I could see the excuse. I mean, don't accept it, but I see possible rationales. Here's one:
McElroy catches his teenage kid doing some rude gesture. Maybe even the 'suck it' one. Reads the kid the riot act. THAT VERY EVENING, McElroy's sitting on the couch with his kids, watching the baseball championship game, and Vitello does it. Kid's all smarmy to his dad, because a head coach just did it on national TV.
So McElroy's problems in that scenario are (1) personal/family and (2) societal, because he's swimming uphill to keep his kids from being as rude as a lot of folks are.
That would make sense.
I'm not saying that's what McElroy meant. I'm not saying that's what happened. And I'm not saying excuse him. There is no excuse for him going off like that on a head coach who clearly has a strong, positive relationship with his players.
I'm just saying it wasn't totally weird, as excuses go.
Go Vols!
Agree - but dang, when the smoke clears and you break it down, whatever the underlying circumstances, McElroy's role as working for a network rather than a school directly, is supposed to swallow his homer bias, and I think for the most part, up to now, he hasn't been bad about disguising it. In fact there have been times when I've said, "dang, he's doing pretty good analysis, that's not a bad take". So, like Biden, he's been good at masking it, but eventually his lack of love for the U. of T. was shown brightly as if the torchbearer got close enough to illuminate it.
The reality is this though, SEC teams are like Indian tribes, we are hard wired to know what tribe we come from and it's difficult if not impossible to promote another tribe rather than the one you belong to. Me, I really have to do some soul searching to heap praise on anything Bama, whether deserved or not. I'm hard wired to root against them, and if I had a talking head job like he does, my bias would eventually be revealed. Oh, I could hide it - but one day.. maybe I went out and had a couple more beers the night before, compounded with a nagging wife and maybe getting rear ended on the way to work... whatever. Just saying everyone had a bad day and that's when you slip and do something stupid like McElroy did.
And let's put yourself in McElroy's shoes for a moment. He's getting some vibes from the Hill. "Gosh, they went into the post season in every sport". "Gosh they just won the natty in baseball". "Gosh their basketball team made a good run in NCAA", He's watching the TV coverage of the final game and I'm looking at the mount Rushmore or UT athletics sitting up there in the box, yucking it up. Heupel, Barnes, Manning, (Fulmer was in that crowd too), Vitello and he's thinking "these guys all have their act together". And he's scared.
Then he starts evaluating his own situation. Saban's gone. New coach, lot's of talent left Bama in the portal and they don't quite have the Rushmore effect he just witnessed on TV and he becomes annoyed that his "tribe" might just have come up against some parity after being dominate, plus all those bad things I mentioned that might have happened with his nagging wife and wrecked car, and he just "went off" on the VOLS for a seemingly random rant.
But it's not random at all, and like that debate - it confirmed what we've suspected all along. and now the world knows his bias. Again - I don't fault him, because I understand the tribal forces at work here. I would be the same way about my beloved VOLS.