Gundy elaborates on job flirtations during SiriusXM interview
Published: 12/10/2012 11:35 AM
Last Modified: 12/10/2012 12:29 PM
I’ll be writing a story about what Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy said during his regularly scheduled Monday morning appearance on SiriusXM’s College Sports Nation show hosted by Mark Packer. In the meanwhile, here are selected questions and (lengthy) answers:
Question: When your name is in the coaching carousel for other jobs, your family has to be going crazy?
Gundy: With technology today and Internet today and all the chat rooms, most of what is out there is not true. But, as a coach, when you have success -- and it’s really the players that have provided these opportunities for me -- it has gone on every year that we have started playing well that people contact you and, because of that, most of what is said is not really true.
But if any of it is at all, you just don’t really talk about it much based on the people that are involved -- universities that are looking for coaches or whether they are out visiting with other potential candidates. They don’t necessarily want people to know that somebody is interested or not interested.
So, as a family, I obviously have a wife and three young boys at home, so it’s tough on everybody. I think that the perception out there is it’s fun for a coach and they like their name being out there and I can only speak for myself, but when it gets into a situation like that, it’s really not fun at all. Some people say ‘well, why don’t you just put a stop to all of it and just say this or that.’ But you just have to be careful. One thing I have learned in this profession -- not only in a potential job opportunity but in recruiting or any other situation -- you have to be careful what you say because you never know when something can happen. The truth be known is this: The way things are set up now in college football, it is basically booming through the roof and if you were in the stock market, it would just be going through the sky is that you have got to be careful what you say.
I have got a great job here at Oklahoma State. These people have been tremendous to me. I have a longterm contract. I am comfortable here. But you never know. You could get a call from somebody and they may offer something that is just out of the ordinary or through the roof and eventually you may say that’s an opportunity I can’t turn down, so you have just got to be careful to say anything. But it’s certainly not a fun situation.
One thing that I did here throughout the process is I had meetings with our team and I kept them up to date with what was going on and made sure they knew that if anything transpired here that they would be the first to know. And I think that’s really the way to handle it. But it has all settled down now. As some of these NFL jobs come open, there will be college coaches’ names pop up there, so it really never stops. With as much money involved as there is, it’s probably going to continue that way for years to come.
Question: Regardless of whether it’s coaching or radio or any other profession, wouldn’t you be doing yourself a disservice by closing a door?
Gundy: The one thing that I have tried to tell people that are close to the situation is if you deal with a hypothetical situation and you say John Smith is in his own private business and he has been in business with these other people for eight or 10 years. And they come to him with an opportunity to go to another business or the same type of business in another part of the country and they say while you are doing that we can give you a 50 percent pay raise, we can give you more years guaranteed on this particular business and are you interested?
In most cases... people are going to say ‘hey, honey, I’ve got to look and see what’s going on here because these people have offered me an opportunity. I don’t know what’s out there. I have never seen it. I need to listen to what they have to say.’ Unfortunately in college football or the NFL really for that matter, if you do that it becomes national news instantly. And so the decision becomes tougher because it’s not between the coach and his family and the administration at that school. It becomes everybody’s business and it makes it a much more difficult decision to make.
Question: It must be tough to handle when you out in public and people know about the speculation?
Gundy: The one thing that we have done here that has been good is we have been very honest with everybody involved. I’m out there in the public all the time with three young boys. I am at a basketball practice or recruiting or the wife makes me pick things up from the grocery store, so... I have not sheltered myself from the public. But everybody has an opinion and in most cases it is not driven by the things that are ultimately the most important. We try to do the best we can in understanding where our loyalties are and try to factor in the most important thing in making a decision like this is the players on our team, the 133 guys that are on our team because they are the ones ultimately that I am responsible for and they trust that I am going to make the best decisions for them. So it never gets mentioned. But the decisions that we have made or I have made are based on what is best for this team, first, and then, ultimately, what is best for my family and the university.
Written by
Jimmie Tramel
Sports Writer
