College Sports,Losing Seasons,and Image Repair Through Open Letters to Fans

Abstract

College sports coaches and administrators can use open letters to repair images and weather crises, especially during losing seasons. Our rhetorical analysis uses Benoit’s typology of image repair to reveal three primary strategies attempted during losing seasons: evading responsibility, reducing offensiveness, and corrective action. We take note of how open letters distributed via electronic media channels widen the audience of such letters, but also, complicate issues of timing and of targeted audience analysis. We offer five implications for scholars and practitioners, including the importance of audience analysis, the value of corrective action, the ineffectiveness of attacking accusers, and the unique value of transcendence in sport communication image repair rhetoric.

Keywords

image repair fans losing season letters audience

Introduction

Open letters from coaches and administrators can be unique components of media sports coverage. Such letters are written with a broad audience in mind—to their direct recipients when mailed or e-mailed, but also, to wider audiences as the messages pass along media outlets and social networks. Fans may read open letters on organizational or individual websites (e.g., Sanderson, 2008), and when other media outlets republish open letters. And yet, even with the public venue of an open letter, these messages still have the trappings of interpersonal communication: the personal pronoun, the sense of dialogue, and the relational dimensions of the letter genre (see Stanley, 2004). “Letters disturb binary distinctions: between speaking and writing and private and public, as well as between here and there, now and then, and presence and absence. They are conversation-like but not actually conversations … ” (Stanley, 2004, p. 209). Indeed, the open letter is a unique rhetorical artifact, particularly when we consider the implications of mediated open letters and the blurred lines of personal and public (Meyrowitz, 1985; Stanley, 2004).

Open letters from sports organizations and athletes can directly address crises, and it is this type of letter that we consider in the present essay. More specifically, we turn our focus toward image repair attempts in open letters written by college sports administrators and coaches in attempts to assuage fans’ concerns about a losing or poor season, and then assess the efficacy of the efforts. We draw five implications from our analysis. Scholars have called for more attention to the rhetoric of sport in general, and to the rhetoric of sport losses in particular (e.g., Enterline, 2010; Kruse, 1981; Llewellyn, 2003).

Before considering our three case studies of college sports teams experiencing disappointing seasons, we first outline why a losing or poor season qualifies as a crisis and why a team’s win–loss record necessitates image repair efforts. Crises fall on a spectrum with wide variance, and while sports teams may be able to successfully work through some losses, during other seasons—and with certain college sports programs—losses can be serious, and, we contend, reach the level of crisis.

Literature Review

Losing Seasons as Crises

We propose that losing seasons can function as crises for sport teams; as Kruse (1981, p. 273) noted, “More often than not … fans and organizational personnel alike see winning only in terms of outscoring the opposition … ” Losing seasons can create financial hardships, which are exacerbated by larger economic challenges of college communities, or even the national economy (e.g., Prisbell, 2011a). Financial harms can linger, too, as losing seasons harm recruitment efforts for future seasons (Staples, 2009) and result in personnel changes (Sander, 2008). With college coaches earning record-breaking contracts, the pressure to win and successfully recruit athletes is at an all-time high for college coaches (Brown & Billings, 2013). Harms of a losing season can go beyond financial stress. Sports losses have been linked to increases in negative emotions of athletes, including humiliation (Wilson & Kerr, 1999). For these reasons, we contend that a losing season can be a crisis, consistent with Coombs and Holladay's (2002, p. 166) conceptualization of crises as “unpredictable events that can disrupt an organization’s operations [and] threaten to damage organizational reputations.”

A losing season can affect fan attendance. Dutch Baughman, executive director of the Division I-A athletic director’s (AD) association, said: “Of course [attendance is] a major concern to any [athletic director] at any level. Anytime you do anything to restrict or diminish an opportunity to generate revenue, it’s going to have an impact” (cited in Wolverton & Richards, 2012, ¶ 12). Even without a losing season, college sports struggle with fan attendance, including attendance drops in men’s basketball (Wolverton & Richards, 2012, ¶ 1) and football (West, 2012). A number of factors contribute to a loss in fan attendance, but as Wolverton and Richards (2012, ¶ 4) put it, “For many athletic departments, the decline [in attendance] coincides with lackluster performance on the court.” Additional variables could be used as metrics for fan support (e.g., purchasing merchandise, positive word-of-mouth communication about the team).

