There were a lot of frustrations about Chris McIntosh's released statement and his second vote of confidence for Luke Fickell for the season. Fans feel like things are only getting worse, a leader believes in a sunk-cost fallacy, and other related concerns. However, the statement revealed, whether McIntosh meant it to or not, that he's bad at his job.
He's no longer the new athletic director, so he doesn't have any excuse for the things the letter admits are problems—problems that come from an athletic director. The letter reveals that he's in over his head if he's just now realizing he needs to invest in the football program. It shows that he tried to cut corners and still win. It shows that he doesn't know what he's doing.
He publicly admitted all this. This isn't someone looking behind the curtain and saying, "Maybe he doesn't know what he's doing." This is him releasing a statement that blatantly says, "I don't know what I'm doing."
Let's break it down with the three things this letter admits:
1. Chris McIntosh hasn't been investing enough in football
Beyond the "throw money at it and that'll fix it" mentality, which is rarely the answer, he says in the statement, "Athletics is committed to elevating the investment into our football program to position us to compete at the highest level." In other words, I haven't been doing that. We haven't been doing that, so we never expected to compete at the highest level, or if we did, we expected to do it with fewer resources.
2. Chris McIntosh admits he was cutting corners
The first leads into the second. It seems in this statement that he admits he was cutting corners. He paid a ton of money to a top-of-the-line coach (at the time). In his mind, that should have been enough. However, he says it wasn't. "As a department, we must provide our coaches the tools necessary to succeed." Why haven't you already, Chris? Why haven't you already?!
3. Chris McIntosh shows that he believes in a sunk-cost fallacy
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This term has been thrown around a lot since this released statement. It certainly wasn't coined over here, but it essentially means that a company, or in this case, a football program, will continue down a path they should abandon because they've already put a ton of money into it. This is exactly where Chris McIntosh is and his line, "The results of this elevated support may not be immediate, but we are confident that the impact will be long-term."
In other words, buckle up. We are going to participate in a sunk-cost fallacy because 'we already have too much money put into Luke Fickell and what he's doing with the program to give up now. To band-aid this mess we created, we will now throw more money at it.'