Notre Dame coach shocked when ‘execution’ joke gets woke-shamed: ‘Are you people crazy?’

 Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly found himself at the center of unwanted attention following Sunday night’s epic college matchup between the Fighting Irish and the Florida State Seminoles when he set social media ablaze by seeming to suggest the execution of his entire football team.

After the final gun sounded on Notre Dame’s thrilling 41-38 overtime win, with his team narrowly escaping after coughing up a double-digit fourth-quarter lead, a victory that relied on a missed FSU field goal, an emotional Kelly was caught coming off the field by ESPN’s Katie George.

It was then that coach Kelly slipped up when he botched a famous sports joke, telling the reporter that “I’m in favor of execution, maybe our entire team needs to be executed.”

Kelly was clearly caught up in the moment after Seminole backup quarterback McKenzie Milton sliced and diced his defense in an improbable comeback that fell just short.

What Kelly was referring to was the quip by John McKay, the first head coach of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers whose remarks over his team’s poor performance became sports lore.

When asked by a reporter “What do you think of your team’s execution coach?” McKay replied, “I’m in favor of it.”

Kelly’s flub was completely lost on the Twitter mob, many of whom had no interest in sports until the media transformed San Francisco 49ers backup Colin Kaepernick into a “woke” messiah, and they rushed to pile on with some seeming to suggest that he literally meant lining them all up against a wall.

The exasperated Kelly expressed disbelief that people would actually believe that he was speaking seriously.

“It’s an old John McKay quote,” he told ESPN, “I was kidding. It was tongue-in-cheek. It wasn’t funny? … I was talking and making a joke about it. It was taken serious? Are you people crazy?”

Notre Dame has been in the gunsights of the cancel culture zealots who have moved on from Native American team nicknames and are determined to take down the famous leprechaun.

The university responded to a recent survey that listed the iconic image to be offensive.

“Our symbols stand as celebratory representations of a genuine Irish heritage at Notre Dame,” according to a statement, “a heritage that we regard with respect, loyalty and affection.”

Sadly, some people have no sense of humor nor are they willing to tolerate the idea that sports have long been a unifying factor in America.