Recognizing severe implications of a losing season, including the specific harm of decreased fan attendance, coaches and officials have attempted image repair, including apologies to their fans (e.g., Fitz-Gerald, 2012). One option is the open letter to fans—a public expression of personal sentiment.

Open Letters

Open letters give a good deal of control to ADs, coaches, and players; open letters “occupy a space between being ‘public’ writings and ‘private’ letters” (Stanley, 2004, p. 207). Sanderson (2008, p. 912) points to information and communication technologies, in general, as a means for athletes and sports organizations “to become directly involved in presenting and releasing information, while the press becomes less involved in filtering that information.” Some athletes have their own websites “to control their image and avoid misinterpretation by the media” (Woolnough, 2001, ¶ 3), and athletes maintain their own Twitter handles to directly interact with fans (Kassing & Sanderson, 2010). Brown and Billings (2013) note that fans of collegiate teams also take part in crisis communication events by taking to social media, especially Twitter, to defend their team after an allegation is made. Thus, the open letter genre—including its extensions into electronic media—represents an active, dialogic approach to sports communication.

In the letters from coaches and administrators surveyed here, the open letter has a specific goal: to repair an image and sustain—or reclaim—fan support during a losing season. As Llewellyn (2003, p. 142) observes, to explain outcomes of games during interviews, “a coach is called on to be a rhetorician.” We use Benoit’s (1995a, 1997) typology of image repair for our analysis.

Image Repair as Crisis Management

Scholars have turned their attention to strategies used to recover from crises and other challenges. For example, Coombs and Holladay’s (2002) situational crisis communication theory (see also Benson, 1988) considers effectiveness of communication efforts in contexts of specific public relations challenges, matching up strategies with specific situational factors. Building off of Ryan’s (1982) work with kategoria (attack), Goffman’s (1955) work with facework, and scholarship of apologia (e.g., Ware & Linkugel, 1973) and accounts (Scott & Lyman, 1968), Benoit (1995a) notes how individuals (or entities, like corporations or, in the present analysis, sport organizations) work to repair damaged reputations once they realize an audience considers them responsible for an act perceived as offensive. As Pfahl and Bates (2008, p. 137) have pointed out, Benoit’s typology represents “a blend of situational and social constructionist approaches.”

Benoit (1995a) advances a typology that explains how individuals attempt this repair work. His typology includes five primary image repair strategies, and most strategies have specific tactics. (1) Denial has two options: a simple denial claims that the act in question either did not occur or the accused did not do it; shifting the blame shifts focus to someone else purportedly responsible for the act. (2) Evading responsibility, which admits the act but not the culpability, has four tactics. Provocation asserts that the act in question was motivated by another act. Defeasibility suggests that the accused was not in control of the act. Accident claims that the act was just that—an accident. Good intentions turns focus to the motivation, suggesting that the offensive effects of the acts were not intended, but instead, the intent was honorable. (3) Reducing offensiveness admits the culpability but tries to downgrade perceived offensiveness of the act, and this strategy has six tactics. Bolstering attempts to shift focus to the positive attributes of the accused. Minimization tries to downplay the act’s perceived harms. Differentiation contrasts the act in question with acts that are more offensive. Transcendence contextualizes the act, inviting consideration of higher considerations. Attacking the accuser questions the charge by questioning the one/ones making the accusation. (4) Corrective action communicates the plan/plans to repair the situation and/or prevent recurrence. (5) Mortification involves a message of regret, for example, an apology. (See Benoit, 1995a, 2000, for a more expansive treatment of these strategies and tactics, including extensive literature reviews that outline precedence for the typology’s strategies and tactics.) Benoit (1997) notes applicability of the strategies for organizations during crises.

