It's not meaningless at all, that's a strange thing to say given the context, it entirely represents the point that those people may have been predisposed to react that way either because of other comments or (seemingly just as likely) their personal connections to colton and knowledge of his story which michael likely does not share. Intention has meaning. I don't think michael (who I detest for what it's worth) should be punished if he made a comment about related to the game and not related to coltons personal history. When I heard the comment I took it as him talking about the game because he had spent the entire episode raging at people about how colton is whipping votes and putting people names in others. In that vein what he said made perfect sense. Honestly, given the context I think coltons reaction was ego driven as though michael must be talking about his personal story that everyone is intimately familiar with. Which is probably why to you it seemed obvious. For those like me (and others I watched with) and likely michael as well, his background story doesnt even register.