STILLWATER — As usual, the
media showed up for Mike Gundy’s
weekly press conference.
But this was not a usual Monday.
People with notebooks and recorders
and cameras were curious
to see how the Oklahoma State football
coach would handle questions
about a pending Sports Illustrated
project that will allege across-theboard
wrongdoings in the Cowboys’
rise from struggling program to national
prominence.
Gundy came to the press conference
armed with
a prepared statement.
“I know you
guys are going to
have questions
about Sports Illustrated
and obviously
I’m here
to talk about Lamar,”
he said, referring
to the opponent for a Saturday
home opener.
“There won’t be any further comment
from me concerning this issue. 1, the opening day of fall camp.
“Our goal has always been to take young people from where their families, their parents, have gotten them and to make them better over a four- or five-year period. We’re very proud of that in many ways. Until further time, which the university obviously will make that decision, there’s not any comment we would have on the Sports Illustrated article.”
SI’s five-part series, titled “The Dirty Game,” will be launched 8 a.m. Tuesday on SI.com. Subsquent segments will appear — a topic per day — this week and Tuesday of next week.
At the end of Gundy’s press conference, he was asked if he is looking forward to sharing his side of the story.
“I think the university looks forward to when they can give our side,” he said, adding that it’s not an “individual” story.
“I’ll be real honest with you. I know the part that may have involved me. I’m not sure we know it all yet. But we’ve had tremendous support from administration, from the people behind the scenes who have looked at this and researched it.”
Gundy said once OSU officials gather all information, they will see where mistakes were made “and we’ll try to make ourselves better and we’ll correct it and then we’ll move forward. And I would hope that there will be some of it that we look at and say ‘I’m not sure one way or the other based on what’s out there.’”
After Gundy’s press conference, athletic director Mike Holder spoke briefly(a consensus opinion seemed to be that he hit a home run) and did not take questions. OSU officials are expected to stage a press conference during, or in the aftermath, of the SI series.
Before Gundy addressed local media, he provided “no comment” answers when asked SI-related questions on a Big 12 teleconference. But he was talkative when interviewed on SiriusXM’s College Sports Nation program.
Gundy was asked if he will talk to his team about avoiding SI-related distractions.
“They are young people,” he said. “They do read and they do listen to things. The social networking and the Facebook and the Internet, all that stuff is out there. What we want our players to know is, just like any other situation with our football team, they need to have an internal understanding of what is really important and what actually affects their life and their everyday ability to continue to get an education and play the game of football and be a part of the team.”
Gundy suggested players will have to be careful about responding to people who might say things on social media.
“Human instinct for all of us is if we feel like somebody is saying something about us that we don’t think is true, we want to respond back right away,” he said.
“... For our players that know what we are all about here at Oklahoma State, they are going to want to respond back right now. They are going to want to fight back. Well, they can’t do that because it doesn’t serve a purpose.”
Gundy indicated the SI series could be a life lesson. He said players will have incidents they must deal with as they get older “and that’s what life is all about. This is another reason that college football is the greatest teaching tool there is for life because it’s not easy and it never will be. We tell them that. We tell them the truth. This is what is going on. This is how we handle it. You will be faced with things later in life that are far worse than this. We move forward and rally as a group to be a team.”
It was suggested to Gundy during the SiriusXM session that once stories take on a life of their own, people want to rush to judgment and it becomes difficult to separate fact from fiction. Gundy said there’s no doubt about that.
“I think at the end of the day everybody has to make a decision on where the information is coming from,” he said. “Who are the sources and then how much validity is there? That’s what we are looking and waiting to see. ... Because inside our program, and I have been here (13 consecutive seasons) now, as soon as those situations hit, I’ll know how much of it is valid and how much of it is not.”
Up next
Vs. Lamar
6:30 p.m. Saturday
Radio: KFAQ am1170
Eric Bailey 918-581-8391
eric.bailey@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Gundy: Cowboys focused on team
