By JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Columnist on Sep 11, 2013, at 2:27 AM Updated on 9/11/13 at 3:59 AM
The din created by a handful of discontented former Oklahoma State football players on Tuesday was very nearly drowned out by a chorus of support from other ex-Cowboys.
In a much-anticipated but widely criticized Sports Illustrated report about OSU's football program from 1999-2011, allegations of payments by O-State coaches and boosters paint a picture that other Cowboy alums don't recognize.
And the level of distrust toward the former players quoted in the story - most of them either kicked out of the program or left prematurely for other reasons, several with long criminal records - is palpable.
"Listen only to the people that you perceive to have high integrity and character," said two-time All-American Rashaun Woods. "Follow what they say."
Woods, a four-year starter who played under Les Miles from 2000-03, declined additional comment until the entire series was published, except to add what many other former Cowboys said: He never saw anything resembling the image portrayed in the SI cover story.
No cash payments. No boosters in the locker room. No envelopes stuffed with cash. No bogus jobs.
According to the football media guide, 350 men suited up, got in a game and earned a letter at OSU from 1999-2011. But as of 10 p.m., not one other person came forward publicly on Tuesday and said, "That's what happened. That's exactly how it was."
Instead, dozens of former OSU players spent the day staunchly defending their program and their school.
"Today, we had a bunch of former Oklahoma State players, star athletes, say they didn't do anything wrong," ex-offensive lineman Sam Mayes said. "This is a victory for Oklahoma State."
Mayes, who played at OSU from 2001-04, hosts a radio show in Stillwater, and many of his guests Tuesday were former teammates who were incredulous at the accusations made and fingers pointed by a dozen ex-Cowboys who said they either got cash or saw others take cash from coaches or boosters for game performance, in surreptitious handshakes or from others in no-work jobs.
"I'm thrilled," Mayes said. "I'm thrilled that not only no one else has come out and supported those claims, but that all these guys have come out and supported their university."
Mayes and others acknowledged that the wide scope of the accusations - forthcoming reports reportedly will depict rampant drug use, sex for recruits and academic fraud - probably means some transgressions were real.
"You'd be pretty naïve," Mayes said, "to think that none of this is true."
But Mayes and others also said the enormity of Tuesday's report on illegal cash payments simply was not believable.
"They could have made up a lesser story and it would have been more believable," he said. "Something like, 'We drove to Pawnee and met a guy who gave us $1,000.' That's more believable than boosters walking through the locker room handing out envelopes full of cash.
"It's too big to believe. It's too big to take serious."
One high-ranking OSU athletic administrator told the Tulsa World on Tuesday that at no time are boosters allowed in the locker room, although former running back Tatum Bell said perhaps the lone exception to that rule would have been billionaire Boone Pickens.
That administrator, who flies with the team to road games, said the idea of boosters walking down the aisle of airplanes distributing cash payments to select players is laughably absurd.
Similarly, players getting bills stuffed into their hands during "The Walk" - the team walks a few blocks from the student union hotel to the stadium before home games - is incomprehensible. Thousands of witnesses attend "The Walk" each Saturday, and this is supposed to be some kind of secret way of breaking NCAA rules?
"It's ridiculous. Come on, man," Mayes said. "Even if Billy Bajema and Sam Mayes and Josh Fields and all us guys are just naïve, it's still visible enough to say, 'Oh, I do remember somebody handing somebody an envelope.'
"I sure as hell had a free meal once in a while, but to get $500 or $1,000 or $10,000, that's crazy."
Predictably, and rightfully so, critics of the report questioned the credibility of SI's sources. Of the 12 former players who either pointed fingers or admitted guilt, nine either were kicked out of school, dismissed from the program, transferred for playing time issues or just quit. Of those, several had criminal records.
SI did not mention those dismissals or arrests, however.
Bajema, a tight end from 2001-04 and a nine-year NFL veteran, said in an interview with Oklahoma City radio station WWLS it was difficult to see the program he and so many others worked so hard to build be besmirched, and blamed the disgruntled former players.
"To see it tarnished through sources that don't even seem credible," Bajema said, "it's tough."
Moreover, many former players strongly disputed the actual reporting.
Bell, now a high school football coach in the Denver area, was said to have declined comment, although one of the writers posted on Twitter that he had an audio interview with Bell (and others who made similar claims), but Bell said no one from Sports Illustrated ever contacted him.
And linebacker Rodrick Johnson, one of the primary accusers in the report, apparently posted on Facebook that he was "never paid or said anything negative about OSU" and called the article "lies."
Aso Pogi, who quarterbacked OSU 2000-02 and now is a youth director at a church in Lawton, said in an interview with Norman radio station KREF that his only quote in the story was from another topic entirely.
"The quotes that are in there," Pogi said, "are absolutely not accurate."
Original Print Headline: Ex-players staunchly defend OSU
