worth your energy. Still, the gall of it to put down great Notre Dame players of the past ....
Agree and disagree:
It sure is easy for the good old "armchair quarterbacks" of the world to criticize players and say how bad they are, but they really do have a right to do so, especially if the guy is at the professional level. Saying a guy "sucks" is obviously not the correct avenue to do this, and although the ramblings of an angry Joe Schmo who didn't even play pee wee football don't mean much, he still has a point.
Professional athletes work extremely hard and sacrifice quite a bit to have/keep their jobs, but their job is one that requires great responsibility to the many, many people that support them. The "armchair QBs" spend thousands of dollars on tickets, merchandise, etc, and plan their entire weekends around the big game, so I think the people who pay these guys salaries are allowed to be critical of what's happening, as long as they don't look like immature brats (he sucks, what a disgrace, etc) in the process.
I have the utmost respect for collegiate and professional athletes, but to me they are not infallible, and at times I will rightfully question certain players work ethic, performance, etc. They are not "Superman in a helmet," they are other men, just like us, so of course they will make mistakes, but it is within our rights to call them out when needed, for we are the people the team represents.
vbeer on the way.