make them eat dirt for breakfast

[emp0608]

Hi folks,

Could anybody help me with the following Rose’s line in The Golden Girls Season 4, Episode 12?

Rose: Oh, great. Oh, with your help, Dorothy, we'll kick their butts. We'll chew 'em up and spit 'em out. We'll make 'em eat dirt for breakfast. Because breakfast is the most important meal of the day.


Rose is coaching a boys’ football team and Dorothy has just accepted to become her assistant.

 

[SoothingDave]

Which part has you troubled? American football is rough and physical. "Eating dirt" is being knocked down to the ground.

 

[Skrej]

See the idiom 'eat dirt' as well as 'eat X for breakfast'.

As usual, Rose has mixed her metaphors a bit, then further compounds the issue with the old adage about 'breakfast being the most important meal of the day'.

If you're a fan of the show, you know that the character of Rose was not only incredibly naive, but also gullible and prone to mixing metaphors. Often she threw out sayings from her home village of St. Olaf, which were typically nonsensical or uniquely altered versions of common idioms or phrases.

RIP Betty White