One of the grossest things in all of sports is big-time college football recruiting: educational institutions groveling and begging high schoolers to attend, adults directing slush funds towards 17-year-olds, college graduates harassing kids on social media to consider their alma mater. And last night saw just the dumbest manifestation of modern recruiting yet.
It was kicked off by Tate Martell, a junior quarterback from Las Vegas’s Bishop Gorman High School. Last month he verbally committed to Texas A&M—nine months before National Signing Day—but decided to decommit:
Totally coincidentally and having nothing to do with Martell, Texas A&M wide receivers coach Aaron Moorehead—a grown-ass man, I am led to believe—sent out some tweets about loyalty ...
... which then caused a couple other top recruits to decommit or cease considering Texas A&M:
Moorehead stayed strong and tweeted through it ...
... though he did delete tweets that read “People talk about leadership and this generation flip flops like nothing. That’s a real issue. My dad would have whipped my ass” and “Scared for this next group of kids. There is no accountability and no sense of positivity when it comes to adversity. #selfish #allaboutme”.
We’ve entered a warped world where “decommit” is an important and frequently used word in the average sports fan’s lexicon, but what else can you expect when colleges are offering scholarships to middle schoolers and speeding up the already fraught college search process, and an Illinois-transplant coach who is on his fourth staff in seven years is tweeting about #texastough and loyalty?
But rather than ending this blog on a dour note, let’s end it on a sick burn:
Pour it.
Update (11:45 a.m.): Moorehead has apologized for his tweets. Will this save his job?