The Sports Illustrated project on Oklahoma State hasn't been published yet, but already national media are sounding off on the magazine's nearly year-long investigation. Here's what national radio host Dan Patrick had to say on his show Monday morning:
"Here’s the only concern I have with this, as far as everybody latching onto this. You realize the Miami investigation’s been going on for what, three years now? And you had payments, you had strip clubs, you had a lot of different things involved there. You didn’t have any names there. It was Miami, but this isn’t the U. This isn’t what it once was. North Carolina. You remember everything going on at North Carolina? Nobody cares about that because it was North Carolina football. Nobody cared about that.
"Oklahoma State, there’s no Heisman Trophy winner attached to this, Mike Gundy’s name I don’t know how attached it is to it, so for a college football fan to be interested in this, while it’s great investigative reporting, are you surprised by anything that would be in this report? I knew of a school where there were girls and their job was on your first recruiting visit, they slept with you. It does happen. Payments, are you surprised? If T. Boone Pickens is in here, the great benefactor at Oklahoma State, the billionaire, if he’s involved in it, OK, then it has some legs. Dez Bryant might be in here. Maybe there’s a little bit with his career there at Oklahoma State.
"Are we surprised with anything, that you have drugs, you have academic fraud? You might be saying, 'Well, yeah, isn’t that a big issue? Isn’t that a big deal?' Not to me, because it’s been going on (at other schools). It goes on all the time. You know why we cared about Oklahoma and Barry Switzer? Because they were Oklahoma with Barry Switzer and they had uzies. Everybody had guns. They had a frat house. They had drugs. They had women.
" ... It’s big business. How do you want to get these kids in there? You’ve got to do this. 'Oh, you’re not going to pay me, officially pay me? Then unofficially pay me. And what else can you give me? I don’t want to go to class.' 'Don’t worry about going to class.' 'I want a summer job, but I don’t want to work.' 'All right.' 'Got any women? I go to other schools and they give me this.'
" ... Come on. They’re getting paid. They’re not getting paid by the coach. It’s in a surreptitious, clandestine way. If a booster gives you money, who following that? Does anybody have anybody (at OSU) taking money? Dez Bryant, is there a picture of him taking money at Oklahoma State? I don’t know. If there’s not, I just don’t think people are shocked by any of this stuff."
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