Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis is a candidate to become the head coach at Florida Atlantic. Unless he isn’t.
The initial tweet from Adam Schefter of ESPN.com said this: “Following the Deion Sanders-to-Colorado model, Hall-of-Fame linebacker Ray Lewis has emerged as a candidate to become the next head coach at Florida Atlantic University, sources tell ESPN.” However, the item posted at ESPN.com paints a very different picture.
“Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis has been floated as a candidate to become the next head coach at Florida Atlantic, though sources told ESPN that any talk of hiring Lewis is premature,” the article without a byline explains. “Sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Wednesday that Lewis had emerged as a candidate for his first head-coaching job. But other sources told ESPN that FAU is focused in on other candidates at this time.”
The headline to the article says it’s “unlikely” that Lewis will get an offer to coach the team.
This isn’t surprising. Someone who wants Lewis to be a candidate sold Schefter on the notion that Lewis is a candidate. So Schefter posted his tweet as part of the broader source back-scratching ritual that keeps him at the front of the line for news nuggets five minutes before they’re announced.
But then ESPN heard some from someone at Florida Atlantic who said the school is focused on other candidates, and that Lewis isn’t one of them.
The ESPN.com article cleans up the tweet, even if the tweet hasn’t been clarified or supplemented.
It’s all part of the broader dance in which plenty of journalists engage. Sometimes, you’ve got to eat a little shit now to get good shit later.
