ESPNMedia MonsterNCAA Football

Matt Millen: Winning With Troubled Players Is “Makeup On A Turd”

South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia has a long, troubled history at the school that includes a whopping five suspensions over the last four years. Another important fact, though: Garcia is the team’s starting quarterback, and threw for over 3,000 yards last season. After all, the Gamecocks wouldn’t keep bringing him back after all those suspensions if he didn’t help them on the field.

And so Garcia will return from his latest suspension (handed out in April) to participate in voluntary summer workouts with his teammates. In a season that potentially holds great promise for South Caroina – Garcia and star running back Marcus Lattimore return, while heralded defensive end Jadeveon Clowney arrives – Garcia’s conduct will be among the most heavily-monitored aspects of Steve Spurrier’s squad.

With that ever-present question mark of Garcia’s conduct in mind, College Football Live wondered today: just how much of a wild card is Garcia? Matt Millen said that Garcia’s track record proves he’s an awfully big wild card, but then added that winning makes all those issues go away (we’re with him so far). And to demonstrate the healing effects of winning, he used some…interesting phrasing.

Now, it wouldn’t be Matt Millen if he didn’t give us something to pick apart. Here’s what he said:

“Winning cures all…it’s makeup on a turd; it still looks good.”

OK, we get what he’s saying about winning. But…it still looks good? Does putting makeup on a turd really make it…more appealing? We’re afraid what’s happened here is that Millen, in his excitement to say “turd” on television (we fully endorse being excited about this, by the way), inverted what the phrase is supposed to mean. The meaning of “lipstick on a pig,” essentially an equivalent phrase, is as follows:

To put “lipstick on a pig” is a rhetorical expression, used to convey the message that making superficial or cosmetic changes is a futile attempt to disguise the true nature of a product.

Millen, on the other hand, seemed to use it to mean that putting makeup on the turd would actually make things all better, rather than that a turd’s just a turd, no matter what. South Carolina better hope Millen’s interpretation proves prophetic.