Michigan plays Notre Dame in Ann Arbor for what Brian has entitled Cripple Fight 2007. On the heels of his amazing motivational speech last week, we asked Lou Holtz to try again. He responded thusly (speech prefiltered for lisp, though feel free to add it if you like.)

Lou Holtz, motivational speaker, tries again.

What I want you to know is that we’re all here for a purpose. People want purpose. People crave purpose. People also crave honey, like bears do, whether it’s on melba toast, biscuits, or even their oatmeal in the morning. So we’re like bears in a lot of ways men. And that’s what I’m here to tell you: you’re all bears who like honey. In football uniforms.

And one thing bears do is sleep. They’re strong, bears. God made ‘em with four paws so they could get where the want to go so they don’t have to use cars. Because bears have lousy credit, men. Why? Because they don’t take care of the thing they’re supposed to, that’s why! Like the rent, or bills, or driving their cars. What’s a bear doing with a car when I just said they don’t need them?

Life’s funny like that sometimes, men.

Bears who have cars they can’t drive because they don’t have hands. Football teams with lots of talent who can’t win. Chinese people. Zeppelin accidents.

Holtz: Take that, Kaiser Tojo!

They’re all funny in their own way, but also share one important thing in common: they’re all terrible things we should fear in our sleep-Chinese people, especially. They’re all out to get you and you need someone to help, because there’s at least 1.3 billion Chinese people out there and god knows how many bears. AND ZEPPELINS!!! We haven’t even begun to talk about Zeppelins yet! Marauding inflatable Teutonic johnsons waggling their way across the sky! Indecent and flammable all at once. I smoked my first and only cigarette on one, once. Saved America by doing it, too, men, which goes to show you that preparation is success divided by a semi-controlled substance, sometimes.

Anyway, there’s no one else left to depend on. You can’t call mama now, son, but you’re not alone. Look around this room. Go ahead, turn around to the right.

Look at the man next to you. Look him good in the eyes.

Now promise him right now that you’ll fight for him.

Say it! Now promise that you’ll die for him.

Say it again! Promise that you’ll be the one who props up his jalopy, pulls him from a burning whorehouse, and takes him to places of ecstasy he’s never even dreamed of in his most sensational of nightfevers.

I DON’T CARE IF IF MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, JUST SAY IT, DAMMIT!!!

Good! Now kiss him in the European fashion. Europeans like to kiss other men, but it helps them hang together in tough times, especially the Greeks. And like the Greeks at the Battle of Kohima-Imphal, we’re going to run them over with tanks drawn by elephants. Elephants of victory, gentlemen, with hate as fuel.

That’s Notre Dame out there! God IS on their side!

Yes, hate! Do you hate enough to win! That’s Notre Dame out there! They think god’s on their side! And he is, because they’re Jews, and therefore the chosen people, so you’ve got to fight like mad pagans out there today, men with no afterlife to face! Men without hope! In fact, you’re all going to die alone, men. Alone, frightened, and probably too drunk to know you’re freezing to death in a snowbank.

And you know what that is? Unfair and cruel, men. In fact, this whole team is drunk in a snowbank right now. Stinking drunk, like when your girlfriend runs off with a Negro and walks around smiling and bowlegged around town.

And you know who Notre Dame is? Notre Dame’s a homeless man passing your way and eyeing that half-empty bottle of Tipsy Welshman in your hand. Yes, another stinking drunk like you, except you’re not homeless, but instead are late on your rent at some flophouse you won’t even bring widowed floozies hopped up on goofballs home to. Because you’ve been fired from your job selling Fuller Brushes, because who wants to buy a brush from some guy who sleeps drunk in snowbanks all the time? It’s damn hard to get people to open the door when you look like you do, much less sell them a fucking brush!

You’re all angry and dying in a snowbank right now, men. But before you go, you can find the one person on the planet more miserable than you right now and let them know one thing: you may be a miserable, penniless bastard praying for death underneath a boulder of misery, but there’s one person left who’s worse off than you. And that’s that homeless guy who you’re going to beat unconscious and pee yellow ice cubes onto in the dank light of a rattrap alley for trying to take your bottle of Tipsy Welshman.

AND WE’RE NOT GONNA LET HIM TAKE OUR BOTTLE OF TIPSY WELSHMAN, ARE WE MEN?

That’s right. You’ll beat him down with that briefcase of broken dreams and unsold brushes, men. You’ll do that right now. Then you’ll throw down that suitcase and join the French Foreign Legion, where you’ll assume the name Jean-Pierre, marry a Malian negress, and probably die of sunstroke.

But before all that…let’s go beat Notre Dame with that briefcase full of pain, men.

LET’S GO!

Lou Holtz is a commentator for ESPN and former college football coach. He was known as Ernst Himmelgarb before his stint in the French Foreign Legion from 1947-1953.