Benoit’s image repair typology has been used to study a number of image repair scenarios across contexts, including politics (e.g., Benoit, 2006), religion (e.g., Miller, 2002), and entertainment (e.g., Compton & Miller, 2011). The context of sports has also received attention in image repair scholarship, including Blaney, Lippert, and Smith’s (2012) edited collection, Repairing the Athlete’s Image.

Llewellyn (2003) found that after a loss, college basketball coaches often use deference (“respectfully acknowledging the winner,” p. 148), justification (responding to “not-so-subtle challenges to their judgment,” p. 148), redefinition (“redefin[ing] the situation so that supporters and players can find positive values in it,” p. 149), and suffering (engaging in rhetoric “that must be the rhetorical equivalent of donning sackcloth and ashes,” p. 149) in their rhetoric about losses. “Losing hints at the presence of a moral flaw and requires redemption” (Llewellyn, 2003, p. 150). We contend that multiple losses during a season can accumulate to the point that coaches and administrators must move beyond the postgame press conference and engage in additional messages, such as the open letter.

Enterline (2010) primarily used Llewellyn’s (2003) concept of “coachtalk” but also considered Benoit’s typology (e.g., bolstering) in a content analysis of National Football League (NFL) coaches’ postgame press conferences after losses. Consistent with Llewellyn’s typology, Enterline’s analysis found that NFL coaches used deference (e.g., acknowledging strengths of opponents), justification (e.g., problems with execution), redefinition (e.g., reframing the loss), and suffering (e.g., implicating the entire team for the loss). Enterline contends that “losing coach discourse” is “its own division of apologia” (p. 57), and called for more research into losing streaks, or consecutive losses.

Much of the image repair analyses of sport focuses on case studies, including analyses of image repair efforts and Australia’s Canterbury Bulldogs (rugby; Bruce & Tini, 2008); Billie Jean King (tennis; Nelson, 1984); the Duke lacrosse team (Fortunato, 2008; Len-Ríos, 2010); Formula One tire crisis (racing; Pfahl & Bates, 2008); LeBron James (basketball; Brown, Dickhaus, & Long, 2012); Michael Phelps (swimming; Walsh & McAllister-Spooner, 2011); Terrell Owens (football; Brazeal, 2008); Tonya Harding (figure skating; Benoit & Hanczor, 1994), and Wang Chien-ming (baseball; Wen, Yu, & Benoit, 2009). Such analyses help to better define the parameters of successful image repair efforts, while at the same time, offer a more nuanced portrait of sports, what Kruse (1981, p. 270) called “a phenomenon of cultural import.” In this study, instead of examining single case studies, we focus on the genre of open letters, using Benoit’s (1995a) typology to analyze a sample of open letters from coaches and administrators during losing seasons.

Research Questions

Most sport image repair analyses focus on strategies of an athlete to repair an image. In this current work, we turn to the image repair strategies of coaches and administrators. We use Benoit’s typology to identify image repair efforts in open letters to fans during losing or struggling seasons—a common but overlooked crisis situation for programs already struggling for fan support. Our analysis includes three case studies of open letters to fans during losing seasons as we explore:

Research Question 1: Which image repair strategies emerge in open letters to fans during losing seasons?

Research Question 2: What implications can be drawn from an analysis of image repair strategies in open letters to fans?

Method and Findings

Case Studies

To explore image repair strategies in open letters to fans, we consider three case studies: Kevin O’Neill (USC Trojans); Kevin Anderson and Randy Edsall (Maryland Terrapins); and Pete Boone (Ole Miss Rebels). Collectively, the three contemporary cases offer a nuanced look at repairing an image through open letters. With these selections, the two most watched collegiate sports, football and basketball, are represented, and the selection of schools includes programs in different regional conferences. Additionally, this sample of letters includes open letters from both coaches and administrators. In each letter, we identify image repair strategies and tactics using Benoit’s (1995) typology.

