John Griel ("An open letter to the ND football team," Sept. 26), your views on drinking are tragically misguided and it is not your place to ask our football team to "not drink until the off-season."
The players need our support, not a student masquerading as a pretentious paternal figure. Your description of alcohol's effects is absurdly distorted. You claim that the day after drinking, "if we aren't physically sick, we are fatigued and irritable." When drinking in moderation, this is rarely the case.
It seems as though your only experience with drinking is the frat-like "bro bonding" you either sideline or succumb to on weekends in your dorm. Our football players are allowed to have a beer on the weekends.
You also claim our football team "can't expect (their) 95 percent to best someone's 100 percent." Congratulations, you did a flawless job proving that 95 is less than 100. However, you fail to recognize the likelihood that other football teams are not at your definition of "100 percent." Do you really think Notre Dame is the only school with football players that drink?
Your argument is based on the fact that our players have a "commitment to excellence." From this, you argue that since drinking takes away from their being in peak physical condition, it is reprehensible. Are you saying they should be condemned for every action that compromises their fitness? Should they be held accountable for not getting proper sleep during the week? For eating Taco Bell? How about not blotting the grease off their pizza?
Finally, I would like to comment on your reference to the player on the back of The Shirt. Yes, he is wearing the number 12 because we are going for our 12th national title. However, there is a bigger reason why you, me and the rest of the student body don a shirt with the number 12 on it. It is because we are the 12th man on the football team.
Let's start acting like it.
Sean Pennino
sophomore
Fisher Hall
Sept. 29
