About five months ago I formally announced I would no longer be writing for The Nicholls Worth, but taking another job where sports would still be my main focus. Recently, I have been starting to feel withdrawal from writing either weekly or bi-weekly columns for the newspaper and feeling the itch to write again for the place that employed me for over two years.
Surprisingly, I needed a spark to get my creative juices flowing. Then it hit me, or, actually, YouTube hit me. I had just finished watching the Georgia Bulldogs come back to beat Alabama when a colleague of mine posted a new video on MySpace of one of the best coach tirades since Jim Mora’s “diddly squat” rant, which can now be seen in numerous Coors Light commercials.
Apparently, when Les Miles left the corral at Oklahoma State, his successor Mike Gundy learned nothing from him. Gundy went crazy during a weekly press conference when dealing with an article from that day’s Oklahoman”.
At one point during the press conference, Gundy shouted, “That is why I don’t read the newspaper, because it’s garbage, and the editor that let it come out, is garbage!”
Jenni Carlson, who wrote the article, has been surprisingly steadfast through this whole ordeal.
In the highly controversial article, Carlson surmised that OSU’s benched quarterback, Bobby Reid, no longer played because he was too “soft”. If that wasn’t enough, Carlson witnessed Reid, after a loss to the Troy Trojans, being hand-fed chicken from his mother.
Let me say that again-he was seen being hand-fed chicken by his mother. That’s the equivalent of wanting to get Bret Michaels’ name tattooed on your neck; you can never recover from something like that no matter how much you scrub.
After beating Texas Tech, Gundy went off on Carlson among her peers in the post game press conference, believing what he was doing was in the best interest of one of his “defenseless” players. Not to mention that this “defenseless” player is 21-years old.
It got even more interesting when he thought because Carlson had no children, she was incapable of understanding what it was like to defend “one of your own children.” After waxing poetic for nearly 3 1/2 minutes, he exited the room without even mentioning his team’s exciting victory.
Now this is where a coach crosses the line from healthy athletic competition to outrageous disillusionment. Gundy obviously believes that because he coaches a sport, he is the all-knowing, wise sage of life and everything good. Granted, the right coach does provide guidance and support for college athletes, but others feel wisdom is bestowed upon them by the number of zero’s in their paychecks.
Gundy trying to defend a sport that is by no means amateur anymore is laughable at best, especially considering how free clothes, shoes, hats and luxurious locker rooms seem to be totally acceptable for players. A prime example is the car Razorback running back Darren McFadden drives down the streets of Fayetteville, Arkansas, a candy red import better fit for Boss Hog than a collegiate football player.
As a columnist, getting critiqued comes with the territory. When you put your views for the general public to see, not everyone is going to agree with you. All Gundy did was make himself more of a target for scrutiny and ridicule.
In the days after his statements, Gundy didn’t apologize but said he wishes he could have said more. However, he’s patched up his relationship with Carlson and will continue to give interviews to The Oklahoman.
Maybe eventually we can give Gundy one of his own Coors Light commercials. It seems the only thing he’s useful for these days is a good joke.