O’Neill’s Letter to Fans

The University of Southern California (USC) Trojan basketball team amassed a disappointing 6-26 overall win–loss record for the 2011–2012 basketball season. Making matters worse, the team went 1-17 during conference play in a year when the conference strength was considered weak (Schmitz, 2012). The team lost five of their players to season-ending injuries, leaving them with only six scholarship players (Klein, 2012). As the team continued to struggle on the court, the USC fans kept their distance from the Galen Center, the home of the men’s basketball team. In 2009, when the team went 22-13, USC averaged 5,619 fans per game under the guidance of head coach Tim Floyd, who left the university following this season. The university would hire journeyman head coach, Kevin O’Neill to fill the vacancy left by Floyd. But in 2012, USC saw a 29% decrease in attendance, with an average attendance of 3,970 (Wolverton & Richards, 2012). Fan attendance became so low that discounted tickets were offered on the online discount site, Groupon, to try to entice fans to attend their late season games (Hughes, 2012). Abysmal seasons like the 2011–2012 campaign can have a lasting effect on a program. Thus, O’Neill offered a letter to the fans to win their fans back over. Winning back the good graces of the fans was especially important for O’Neill, who had struggled with his image even prior to the difficult season. For example, he had been overheard cursing at his players. As CBS Sports analyst Gottlieb (2013) put it: “There is a point where coaches go from tough love to needlessly harsh and disrespectful. O’Neill more than flirted with that line—he flat-out crossed it.” We identify three primary strategies in O’Neill’s open letter rhetoric: evading responsibility, reducing offensiveness, and corrective action.

Evading Responsibility: Defeasibility

Early in the letter, O’Neill (2012) mentioned players’ injuries as a reason for a losing season. References to injuries served as a type of defeasibility—a way to evade responsibility for the losses. Toward the end of the letter, O’Neill put an innovative twist on defeasibility, offering a preemptive attempt by committing to continue scheduling games against strong teams. This approach could serve two defeasibility efforts: to remind fans of the difficult schedule of the past year and to preview next year’s challenging schedule.

Reducing Offensiveness: Transcendence

O’Neill (2012) argued that there were important things to be learned from the Trojan’s losing season. He praised the fans for their support during the difficult season, even when fans were disappointed. Reflecting a collaborative, interactive tone, O’Neill compared the fans’ and players’ persevering approach to the challenging season. In a transcendence argument that also reflected themes of bolstering, he emphasized the lessons the team learned, including that “when our backs are against a wall, our guys always Fight On!” (O’Neill, 2012, ¶ 2), using the university’s athletic slogan, “Fight On,” to further appeal to Trojan fans. Consistent with a strategy of transcendence, O’Neill argued larger lessons are to be learned from the disappointing season.

Reducing Offensiveness: Bolstering

Other attempts at bolstering were more direct. O’Neill (2012) emphasized that the team did not give up. Then, the conclusion of the letter turned to another bolstering argument—a shift from winning/losing. O’Neill touted the academic success of the team’s players. With this approach, O’Neill attempted to shift the metric by which he and his team would be judged—a bolstering strategy that also had shades of transcendence.

Corrective Action

The most obvious corrective action for the offense of losing is winning, and that is what O’Neill (2012) suggested in his letter—that the coaching staff and team would spend the off-season preparing for a more successful season. Offering more specifics, including a combination of defeasibility and corrective action, the coach touted “a complete roster for the first time during my tenure as Head Coach” and “a lot of new faces who will make next season’s team a lot different than this season’s” (O’Neill, 2012, ¶ 3). After listing a few of the new players, O’Neill mentioned increased recruitment efforts then shared his specific goal of making the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament in the upcoming season. That goal would not be achieved for O’Neill and the USC basketball team; O’Neill was fired in the middle of the 2012–2013 season after the team’s lack of success on the court (King, 2013).

Anderson’s and Edsall’s Letters to Fans

The start of the season for the Maryland Terrapin football team looked promising. The Terrapins defeated the Miami (Fl.) Hurricanes, 32-24, in their season opener. The opening game, however, would serve as the pinnacle game of the year for the Terrapins; they would go on to win only one other game, ending the season with an overall record of 2-10. The week before Anderson’s letter, the Maryland Terrapins “[lost] at home in front of the smallest crowd in 11 years” (Steinberg, 2011a, ¶ 1). Prisbell (2011b) deemed this moment “rock bottom” and noted the “muddy football field … was as tarnished as the Terrapin’s season” (¶ 1). The season was marked with “apparent fan apathy and frustration” (Prisbell, 2011b, ¶ 9). Anderson’s open letter to fans attempted a difficult task: to garner fan support from fans that were not being supportive. We identify one primary strategy: reducing offensiveness.

