By making a stupid decision, Blackmon risks bright future
Published: 10/27/2010 8:29 PM
Last Modified: 10/27/2010 8:29 PM
During a span of about six weeks, Justin Blackmon rocketed from national anonymity to stardom. He’s on everyone’s radar. NFL scouts have noticed. Blackmon’s future is bright – unless he makes a habit of driving 92 mph, and doing it at 3:45 a.m., and doing it in a Dallas suburb when he should have been in his Stillwater apartment.
And doing it all after, allegedly, consuming alcohol.
It’s never a good idea to make an out-of-state jaunt – during a game week – that the head coach has not authorized. Until he received a 6:51 a.m. phone call on Tuesday, informing him that Blackmon had been arrested on a DUI complaint and spent several hours in a Carrollton, Texas, jail, Mike Gundy says he had no idea that his stud wide receiver had traveled to the Metroplex to watch Monday’s Dallas Cowboy game.
I don’t pretend to actually know Blackmon, but I’ve interviewed him on numerous occasions and he seems like a genuinely good guy. He was his class president at Plainview High School in Ardmore. Everyone in the Cowboy program seems to like him.
If Blackmon were a head case, I would have heard about it by now. OSU’s Mike & Mike – Gundy and Holder – have a limited tolerance for head-case athletes.
Gundy has suspended Blackmon for this week’s Kansas State contest. For having done something so incredibly stupid when he was supposed to be preparing his mind and body for a Big 12 road game, Blackmon got off easy with a one-game penalty.
And while Blackmon may feel like he’s been struck by misfortune, he’s actually extremely lucky. What if there had been an accident at 92 mph?
-- Bill Haisten
Written by
Bill Haisten
Sports Writer
