Stewart Mandel Says Covid Tweets Were 'Condescending', Asks for Reset

Longtime college football writer Stewart Mandel opened his mailbag at The Athletic today with a note acknowledging the "condescending" tone he has had in tweets about Covid-19 to readers and asking for a reset. Here's the full text of what he wrote:

Before I get to your questions this week, I wanted to address something that’s been weighing on me — and many of you.

Writing and tweeting about college football in the time of COVID-19 has been the greatest challenge of my career because the topic is so emotional and has become so divisive. I’ve been accused at times of being too negative, or even that I’m trying to bring down college football due to some political agenda. Up until recently I mostly brushed off those comments. Once in a while I would snap back.

But over the last couple of weeks the tenor intensified — both from myself and my readers/followers. I’ve caught myself on a few occasions having to delete tweets that were just plain condescending. On Monday, after the preseason AP poll came out, I published a seemingly fun and innocuous piece making “predictions” on how the now-canceled marquee September matchups would have transpired. When the comments section quickly deteriorated into angry readers blaming me for those cancellations — and those comments getting lots of “thumbs ups” — it was time to stage a self-intervention.

The simplest explanation I can give you is, I’ve still got a lot of fears about COVID-19, both for myself and my family members. I live in a part of the country (California) that is still being super cautious (bars and indoor dining never reopened, outdoor gatherings are still severely limited), and every university in my time zone has canceled football. So it definitely feels foreign and alarming when I see pictures/videos of students at bars or news that a school is going to be allowing 20,000 fans at its games. And so I’m probably projecting some of my own fears in my tweets/comments about that kind of stuff.

Although my concerns aren’t going away (yet), I don’t think I’ve done a good job of taking the time to understand and accept that my reality is not necessarily the same as many of yours. I’m aware that in the South and elsewhere, people are increasingly returning to regular life (albeit in masks). High schools are playing football games. My brother’s ’90s party band in Cincinnati played in front of a socially distanced crowd at a bar last weekend. For many people — myself included — college football returning will be the most seminal milestone yet. And though I assure you I have neither the desire nor the influence to prevent that from occurring, I haven’t been reading the room with some of my more flippant tweets recently.

So, what do you say we hit the reset button? While I’m not going to stop reporting/commenting on pertinent COVID-related news, I’m going to be more mindful of my tone. Also: There are games being played barely more than a week from now. We at The Athletic are rolling out a lot of season preview content this week and next.

Though there is no singular tweet from Mandel that especially sticks out in my memory as condescending, I do recall feeling that way at moments when some of them crossed my timeline. Mandel was hardly alone there; he deserves credit for the introspection here. I read his anticipation of the return of what's left of college football as an acknowledgement that cooler heads are prevailing.

Will anyone else follow Mandel's lead?