The Power of Social Media: Aggie Edition

The credit for the foundation of this blog goes to Mike & Mike in the Morning, a sports talk radio show on ESPN every weekday morning.

The power of social media is a real and slightly terrifying fact. It must not be ignored. I am sure many of you have been instructed about the importance of protecting your image by being cautious about the things that you tie to your name on the internet. However, it seems that no matter how many warnings we receive, we allow for emotion to overcome us and cause us to post things on social media that we don't want to be there. 

This morning I was listening to Mike & Mike and they were talking about the wide receivers coach at Texas A&M that had posted the following statement on Twitter,

"I feel sorry for ppl who never understand loyalty. I can't really even vibe with u. At the end of the day trust is  & everything else is BS"

At face value, it doesn't look to bad except for the fact that he spelled people without any vowels and used the letter "u" in place of the actual word. Bottom line, loyalty and trust are the most important things in this world. We can regard anything that doesn't resonate with trust and loyalty as some bull taco.

The problem? This was tweeted exactly 6 minutes after Texas A&M recruit, Tate Martell, announced this on Twitter...

"After talking with my family aboutwhat is best for my future, I havedecided to reopen my recruiting process."

Honestly, the player has the right to do this and he did so in a very clean, no disruptive manner. He didn't slander A&M or even talk about what caused him and his family to come to this decision. He made a verbal commitment to them, but never signed any papers and colleges do this same thing to players all the time so I have zero sympathy for A&M.

I feel like you are starting to see what happens. Well the coach followed up that tweet with this gem about 24 minutes later...

I wasn't even talking about who everyone thinks I'm talking about. I didn't even know #badtiming #relevanttho #stillnoloyalty

This would have been a fine response had he stopped at the #badtiming. Instead, he opened up an uncontrollable can of worms. Now, the world is seeing the Texas A&M wide receivers coach as the kind of person that will call high school kids out on Twitter.

Think this is bad? It got worse.

An hour later, a wide receiver named Mannie Netherly announced that he was removing his commitment to Texas A&M for the following reason...

"After tonight I see what kind of person my "future coach" is & I myself don't wanna play for someone like that so without further adu I would like to announce that I am decommitting from Texas A&M" 

Of course, the dude doesn't notice that he is already drowning and says...

"People act like the truth is all the sudden a bad thing. Society is too sensitive. Y'all boys soft. #texastough"

"I love Texas A&M football. I guard it and respect it with my life. I don't take that lightly day to day"

That last bit is nice in theory, but this guy has already lose his beloved Texas A&M football team a recruit tonight. I would say that's some pretty bad guarding.

"I would like to say thank you to TAMU & fans but due to some tweets subtweeted towards my brother, I will no longer be looking at A&M."

And....another one bites the dust. Tyjon Lindsey tweeted this later that night. Granted he was not yet committed to A&M, but he is surely not going to be doing it now.

Moral of the story? Well, there are a couple. First, if you are the adult, act like the adult. I don't know if the original tweet was in response to the decommittment or not, but it doesn't matter because I imagine that everything would have just gone away if he hadn't sent out that second tweet. It's obvious the coach was riled up by people responding to his tweet about trust and loyalty. All he had to do was say to himself "okay, who cares if they think that." Instead he tweets again and starts saying things with the intent to hurt peoples' feelings. A couple hours later he has shamed the school and football program he loves so much. I imagine today he is kicking himself because all he had to do was not hit ENTER and much of this would not have happened. Second moral: think about the consequences of the things you do and say.

Man, I can't imagine how pissed the head coach is.