An apology to Coach kittley

There is a right and a wrong way to criticize coaches. I made a tweet during a down moment, and I did not handle it the right way. As such, I owe Coach Kittley the apology I promised. I was going to write this tomorrow but if you have paid any attention tonight it seems more relevant now. Accountability is why I sign my name to start the year as a live tweeter, and it is why I was planning to do this. I’ll make more bad take I am 100% sure, but I hate the takes I make that reek of defeatism in particular. So, because of that I wanted to explain what I did wrong in detail and apologize to Coach.

The question gets asked to me a lot, do I try to create hot takes? Yes and no. Yes, I love to poke other fanbases. I will say things I know Texas fans hate or will disagree with because I want to rile up the Horns. Or the Bears. Or whoever.

But do I intentionally make contrarian opinions or hot takes or shock value tweets to get engagement about Tech? No, I don’t. For the game tweets you get my honest and unfiltered thoughts as quickly as I can get them out. That doesn’t excuse the bad ones, but its why I am sometimes all over the map of happy to sad. That tweet though has stuck with me because it was something I generally want to avoid at all costs. So let me explain what I did wrong and offer a sincere apology for it and a promise to do better.

This is all a game, is it that serious? I don’t know, maybe maybe not. But I think when I am wrong taking a step back to note that makes sense. Besides, Coach Kittley and the offense got the job done. They deserve the chance to making me literally eat my words as I can figure out.

Coach,

I made three mistakes on the tweet. First, and in my opinion most importantly, I gave up on Tech. I usually spend entire games calculating the ways Tech can come back, but in that moment I lost the faith. That’s something I can’t have on the brand account in particular, it is the kind of defeatism that does not add value to the community. I ask fans to do better with that attitude, and I will do better to remove it from my live game tweets.

Secondly, I assigned blame for a loss directly to Coach Kittley. That is never how it should go. While yes, coaches deserve fault for failures losses are shared. Everyone loses together, and to target a coach dealing with a tough assignment for full blame was inappropriate. Similarly anyone blaming Donovan for the offense’s performance, or just the offensive line, is wrong too. I will seek to avoid these kinds of sweeping targeted blame games, it is over simplified and not something that improves the experience.

Lastly, I don’t love called the play calling series stupid. Character assaults are not justified over on-field performance, and that feels too much like I was calling Kittley stupid. I didn’t like the play calling, but the word choice was both too harsh and opening to a personal attack I always try to avoid.

I do apologize to Coach Kittley, who managed to patchwork the gameplan together to lead one hell of a drive down the field as time expired. I am ecstatic to be wrong about the outcome, and look forward to more wins in the future.

Sincerely,

Michael Macon