Reducing Offensiveness: Attacking Accusers

Anderson walked a fine line in his letter when he bordered on attacking his accusers—the fans. However, it was more of a preemptive, implicit attack than a reactive, explicit one. He told fans that the team especially needed their support during struggles and gave fans a role in the team's improvement—“we need to all be pulling on the rope in the same direction” (Anderson, 2011, ¶ 2) emphasizing the team aspect. Such an “attack” on fans is mild and implicit. Media coverage of a previous game had emphasized record-low attendance (e.g., Prisbell, 2011b), and Anderson seemed to implicate wavering fans in these remarks. But it is an indictment with a collective implication. Anderson used, repeatedly, the pronoun “we.” Personal pronouns are a common feature of the letter format (see Stanley, 2004). The use of collective pronouns also could counter an effect discovered by Cialdini and colleagues (1976): When teams lose, fans are less likely to use the pronoun “we” when talking about the team.

Reducing Offensiveness: Transcendence

Anderson (2011) tried to shift focus to supporting the seniors on the team, mentioning the upcoming Senior Day. Senior Day is an important moment for intercollegiate teams, as it recognizes the contributions the graduating seniors have made toward the team and the university during their collegiate years. Anderson’s reference to this special commemorative event, then, served a practical purpose (to announce the date of Senior Day) and a more philosophical purpose (to place the importance of fan support in a larger context—and a context that is less to do with winning).

Reducing Offensiveness: Bolstering

Anderson (2011, ¶ 3) called his senior players “student-athletes of character and perseverance … ” Anderson’s wording is particularly strong here, as he reminded his audience that his athletes were students first—and not only students, but students of “character and perseverance.”

After Anderson’s first letter to the fans, the football team lost their final four games. Anderson and head coach Randy Edsall penned another letter. After calling the season “unacceptable” (cited in Prisbell, 2011c, ¶ 4), the letter continued with the two main strategies of corrective action and evading responsibility—a marked departure from the open letter strategy of reducing offensiveness reflected in Anderson’s letter at midseason.

Corrective Action

Anderson and Edsall offered a general goal of corrective action: “match[ing] the academic excellence and national prominence of our University” (cited in Prisbell, 2011c, ¶ 4). Of note, though, the letter moved beyond a conventional commitment to corrective action and offered a few specifics, including specific attention to recruitment and a systematic review of the program (cited in Prisbell, 2011c, ¶ 5).

Evading Responsibility: Defeasibility

For the most part, Anderson and Edsall avoided attempts of evading responsibility. In fact, they blatantly rejected it, stating unequivocally that they “take full responsibility for that disappointing performance” (cited in Prisbell, 2011c, ¶ 4). But there was some defeasibility. In the concluding paragraph, Anderson and Edsall encouraged fans to attend games “as this young team matures and improves” (cited in Prisbell, 2011c, ¶ 7). The defeasibility effort is subtle, with a description of the team as “young.”

Evading Responsibility: Attacking Accusers

There was evidence of mild attacking of accusers, or, more accurately, a preemptive attacking of accusers, noting that improvement will happen “[o]nly with your help and continued support” (cited in Prisbell, 2011c, ¶ 7). The final line added a condition for a successful season—fan attendance.

Boone’s Letter to Fans

Residing in the powerhouse Southeastern conference, the Ole Miss Rebels football team already faced an uphill battle to end the season with a winning record. Coming off a disappointing 2010 campaign, which saw the team go 4-8 overall and only 1-7 in conference play, and with only nine returning starters, the 2011 season had challenges from the start (Boyd, 2011). After a 1-2 start to the season and a loss to Vanderbilt in their first conference game, Ole Miss AD Boone (2011) wrote a letter to Ole Miss ticket holders. As in the letters previously explored in this essay, Boone admitted that there was a problem, deeming their record “unacceptable” (¶ 3). Boone employed two primary image repair strategies: reducing offensiveness and corrective action.

