Playing quiet game helped author of OSU football book gain inside info
Published: 6/23/2012 7:57 AM
Last Modified: 6/23/2012 7:57 AM
In Friday’s Tulsa World, I wrote a story that said Cowboy Sports Network sideline reporter Robert Allen has authored a book which will provide an insider’s account of OSU’s historic 2011 football season.
Allen said some items that would have been too sensitive to write about during the course of the season are no longer forbidden subjects. Said Allen, “(It’s) kind of like when the FBI or the CIA declassifies files.”
That raises this question: Did Allen have coach Mike Gundy’s permission to declassify the files?
The answer is yes. In fact, Allen said Gundy contributed so much to the book that the coach will be listed as a co-author. And, if Gundy was opposed to an insider book, he wouldn’t have granted Allen permission to be in rooms where many people would have loved to have been a fly on the wall.
For instance:
New offensive coordinator Todd Monken agreed to run a system that had been installed by the previous offensive coordinator, Dana Holgorsen. Monken had to be taught the system, which was problematic since Holgorsen did not use a playbook and did not donate a semblance of one when he left.
Fortunately for Monken, quarterback Brandon Weeden had run the offense the previous season. Monken learned the offense by meeting with Weeden and two graduate assistants who knew a thing or two about how Holgorsen’s machinery functioned.
One other person was in the room, too. Guess who.
Allen asked Gundy for permission to sit in on the learn-the-offense sessions. Monken was cool with it, but only if Allen agreed to the following terms: Don’t talk.
“Anybody who knows me knows that is a challenge,” said Allen, who hosts a sports radio talk show in Stillwater.
Allen apparently clammed up long enough to gain valuable insight for the book.
“A lot of people thought it was Weeden teaching Monken the offense,” Allen said. “It was more of an equal exchange. That was where Todd initially started putting some of his own spin on it. He would say ‘what would you think if we did this?’ And Brandon would say ‘yeah, that would work.’ Literally, over a three-night period, they constructed the offense.”
--Jimmie Tramel.
Written by
Jimmie Tramel
Sports Writer
