Oklahoma State coach Gundy blasts Oklahoman columnist

And nobody puts Gundy in the corner.

 

How do you know she didn't get that info straight from an assistant coach, or even Gundy himself, and used the "rumors and rumblings" as a way to shield her source?

I agree it wasn't a great, nor even good, column. It needed some serious editing. But saying Carlson had "no legitimate facts" is pure speculation.

 

I don't doubt that what she wrote was true. Everybody who has covered a college or pro team knows a ton of things from behind the scenes that unfortunately rarely, if ever, make the paper...

 

Well, if you have a source who doesn't want to be named, you say "an anonymous source," don't you?

"Back stories" and "rumblings" sounds a lot like "beat writer gossip" and "message-board posts." (Which are often one and the same, of course.)

That doesn't mean what she said isn't true -- hell, I'm sure it is true. Nonetheless, it's hardly the kind of thing I'd want my paper's columnist sourcing a column around on my beat.

 

That's the irony. The coach was upset because somebody basically called his QB "soft". Now, because of his rant, the entire freakin' world knows that his QB is (allegedly) soft and hundreds of thousands more (if not millions) know about his mom feeding him chicken and that he was laughing on the sidelines.

Way to minimize the impact of that column. :

 

Really disappointed that there are so many people who won't stick up for one of our colleagues. This is very much an us-against-them, black-white issue.

You either support A COLLEGE FOOTBALL COACH and the knuckle-dragging yahoos who are thrilled by his dressing down of a reporter, or you support ONE OF OUR COLLEAGUES.

For me, the choice is incredibly easy.

Here's a post from a (non-OSU) message-board discussion of the incident. Do you want to be on this side?


I have to say I fully support this guy and I am real happy he was standing behind his statements on Monday and not caving and apologizing. I also like the fact that other coaches are supporting him against these a-hole journalists. I read the gals article, and she was definitely questioning the kid's character (the QB who was benched, Ried), and I read the other columnists's article attaking Gundy and insulting him in more ways than one.

My question is: who do these journalists think they are, and why do they think they can attack people's character w/out any retaliation. The gal was questioning the klid's toughness, and I'm pretty sure she has never played football in her life, so what qualifies her to question a kid's toughness? And this Dodd character is just a big nerd. I can't imagine anyone other than other, loser, journalists would support these 2 idiots.

 

Again, I ask the question: Does it matter if what Carlson wrote is actually the truth?

I'll agree that writing a column on the basis of rumor and "back stories on the sly" is not good. But what if those "rumors" were actually fed to her by numerous sources within the program -- assistant coaches, other players, etc.

I don't know if they were or weren't, but I refuse to believe Carlson was just making up stuff, throwing it against the wall, and seeing what stuck. Hell, I don't even cover that program and I know enough to know some of what Carlson wrote is dead on. Tales of Bobby Reid's wussiness are legendary.

And, yeah, it would be nice if she had talked to Reid. It would also be nice if big-time college programs made their key players available in good times and in bad. But knowing how OSU operates, there's no doubt that the minute Reid got demoted, he also became off-limits to the media.

Again, I don't want to defend this column completely -- because, you're right, it does look lazy and baseless. At the same time, what if it's spot on? Does that make a difference?

 

No, I probably wouldn't want a column writing something like that on my beat.

But in general, I think columns should be allowed to include more innuendo and what-ifs than a straight news story. I think a column(ist) can be very valuable in saying the things that a beat writer can't.

 

There's no way she just made it up...

We've all had coaches make sweeping statements like "Half that article is fabricated..." and then when they're called on it, they can't tell you what was made up...

 

"Black dude with pompano" is SportsJournalists.com's most inscrutable username since "Evil...Thy Name is Orville Redenbacher!" Much respect for that.

But as has been said over and over again on this thread, it's not an either/or thing. I think almost everyone here agrees that Gundy's a self-righteous asshole who made a fool out of himself.

Though we don't like Gundy or the mouth-breathing idiots who support him, we're not required to fall all over ourselves to praise Jenni Carlson out of some idiotic "solidarity."

 

OK, I work in Oklahoma for the "rival paper" and know Jenni, so I've held off comments so far. But I have a few thoughts.

First off, I think the idea of Reid being soft isn't the main point. From the story about his mom feeding him chicken to the rumors of him thinking about transferring and sitting out with minor injuries, I felt she was building an argument that he felt a sense of entitlement, pretty much from the moment he came on campus. If I remember right, the guy was one of OSU's biggest recruits in recent years, and I think she was getting at the idea that his sense of entitlement had led him to feel like he should be the starter not because he worked harder or performed better, but because he was Bobby Reid. And because of that, Reid didn't have "he have the fire in his belly" that it takes to succeed in major college football.

Second, this column is by no means Jenni's best work. She's done far better columns, and she is an excellent feature writer. She's a polarizing figure here in Oklahoma. A lot of people hate her purely because she's a woman writing about sports. She puts out some really good stuff, though. It's pretty bad that this column wouldn't probably rank anywhere near the top stuff I've read from her, but this is the column she's going to be most known for around the country.

Third, after thinking about this a bit, I think that Gundy will come out all right. Yes, he looked like a crazed lunatic. Yes, he could've been better prepared and more cohesive. Yes, he stepped WAAAAAY over the line saying she didn't have the right to criticize because she didn't have a child.The media will skewer him because we defend our own, and he'll loose a little face on the national scene. But for every non-journalist who thinks he was insane, there'll be another who love him. We're the media. People hate us. When someone calls us out, they love him. Now, it might come back to haunt him if he ever wants to leave OSU, but I'm not sure he wants to leave.

The thing I found interesting that no one mentioned, and I could be getting this wrong, is that Saturday he said the article was brought to him by a "mother of children" and then during his teleconference Sunday he said that he was told about it by OSU staff when the papers were kept away from his players Saturday morning. He then said Monday that several people in the program had told him he should read it and he decided to wait until after the game because Saturday's a fun day for him. So which is it? My main interest here is knowing whether the mom brought it to him as he first claimed, which wouldn't necessarily be bad, but if that's the case, why did Gundy change his story? Did he think it made Reid look bad?

 

I agree across the board...