Reducing Offensiveness: Bolstering

Boone’s (2011) opening paragraph was a note of praise for fans, calling them “the most important part of Ole Miss Athletics” (¶ 1). This bolstering strategy was, of course, intended to bolster fans, but we also argue that it served to bolster Boone. His message of fan praise suggested his humility, his willingness to give fans credit and to acknowledge the fans’ place in the school’s tradition. Later, in another strategy that we label bolstering, Boone mentioned the team’s focus on success and their confidence in that success.

Corrective Action

Boone (2001, ¶ 2) noted that he had met with Head Coach Houston Nutt and reported their emphasis on “solutions for improvement” in “several areas” and “effort to correct those areas.” We label this approach corrective action, but it is important to point out that the corrective action was generic. Fans were told that “solutions” are important and that these solutions would focus on “several areas.” None of these areas were clarified in the letter.

Ultimately, Nutt was asked to resign at the end of the season after the poor performance of the football team over the past two seasons (“Houston Nutt,” 2011). During the press conference announcing the decision, Boone also announced that he would be leaving his position as AD (“Houston Nutt,” 2011).

Discussion and Conclusion

Open letters to fans during struggling seasons fit within a larger context of college sport teams trying to build more personal relationships with fans. Steve Hank, associate AD for revenue at Arizona State, put it this way: “A lot of schools have transactional relationships with fans and not personal relationships—and that’s what people are looking for. We’re building a one-to-one connection” (cited in Wolverton & Richards, 2012, ¶ 30). Open letters to fans could affect interpersonal dimensions of communication and sport, as coaches and administrators attempt to successfully negotiate the complicated demands of successful image repair. We highlight five themes from our analysis of open letters to fans:

1. The letters surveyed here highlight the importance of considering audience as part of the equation of successful open letters to fans. The letters in our analysis were addressed to specific groups of fans; however, letters were also posted to blogs or reprinted (or excerpted) in news stories. (Indeed, the authors of this essay did not personally receive any of these letters, but instead, accessed them via public electronic venues, including blogs and Facebook.) Letters can move beyond a conventional private or personal context and, instead, become public messages (Stanley, 2004), with electronic media fundamentally changing the parameters of audience (Meyrowitz, 1985). Consequently, as the letters here reflect, writing to a specific fan group might not be an option for coaches or administrators during losing seasons. Audience is an important component of image repair (Benoit, 1995, 1997), and issues of audience are particularly complicated with an open letter format.

Letters using public venues, such as Facebook or blogs, not only widen the scope of the audience but also usher in a new level of audience interaction through readers’ comments. Stanley’s (2004) observation of the unique interpersonal nature of the open letter format takes on new dimensions when the letter is distributed through a venue that allows feedback, including counterarguments and refutations. For example, Anderson and Edsall’s letter to fans also appeared on the football program’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/MarylandFootball), but was later removed (Prisbell, 2011c). Prisbell (2011c, ¶ 1) reprinted the text in The Washington Post Sports blog, “to generate some feedback from fans,” and some readers’ were critical that the letter and negative comments were removed from Facebook, considering the move as an attempt to silence their criticisms. Scholarship of communication and sport has explored Facebook and other social media venues (e.g., Wallace, Wilson, & Miloch, 2011), and we contend that the dissemination of open letters on Facebook warrants particular attention.

2. We argue that corrective action is a particularly relevant and important image repair strategy to use in open letters to fans during losing or poor seasons. An empirical analysis of image repair in an interpersonal context found corrective action (and mortification) to be particularly effective (Benoit & Drew, 1997), and as previously noted, open letters have characteristics of interpersonal discourse (e.g., Stanley, 2004). Corrective action has also been found to be a successful image repair strategy in a number of analyses of image repair situations (e.g., Compton, 2012; Compton & Miller, 2011) and particularly during times of crises (Benoit, 1997). Coaches can characterize losses as opportunities to improve (Enterline, 2010).

