Oklahoma State booster T. Boone Pickens says he was disappointed by the Sports Illustrated series on Oklahoma State that began Tuesday.
Pickens wasn't implicated in the first installment of the series posted Tuesday morning that claimed coaches and boosters paid OSU football players thousands of dollars in bonus programs and for work not performed.
Pickens' doesn't address the specific allegations, saying only that the SI series isn't a reflection of what's going on in Stillwater today.
"There’s one word I have for the Sports Illustrated reporting on Oklahoma State University: Disappointing," Pickens says in his statement. "This series is not reflective of Oklahoma State University today. Many of their sensational allegations go back a decade ago."
Sports Illustrated’s special investigative report -- a five-part series titled “The Dirty Game” -- into the Oklahoma State football program was launched at 8 a.m. Tuesday on SI.com.
Each part of the series tackles a different topic and the initial topic was money.
Among allegations made by SI in the first part of the series:
--Former cornerback Calvin Mickens said he received $200 cash from a man he had never seen before while in the locker room after his first college game in 2005. He also said he got $800 from someone after another game that season.
Former linebacker Fath’ Carter said some players got “$500 handshakes” from boosters after an upset win over Oklahoma in 2001.
--SI said payments were made to players from 2001 to at least 2011 and they were delivered by way of a “bonus” system for performances on the field (managed by an assistant coach), direct payments from boosters and coaches that were unrelated to performance and “no-show and sham jobs” that included work related to the renovation of Boone Pickens Stadium.
SI concluded that not all players were rewarded. Former Cowboys estimated that between 15-20 players received money under the table in any given year. SI said some players received received $2,000 annually while a few stars allegedly received $25,000 or more.
“It was just like in life when you work,” former defensive back Thomas Wright told SI. “The better the job you do, the more money you make.”
--Former defensive tackle Brad Girtman said money was delivered to players in envelopes that contained per diem, plus more. Girtman said he got paid on the “low end,” but some players received “monster payments.” Wright said if players found a new pair of socks in the dressing room, the socks would sometimes contain cash.
--Girtman said pay rates for big defensive plays -- quarterback hurries, tackles, sacks -- were told to him by former assistant coach Joe DeForest, who left the program at 2011 to go to West Virginia.
Former linebacker Rodrick Johnson told the magazine that DeForest set rewards ranging from $100-$500 for big plays on special teams.
DeForest denied the allegations.
Girtman, Mickens and Johnson told SI they received bonus payments and named other players who allegedly received them. Former receiver Artrell Woods said former quarterback Bobby Reid’s bonus payments were cut off after he lost his starting job in 2007. Reid, now a member of OSU’s administrative staff, denied to SI that he received money.
--Girtman and former running back Seymore Shaw allege that DeForest and former running backs coach Larry Porter made direct payments to players. Girtman said DeForest gave him a debit card with $5,000 on it in 2003. Also, Girtman said DeForest once provided a list of boosters to call if he needed anything. Like DeForest, Porter denied the allegations.
--Shaw said that when he told Miles he needed a car to get to some classes, Miles introduced him to Kay Norris, an alumnus who allegedly overpaid Shaw for labor. Norris died in 2006.
SI also alleges that John Talley, an area director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, paid players for speaking engagements or sometimes compensated them for jobs they didn’t do.
Talley said he paid players an hourly fee and said he would never pay anyone “not to work.”
Former defensive end William Bell said someone from the coaching staff (he couldn’t remember who) directed him to a booster who paid him a “couple hundred dollars” to fish in a pond.
--DeForest was alleged to have overpaid players for work at his home, but told SI he paid them “fair market value based on services rendered.”
--OSU players signed up to move material or do clean-up work during the renovation at Boone Pickens Stadium. The contractor told SI that no player was paid for work not performed, but Mickens said he worked “at most a week” and was paid for an entire summer. He said he would show up, sign in and leave, sometimes rubbing dirt on his shirt to make it appear he had done work.
“The Dirty Game” will be the cover subject on this week’s issue of SI and it will spill over into next week’s issue of the magazine.
Subsequent parts of the series will appear on SI.com on a daily basis this week and the final chapter will appear next week. The schedule:
--Part 2 topic: Academics (Wednesday). An SI press release about the project said this part of the series will allege “widespread academic misconduct, which included tutors and other OSU personnel completing coursework for players, and professors giving passing grades for little or no work, all in the interest of keeping top players eligible.”
--Part 3 topic: Drugs (Thursday). Said the SI press release, “OSU tolerated and at times enabled recreational drug use, primarily through a specious counseling program that allowed some players to continue to use drugs while avoiding penalties. The school’s drug policy was selectively enforced, with some stars going unpunished despite repeated positive tests.”
--Part 4 topic: Sex (Friday). SI alleges that OSU’s hostess program, Orange Pride, figured so prominently in the recruitment of prospects that the group more than tripled in size under former head coach Les Miles. Both Miles and current head coach Gundy took the unusual step of personally interviewing candidates, according to SI, which also alleges that multiple former players and Orange Pride members say that a small subset of the group had sex with recruits, a violation of NCAA rules.
--Part 5 topic: The Fallout (Tuesday, Sept. 17): SI alleges that many players who were no longer useful to the football program were cast aside, returning to worlds they had hoped to escape. Said SI’s press release, “Some have been incarcerated, others live on the streets, many have battled drug abuse and a few have attempted suicide.”
Some allegations leaked out prior to the debut of the series and former OSU safety Markelle Martin took to social media to weigh in with a response.
Wrote Martin, “I think all the scandal and rumors about my positional coach (DeForest) is crazy. Paying players, bounty system, changing grades? I can speak for a four-year span and say I have never been paid to play. I made do with my scholarship that I earned. We didn’t need a bounty system. We’re DBs. It’s our job to hit...
“As for changing grades, we all know I was academically suspended and grinded my way back, pushing 15 hours in season, earning my degree. Now they want to question all that hard work? Hell yeah I’m offended.”
According to promo material distributed by SI, OSU was chosen for examination because the once-struggling program (11 losing seasons in 12 years) rose to national prominence, winning a Big 12 title and a BCS bowl in 2011.
SI said the rise was aided by OSU taking “extreme measures... with an increased willingness to cut corners and bend rules. The transgressions began under former coach Les Miles, who was the head coach in Stillwater from 2001 to ’04 and is now the head coach at LSU, and continued under current head coach Mike Gundy, who was promoted from offensive coordinator in 2005.”
Executive editor Jon Wertheim, assistant managing editor Hank Hersch and executive editor B.J. Schecter oversaw the investigative report, which was written and reported by senior writers George Dohrmann and Thayer Evans.
“We wanted to take a comprehensive look at a big-time program, particularly one that made a rapid ascent,” Wertheim said in the release. “There’s obviously a steady drumbeat of scandal in college sports -- improper benefits here; a recruiting violation there -- and plenty of rumor and hearsay about the unseemly underbelly. For this piece, we were more about venturing inside the factory and seeing how the sausage is made.”
A few hours before SI went public with its coverage plan Monday, OSU athletic director Mike Holder addressed the magazine’s project at the end of Gundy’s regular weekly press conference.
“We’re all committed to playing by the rules and doing things the right way, and for people to say that is not what’s happening is very disturbing,” Holder said.
“Our goal is to separate fact from fiction, and then we can start dealing with it. We’ve already notified the NCAA, and they’re going to assign an investigator to this. We’ll reach out and get someone to stand with that investigator and go through the facts. And at the end of the day, we’ll come to some conclusions, and we’ll deal with those. We’ll prop ourselves back up, polish up that OSU brand and move on down the road.”
