By JIMMIE TRAMEL Sports Writer on Sep 17, 2013, at 11:02 AM Updated on 9/17 at 11:02 AM
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
Former receiver Artrell Woods was a focal point in the final chapter of Sports Illustrated's five-part investigative series ...
On Friday, Sports Illustrated’s five-part investigative look (“The Dirty Game”) at the Oklahoma State football program focused ...
For a story in today's Tulsa World, I talked to Melanie Page, an Oklahoma State psychology professor who was quoted in an ...
Former Oklahoma State receiver Artrell Woods is down and out. He suffered a spinal injury (and temporary paralysis) due to a freak weightlifting accident while at OSU. He came back from the injury to play, first at OSU and then at Central Oklahoma. Now he says his back hurts more than ever before and he wants money because of his pain and his suffering -- and he wants to launch his own business.
Woods was a waiter at a chain restaurant in his hometown of Bryan, Texas, when he was interviewed by Sports Illustrated for “The Dirty Game.” The final chapter of the story was essentially a where-are-they-now which focused on players who did not finish their careers for various reasons.
I called Woods yesterday. Among things he said:
“I’ve got people jumping on my Facebook and jumping on me like ‘stuff happens to everybody.’... Well, (expletive) not everybody breaks their back and gets paralyzed. (Stuff) happens to everybody, but if that doesn’t happen to you, then don’t tell me how I should feel afterwards, especially when I’m doing something I don’t want to do in the first place.”
I talked to two former players yesterday who had spinal issues while at OSU. Ex-cornerback Andrew McGee broke his neck in 2009 and returned to play in 2010. Now he’s a graduate assistant coach at West Virginia, which, coincidentally, is OSU’s next opponent.
I asked McGee if he hopes Woods finds peace.
“I wish all guys that are in his position would find peace,” McGee said.
“I don’t know, and I can’t speak on his specific situation, but one thing I came to know is the more I look back on my life, every decision I was making made me who I am today.”
SI’s story said players from bad environments view college as a way to change their lives, but the magazine concluded that many former Cowboys slid back into the depths after parting company with the program.
“Of course there are going to be situations people are going to be put in that are going to be tough,” McGee said.
“I know stories of guys who were in bad situations... and I was in somewhat of a same situation. I know 100 other guys who were. But (for former players) to still play the card of ‘I came from this’ or ‘I came from that’ and you have an asset of a program like Oklahoma State and you don’t take full advantage of it, it’s not anyone else’s fault except yours. You can’t blame it on anyone else -- and definitely you can’t blame it on the program.”
McGee said there were a ton of players in the program who made the decision “to do the right thing and bought in and everything worked out great for them. That’s my story, exactly.”
SI apparently chose OSU as a case study to point out things that are wrong with college athletics, thus the title of “The Dirty Game.” During the five-part series, OSU backers expressed concerns about the magazine choosing to use primarly disgruntled former players as sources. Greg Gold and Aso Pogi are among former players who told me an interviewer asked questions in such a way as to suggest that they had been wronged by OSU and this was a chance to return fire. Gold said some player weren’t smart enough to avoid “the trap.”
McGee isn’t going to say Woods or any of his ex-teammates were bad kids. That would serve no purpose. Moreso, he said they some just seemed to have a belief that things were always somebody else’s fault or a coach had something against them.
“Unfortunately guys left there bitter because they couldn’t look at themselves and have some self-evaluation on what they were doing wrong,” McGee said. “And that’s just not them. That’s all over the place. Unfortunately, for Oklahoma State, the focus became on them on this issue.”
In Woods case, he left OSU because he wanted to continue his playing career instead of being on a medical scholarship. Woods alleged that coach Mike Gundy offered a medical scholarship just to free up a scholarship for another player. Sources close to Gundy say he was worried about Woods’ safety and the coach didn’t want it to be on his conscience if a player who was once paralyzed wound up on a stretcher.
That’s a tough decision for a coach.
“Actually that was in the back of my coaches’ heads back when I was hurt,” McGee said.
“After I found out that my neck was broken, the doctor came and told me that I was lucky. I’m blessed and I understand that I should be paralyzed and maybe even dead, but I thank God that he showed me mercy and grace and not allow my neck to be as serious as it could have been. But I look at that as something that has really made me who I am. My testimony is my story and I embraced it.”
Post-injury, Gundy and assistant coaches called McGee’s parents and double-checked and triple-checked to make sure they were OK with their son resuming his career, according to McGee.
“When the doctors cleared me, I knew I would play,” he said. “There might have been a little bit of hesitation and (I was) being a little timid, but I knew I would. It was on their conscience way more than it was on mine. And they wanted to triple check. They did whatever they could. I even had to wear a big neck collar in practice. They wouldn’t even let me practice without the neck collar. I said that was fine. But they didn’t ever want that to be hanging over their heads.”
