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
— Aaron Moorehead (@Amo8685)May 5, 2016
I wasn't even talking about who everyone thinks I'm talking about. I didn't even know — Aaron Moorehead (@Amo8685)May 5, 2016
Moorehead also Tweeted (and deleted) the favorite old sports man opinion that "there is no accountability and no sense of positivity when it comes to adversity" for kids these days—unlike previous generations of teenagers, who always greeted bad news with a happy smile and never, ever failed to take responsibility for anything.Speaking of being held accountable for one's actions, Moorehead's Tweetstorm caused a four-star wide receiver to decommit, and it caused other recruits to stop considering A&M.People act like the truth is all the sudden a bad thing. Society is too sensitive. Y'all boys soft. — Aaron Moorehead (@Amo8685)May 5, 2016
Moorehead was dumb to present his opinion the way he did. No question. But the real problem here is that his worldview is shared by many of the adults in college sports—it's essentially what they think about high school and college kids.Just this week, CBS's Jon Rothstein wrote about college basketball's supposed "transfer epidemic," stating that "fighting through adversity and building calluses through life experience is something that's a thing of the past and that's reiterated by the way players change programs at the grassroots level prior to ever stepping foot on a college campus." Rothstein also blamed this alleged rending of our national collegiate athletic moral fabric on—you guessed it—social media, claiming that "college athletes have an ego and part of the reason why they're so prone to make a change in where they're playing college basketball is due to the enjoyment they receive when their name is constantly posted across a social media platform."
All of this is hypocritical. Rothstein worked at ESPN Radio and MSG before jumping to CBS. (Oh, and his entire profession depends on capturing reader attention, largely via social media). Moorehead has had four different coaching jobs in seven years. Greenberg coached at seven different schools as he worked his way up the ranks. Couldn't even fight through their own adversity and stay loyal! Sad!The transfer epidemic is not limited to colleges. The enabling starts in grassroots and high school. Everyone wants it now The best earn it!
— Seth Greenberg (@SethOnHoops)April 26, 2016
In no world outside of college sports is social media use considered a privilege—well, maybe prison and/or the military, but those are very bad comps—yet that's the type of control Sumlin and other coaches are used to having. A type of control they take for granted! So when they suddenly can't act like little kings—that is, when a recruit or player decides he's changed his mind—they grasp for fantastical reasons to explain why this unfathomable insubordination happened.And so we get the adversity narrative. And the generational softness. And the blah blah blah blah cue the teacher's voice from the Peanuts cartoons.Truth is, Martell hasn't shown that he can't handle adversity. He simply wanted to go to a different school and work for different bosses—just as Moorehead did when he left Virginia Tech for Texas A&M in 2014.The Aggies deserved their awful night after Moorehead's ignorant rant, but the problem is bigger than this one ill-advised outburst. If schools lose their authoritarian privileges, maybe we'll begin to see decommitments and transfers for what they are: people taking personal responsibility for bettering their individual situations, just like the rest of us.Sumlin asked about social media policy for players, coaches: 'Our policy has been abuse the privilege, lose the privilege. Put it that way.'
— Chuck Carlton (@ChuckCarltonDMN)May 5, 2016