Michael Vick, a four-time Pro Bowl quarterback and NFL analyst for FOX Sports, has reportedly been hired as the head coach of the Norfolk State University football team, according to a report from David Teel and Michael Sauls of The Virginian-Pilot. The newspaper divulged Vick’s interest in the position on Monday while ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter shared that Vick met with Sacramento State about its head coaching job as well. Within his post, Schefter wrote that the school has more than $50 million in funding for name, image and likeness (NIL), something that caused other reporters to raise objections.
Doug Gottlieb, afternoon host on FOX Sports Radio and head men’s basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, replied to Schefter’s post by articulating that he should edit what agents tell him. Gottlieb added that there is no chance the school has $50 million in NIL money, a response that prompted Schefter to explain the situation. From there, Schefter shared a photo of the Horizon League standings, asked Gottlieb why his team was in last place and had lost seven straight games and implored the sports radio host to spend “less time on social media and more time in the gym.”
The tweet went viral on social media, and Gottlieb responded to what took place on the Tuesday edition of The Doug Gottlieb Show on FOX Sports Radio.
“I’ve been in plenty of these before,” Gottlieb said. “I think the difference is two or threefold, okay? One is that in the past when you tweet something you don’t like the way it comes out, you just take it down, but somehow we’ve gotten into this ‘screenshot gotcha’ sort of thing where if you take it down, now it’s like, ‘Ooh, we found you tweeting something,’ when you’re allowed to erase something if you’re like, ‘Aah, I wish I would have reworded that.”
Gottlieb admitted that he is not super defensive and may not have been able to recognize potentially incendiary language in his own tweets. After explaining his perspective as a college basketball coach towards NIL, during which he mentioned a pending settlement in House v. NCAA that could presumably lead to schools owing compensation to former students for name, image and likeness, he asked producer Dan Beyer his thoughts on his reply.
“I think it’s more of a group text sort of thing, like, ‘Guys, get a load of this. This is completely off base. None of this is true,’ so I thought the wording of it was a little harsh, even if you were correct in what you were saying,” Beyer explained. “And then the comeback from Schefter because of how you worded it leaves you open to taking that sort of blow with the screenshot, and yeah, and then it just absolutely took off from there.”
Beyer articulated that it was not more important to be right in this case and spoke about how the interaction seemed to be carried on. Furthermore, he stated that it seemed to be the remark about getting information from agents that annoyed Schefter and implied that it may have been better to leave that part out.
“There’s no question because that’s how by and large he gets that information,” Gottlieb said. “The agent [was] probably not involved in this one, but it’s more the point of insiders – and you and I know lots of them, and Schefter’s really good at NFL stuff. Part of it is Schefter trying to say he can do the basketball stuff, which is like, again, if you haven’t been in a business, your ability to understand that business is made really, really difficult – really difficult.”
Gottlieb referenced another NFL insider who obtains information from agents and inflates information to benefit the players. While he did not name the insider, he commended Schefter for doing a much better job in general of stating what is taking place and what is going to happen.
“In that case, he was literally discussing something that either he didn’t have any desire to look into; he might have been doing somebody a favor,” Gottlieb said. “It might have been helping encourage Mike Vick – ‘Here’s why you should take the job. We got $50 million in cash right on hand,’ but it’s not true. And I completely understand my tone was pretty negative there, I got it. I didn’t think I went as personal as he went.”
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