While cyber-bullying is not a good thing, it can sometimes yield positive results. Case in point, it might have saved the SEC from making a very unpopular decision for the upcoming college football season.
On Friday, Walker Hayes posted a video for his song, Y’all Life, on YouTube. The SEC — or at least whoever runs the SEC Twitter account — seemed to like the song, posting “just might be the song of the college football season right here!” and asked Hayes if he wanted to collab. Hayes was interested.
For those unfamiliar, Hayes was the singer on a jingle in an Applebee’s commercial that came out right before the 2021 college football season began. It was not popular among football fans. When college football fans saw the tweets of a potential collaboration between the SEC and Hayes, they made it known that it would not be well received. Those complaints seemed to work, as the SEC tweet was taken down shortly after it went up.
They deleted it!!! We won!! pic.twitter.com/myLVAnAJDX
— 🇲🇭 Sickos Committee 🇲🇭 (@SickosCommittee) July 15, 2022
Bullying works pic.twitter.com/NhfadHrxH1
— Jason Kirk (buy my novel) (@JasonKirk_fyi) July 15, 2022
There are two ways of looking at this.
One is that it’s probably embarassing for the SEC to have to backtrack on such an enthusiastic tweet shortly after making it.
Just imagining the call to the record company from the SEC marketing person on the Friday before SEC Media Days.
“Um, we’re going to need another song. That one got roasted.”
— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) July 15, 2022
On the other hand, if the SEC received this kind of backlash just for suggesting a collaboration, we can only imagine what would have happened during football season if it actually happened. Sure, the SEC may have some egg on its face now but cutting the losses was probably the best decision possible here.
[Photo Credit: Walker Hayes]
