Doug Gottlieb was put on the spit and roasted into oblivion for his Andrew Luck take, the proclamation via Twitter that “Retiring cause rehabbing is ‘too hard’ is the most millennial thing ever.“

The Fox Sports host was ripped by the likes of Troy Aikman and Torrey Smith, the former calling his comments “bullshit” and the latter claiming that Gottlieb “stole credit cards because working was ‘too hard.'”

Gottlieb responded to the responses via this segment below:

Gottlieb, in part:

First of all, I understand that on Twitter, sarcasm, ‘snarkasm,’ tongue-in-cheek comments don’t always translate. I do think by now, I’ve been doing this long enough, that there are plenty of people – my friends especially in the business and listeners and viewers, whatever – that understand I’m a smartass. I always have been and I always will be. If I can’t find something funny with the things in life, then you know what? Strike me down. Because I like to make fun of things in life.

Ok, fair enough. His personality is certainly like that. He’s always been kind of snarky.

More:

Lemme just say this, and I’m gonna say this one time. I understand if you don’t like me or you think that I’m characterizing somebody as something they’re not. But I’m only gonna point out to people like Torrey Smith – who I don’t have a bone to pick with – to others in the media or in sports, if you wanna go to me stealing credit cards 23 years ago, you’re gonna have to deal with the fact that those questions have been asked, that has been answered. We’ve all moved on.

It’s true. Gottlieb has addressed this and apologized for it. It’s not like he hides from this or pretends it never happened.

But if you’re seriously bothered by pointing out the new generation in ‘athlete that has something else going‘ in the search for joy, these are all new ideas. It’s the ‘generation me.’ Go up and look up the things that define what millennials are. They want to work in groups but they do want confirmation and affirmation of their success. They’re willing to move. Anyone who hires a millennial will say, ‘you know what, it’s kind of amazing, they’re really smart, kind of worldly, they come in, sort of think they know everything, but they’ll get after it and work hard.’ Then they want a raise like two weeks later. That sound like any football players you know? Want a raise as soon as they see any sort of success even though their contract says otherwise?

Ok, so listen, Gottlieb’s diatribe on millennials isn’t entirely off-base, but the the large chunk of that monologue isn’t really truly applicable to Andrew Luck, who rehabbed and played through various injuries for years before deciding to retire at age 29. It’s not like he logged two NFL seasons and then held out and ask for a new contract. He just retired because he wanted to do what was best for his physical and mental health, and while I wrote yesterday that the timing of it was kind of shitty, nobody should begrudge the guy for doing what he felt needed to be done.

But yeah, it’s true that some younger employees want a little bit of affirmation, not necessarily because we need sunshine blown up our ass, but because it would just be nice to know that we’re doing the right thing, that we’re on the right path, and that everything is good from a macro-level perspective. If millennials are on a shorter “timeline” than other employees, then boomers are on the total opposite end, because I’ve worked for some managers who will literally sit in their office for six months straight without even addressing their employees at all. Millennials don’t necessarily need attention, they just want to feel like they are “part” of something instead of just being another replaceable wheel in the cog.

That’s another story for another time though. Boomers are indeed some of the worst managers I’ve ever worked for, so I don’t blame “the millennials” for wanting just a little bit more from their employment.

Time’s yours.