More stories (peanut butter-stained arms?) from OSU football book
Published: 7/17/2012 9:21 AM
Last Modified: 7/17/2012 9:21 AM
Here's one more dose of excerpts from the new book ("More Than a Championship) about Oklahoma State's 2011 football season.
The book was co-authored by OSU sideline reporter Robert Allen and head coach Mike Gundy. Though the book is centered on the Cowboys' Big 12 championship season, two early chapters deal with Gundy's background.
--After being named OSU’s head coach, Gundy (a former OSU quarterback) said he got his “New York Yankees job.” In hindsight, he said he was too naive to know that “we really didn’t have it very good around here.”
Gundy was referring to facilities, which are now top-flight thanks to donations from Boone Pickens, who is pictured in the book with the Big 12 championship trophy.
--Defenders had a difficult time slowing down Justin Blackmon. Peanuts apparently stop him in his tracks.
A game at Tulsa included a lengthy storm delay. Coaches' wives made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for players so they wouldn’t return to the field with empty stomachs.
“We had to make Justin a jelly sandwich,” Jennifer Singleton, wife of running backs coach Jemal Singleton, said.
“They came in and told us that Justin was allergic to peanuts. It was just like making them for our kids except there was so much more. We had peanut butter and jelly all over us -- up our arms and all over -- because it was just assembly line and we were making them as fast as we could.”
--Co-defensive coordinator Glenn Spencer lost his wife, Angela, during the course of the season.
In a vignette for the book, Spencer wrote that his wife passed away “not only to remind us all of the frailty of life, but to test the faith of a husband and a family, to reveal the character of the leader of an organization and to forever influence the lives of over 100 young men who found that a championship will never compare to the love of a Godly woman.”
The week after Angela died, OSU played a Big 12 opener at Texas A&M and rallied from a 17-point halftime deficit to remain on course for a book-worthy season. The Cowboys won their first Big 12 championship and their first BCS bowl.
Written by
Jimmie Tramel
Sports Writer
