Dallas ? My biggest problem with Mike Gundy isn’t that he yelled at a newspaper columnist (happens all the time) or that he chose to do it in a public forum (that’s his right) or that he made an outrageous fool of himself on TV (been there myself).

My biggest problem is that Oklahoma State was off to a terrible start and had just scored a very large Big 12 victory that might play a significant role in turning around the program and competing at least for second place in the Big 12 South and that Gundy chose that time to go after The Oklahoman columnist Jenni Carlson.

What a goof.

Outside Stillwater or Lubbock, where a defensive coordinator just lost his job, no one is talking about the Cowboys’ 49-45 victory over the Red Raiders. But people from Ontario, Calif., to Ontario, Canada, are laughing at Gundy’s tirade on YouTube or any of a number of sports-related shows.

Gundy said his motive was to defend the honor of benched QB Bobby Reid, whose toughness was called into question by the columnist. That’s reasonable, I guess.

But do it in your Monday news conference after the win. Don’t do it after you’ve just knocked off a worthy opponent on Saturday.

In case you somehow missed it, Gundy held up a copy of The Oklahoman and went after Carlson’s column. He said three-fourths of it was inaccurate although Carlson, to her credit, asked him then and again Monday to point out any errors, which Gundy refused to do.

Carlson led her column with the fact that Reid was having his mother feed him chicken outside a bus Friday and seemed to think this called the QB’s toughness into question. I don’t know how that makes a lot of sense, particularly in light of the fact that it’s not unusual for very tough African-American athletes to have very strong bonds with their mothers. But beyond that, there was nothing really personal in the column related to Reid.

If you’re a quarterback at a top college program where fans care as passionately about their teams as the fans of professional clubs (perhaps moreso), then you have reason to expect criticism.

And if you play in Oklahoma or in Alabama where there are no pro teams in the major sports leagues and your schools generate just about all the sporting passion above the high school level in the state, you have reason to expect more criticism.

There’s a price that comes with that free ride, and it’s understood.

I have to completely disagree with Football Writers Association of America president Mike Griffith who said Gundy’s response “could have been handled in a more private and appropriate manner.”

No way.

We critique coaches and athletes and we put big, bold headlines on it in the very public forum that is a newspaper, or we say it on TV and then when they want to respond, it needs to be handled privately so as not to embarrass us?

Absolutely not.

Gundy had the right to respond in front of all those cameras.

That he chose to do it in a way that made him look foolish and that he then refused to take any questions about his team’s victory is what stands out in this story.