We note, however, that corrective action is not without its risks, including in the context studied here. Corrective action represents a commitment to improve, so corrective action needs follow through to be successful and to avoid grounds for further image attacks (see Benoit, 1995a, 1995b, 1997). Note that Kevin O’Neill was fired (Eisenberg, 2013), Houston Nutt was asked to resign (“Houston Nutt,” 2011), and Pete Boone stepped down from his AD position (“Houston Nutt,” 2011) after their teams’ failures to improve. Kevin Anderson and Randy Edsall, however, remained at Maryland after their team successfully doubled their win total in the 2012 season. A commitment to corrective action has a clear metric for success: a win/loss record. “More often than not … fans and organizational personnel alike see winning only in terms of outscoring the opposition … ” (Kruse, 1981, p. 273). “In sports, one cannot hide a win-loss record” (Enterline, 2010, p. 57), or as Llewellyn (2003) put it,

The literal result of the games or the season is clearly presented on the scoreboard or in the box score. It remains for someone—usually coaches and commentators—to color the figures rhetorically to give them dramatic meaning. (p. 153)

As our analysis indicates, one way coaches contribute to the conversation is through open letters to fans during losing seasons, reflecting strategies of image repair.

It is interesting that none of the examples we surveyed here combined mortification with corrective action—a combination that has established efficacy in other contexts (Benoit & Drew, 1997). Other analyses of sport image repair have suggested the possible effectiveness of mortification to repair a damaged image (e.g., Brown et al., 2012; Walsh & McAllister-Spooner, 2011), and have noted an absence of mortification (e.g., Benoit & Hanczor, 1994) or weak mortification (e.g., Brazeal, 2008) as possible explanations for ineffective image repair efforts. Kruse (1981) contends that mortification is common in sport apologia for poor conduct:

[S]port figures are likely to say, “I’m sorry,” and express regret for their conduct. These apologists verbalize their remorse so frequently that this can be identified as a convention of the discourse. (p. 281)

Of course, mortification has potential implications as well. Coombs and Holladay (2002) point out potential legal ramifications of admitting fault in some circumstances, for example. A coach admitting poor coaching might be fired or will not have their contract extended (Enterline, 2010). Thus, using mortification in the context of a losing season might be more effective as a blanket apology for a poor record than a taking on of personal responsibility for the losing season.

3. Instead of attacking accusers—a tactic of reducing offensiveness—open letters to fans may need to praise would-be accusers. The three letters surveyed in this essay were thank you letters—thank you letters to some of the very fans that were “attacking” by not attending games. Boone’s letter was more clearly a conventional “fan letter,” or more specifically, a fan letter to fans. Anderson notes the importance of fan attendance, while subtly reminding the Terrapin fans that they needed to stick with the team through wins and losses. Fans and teams can be intertwined in complex ways; “The team’s victories and defeats are reacted to as personal successes and failures” (Cialdini et al., 1976, p. 374). Open letters during losing seasons have the difficult task of praising fans while implicitly scolding them for their lack of attendance. The image repair strategies in open letters during losing seasons highlight a unique challenge for image repair, and one that might cross into other contexts for image repair: How can an image be best repaired when the “attackers” are needed for the corrective action plan?

4. The tactic of transcendence is particularly applicable to a context of sports, as a way to shift the measure of success from win/loss records to more abstract considerations (Llewellyn, 2003). Other image repair analyses of sport rhetoric have pointed to the importance of highlighting sports values (e.g., Brazeal, 2008). Although open letters were addressed to fans, the administration also attempted to serve as their own gatekeepers by shifting the focus on the team away from the win/loss record and toward other metrics for success. For example, O’Neill points fans to the lessons learned by his team through the difficult season and notes that his team will continue to “Fight On” in the next season. When the following season did not provide more favorable results for a healthier USC team, O’Neill was ultimately replaced mid-season. Anderson uses his first letter to remind the Terrapin fans of Senior Day and assert that a better turnout for the game would be a way to honor the Seniors. Although causality cannot be proved, after Anderson’s letter, there was an increase of 7,500 in fan attendance between the two games (“Maryland Athletics,” 2011).

