Blatnick’s silence to continue all season
Published: 10/11/2010 9:31 AM
Last Modified: 10/12/2010 7:47 PM
As recently as late July, Jamie Blatnick was regarded by Oklahoma State coaches and officials as being among the best and brightest members of the football team. The junior defensive end was selected to represent OSU during the Big 12 Media Days session in Irving, Texas.
Only a few days after the Big 12 event, Blatnick was involved in a Stillwater bar fight. He was charged with felony aggravated assault after having been accused of striking former Cowboy teammate Steve Denning in the face with a beer bottle. Denning sustained multiple lacerations and a fractured orbital socket.
During the first two weeks of OSU’s preseason camp, Blatnick watched each Cowboy practice while working on the StairMaster machine. It was a tedious and grueling punishment, but, coach Mike Gundy says now, “he never complained.”
On Aug. 27, Blatnick received a deferred sentence after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor assault and battery.
Blatnick since has worked his way back into the starting lineup, but he’ll have to do all of his talking on the field. He was not made available for media interviews in August or September, and, apparently, will not be available for the rest of the season.
Gundy says that as long as Blatnick is a member of the Cowboy program, he “never” again will be brought to any news conference or postgame session. Wide receiver Bo Bowling, who during the spring served a two-week jail sentence on a drug conviction, took questions during Media Day in August, but Blatnick has been muzzled.
After the bar-fight incident, Gundy recalls his message to Blatnick as having been this: “If you want to quit, then you might as well quit right now. That’s a choice you make. You made a dumb decision. Here’s your punishment. If you want to quit, then quit. So be it.”
Gundy says he received “400 e-mails telling me that I was too mean to him, and 400 e-mails telling me that I should kick him off the team.”
-- Bill Haisten
Written by
Bill Haisten
Sports Writer
