Commentary: OSU coach’s tirade leaves a bad mark

It turns out Mike Gundy has a little fire after all.

Strange as it seems after last weekend’s YouTube instant classic, but that’s a question some Oklahoma State fans were asking about his deer-in-the-headlights look as his team got pushed around two weeks ago by Troy.

No longer. Now you can merely question Gundy’s decorum. And his sense of timing.

The Cowboys should have been basking in Saturday’s 49-45 win against Texas Tech, a thriller not decided until stopping Tech on downs at the OSU 15. Instead, Gundy sullied it with a three-minute rant over a newspaper column.

“This article embarrasses me to be involved with athletics,” Gundy said, holding up The Oklahoman and pointing to Jenni Carlson’s column on demoted quarterback Bobby Reid.

“That article had to be written by a person that doesn’t have a child – and never has had a child that’s had their heart broken and come home upset.”

He was just getting warmed up. Within seconds, Gundy had stepped out from behind the podium – eyes blazing, voice bouncing off the walls, pointing in what appears to be the direction of the offending writer.

“Where are we at in society today?” Gundy roared. “Come after me! I’m a MAN! I’m 40!”

At this point, the mind flashes back to Howard Dean’s famed meltdown on the 2004 presidential campaign trail. One half-expected Gundy to punctuate his rant with a voice-cracking “YEEAAAAaaahhh!”

No such luck. Gundy ended with, “It makes me want to puke.”

A little setup here. Reid began the season as the starter, then got dinged up early in a win against FAU. Before Troy, OSU coaches stressed all week that Reid was still their guy – right up until Zac Robinson trotted out for the first series.

When Gundy was evasive about why the sudden switcheroo, reporters began nosing around. An unexplained QB change at a BCS-league school has a tendency to spur that.

Word from Oklahoman sources indicated Reid’s attitude may have been at the core. Carlson, in her columnist role, began trying to connect those dots with other vignettes from Reid’s stay at OSU.

Honestly, it wasn’t the best job of dot-connecting. And it certainly painted Reid in an unflattering light when it opened with a scene near the team bus at Troy in which Reid – cellphone in one hand, box lunch in the other – was being fed chicken by his mother.

The implication: Mama’s boy. Coddled.

Ouch.

“He’s a good kid!” Gundy argued. “He’s not a professional athlete and he doesn’t deserve to be kicked when he’s down.”

Give Gundy partial credit for standing up for his player. But let’s dissect those last words.

Reid is no kid. He’s a 21-year-old junior. Old enough to vote, to sign his own legal documents, to serve his country. Plenty of “kids” his age are serving in Iraq right now.

And though college athletes don’t play for a paycheck, they do get a scholarship. Those in-kind goods and services aren’t exactly cheap.

Does that leave college athletes open game? Discretion remains the rule. Then again, Gundy didn’t help his cause by going personal with Carlson.

“Who’s the kid here?” the coach bellowed Saturday. “Who’s the kid here? Are you kidding me?”

Maybe, just maybe, it’s the 40-year-old MAN.