5. Defeasibility was a popular choice among image repair strategies found in open letters, but not in the conventional sense. Defeasibility efforts were used through a more subtle approach. O’Neill used preemptive defeasibility by highlighting the tough schedule the team would continue to have in the upcoming season. O’Neill also used a combination of defeasibility and corrective action when referencing the roster, reminding USC fans that he inherited an inexperienced roster and was also facing an uphill battle as the team was overcoming NCAA penalties that resulted from improper recruiting issues (Pucin, 2013). The subtle use of defeasibility is consistent with the genre of the open letter and with the role of coaches and administrators. Blatant attempts to suggest a lack of control could threaten perceptions of their leadership and damage the friendly, interpersonal tone of the letter.

The brief survey of open letters in this essay reveals complicated interactions between senders, receivers, and context (see Stanley, 2004, for general theorizing of the letter genre). Of course, even winning teams struggle with fan attendance (Wieberg, 2012; Wolverton & Richards, 2012). An open letter will not solve all of the problems of a struggling team, and it will not cause a team to suddenly start winning again. Nevertheless, we conclude that open letters are potentially effective modes of image repair during losing or poor seasons, reaching wide audiences through electronic news. Furthermore, an analysis of image repair efforts in open letters to fans during losing seasons offers a more nuanced view of apologia in general; “In that a principal objective of the team sport apologist is the repair of a damaged public image, the strategies the individual employs are the same ones used by all apologists” (Kruse, 1981, p. 280).

Suggestions for Further Research

Future studies should examine open letters to fans in professional sport (e.g., Sanderson, 2008). For example, Lawrence Tanenbaum, Chair of the Board of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, posted a letter to fans in 2012 after the team failed to advance to the play-offs (“Open letter,” 2012). Similar to the letters surveyed here, Tanenbaum praised the fans and employed a number of image repair strategies, including mortification, corrective action, and bolstering. Llewellyn (2003) observed that “coachtalk” might differ between college and professional sport.

Research should also assess letters to fans that are not meant to respond to losing seasons. For example, Peter Konz, a junior center for the Wisconsin Badgers, wrote a letter to fans to explain his decision to forego his senior year and enter the NFL draft. His letter includes many attempts at bolstering and praised his fans—a proactive appreciation for their continued support (“A letter,” 2012). Bolstering is a common feature of sport apologia (Kruse, 1981), and future research should consider whether bolstering plays prominently in the open letter.

Timing is an important part of the open letter image repair process. Future research should examine possible differences in strategies and effectiveness of strategies based on timing. In this study, we analyze two letters in the same season from Maryland. Note that the mid-season letter used different strategies as opposed to the end of season letter. Llewellyn (2003) called for more attention to changes in win–loss rhetoric during seasons, and Enterline (2010) observed differences in postgame press conferences when comparing regular season games to play-off games.

Finally, future studies should also explore fan letters to teams. Open letters can approximate dialogue, and sometimes, recipients respond—although the open letter is not particularly suited for responses from recipients (see Stanley, 2004).

Rhetorical analyses of case studies offers nuance to our understanding of losing seasons as crises; however, we do not yet have empirical evidence for effects of open letters. Research could follow the lead of empirical assessments of image repair in sports (e.g., Brown et al., 2012). Additionally, larger sample sizes and a random sample selection would be needed for increased confidence in representativeness.

A Final Recommendation

We conclude with a final recommendation. Coaches and administrators do not need to wait for a crisis before sending open letters to fans. Image repair can be used preemptively (Benoit, 1995a), or other preemptive image strategies, such as inoculation theory-informed campaigns (see Compton, 2012a, 2012b, 2013; McGuire, 1964) can preempt challenges to image before the challenges occur. The first author of this current essay is exploring a combined strategy of image repair strategies and tactics (Benoit, 1995a) and the framework of inoculation theory (Compton, 2013; McGuire, 1964), as a sort of image prepare strategy (Compton, 2012a). Open letters to fans, prior to anticipated difficult seasons, could be an optimum avenue for exploring this approach.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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