Oklahoma State coach Gundy blasts Oklahoman columnist

Hey, maybe she did and he already had slit his wrists, since he couldn't handle the pressure.

And it's her right to write that column. And it's our right to skewer her for the column.

But we should all be backing her 1,000 percent against this Gundy moron.

 

From her column:

"His mother was feeding him chicken." (What's the point of this comment?)

"If you believe the rumors and the rumblings,..." (Um... No. I'd rather believe facts and quotes.)

"Tile up the back stories told on the sly over the past few years,..." (Um... I'd rather not tile up any stories told on the sly. How about some facts told over the past few years?)

"and apparently, Reid considered leaving OSU..." (Apparently? He either did or not? Why "apparently"?)

"Other times, though, Reid has been nicked in games and sat it out instead of gutting it out." (Really? And Ms. Carlson ascertained this... how?)

"Even though Mike Gundy said last week that Robinson got the nod because he had the better week of practice, insiders say that the coaches decided to bench Reid early in the week." (See... SockPuppet, the coach DID give an explanation for the QB change. Carlson chose to believe the "insiders" and not the coach, who gave a reason. Kind of kills your whole theory, doesn't it?)

"There's something to be said for not being a malcontent, but you can almost see Reid shrugging his shoulders as he says those words. Does he have the fire in his belly?" (This said about a comment Reid made to a co-worker, not Carlson.)

"Or does he want to be coddled, babied, perhaps even fed chicken?" (Why? Why write this sentence? She thinks the guy is a wussy momma's boy. Why didn't she just write that?)

The fact that SO many of you are defending this column says more about how screwed up the profession has become than anything else.

 

I'm sorry. I completely forgot that you've been appointed to determine whether someone has a right to his emotions. Since my emotion was sympathy for the guy, let me request that you determine the amount of sympathy that I should feel.

 

Defending the column and defending her RIGHT to write the piece of shit column are two different things. How do you not get that?

And letting one coach treat a reporter like shit, without backing her up, just means more of that in the future. And that would make YOUR job more difficult.

 

You people don't get it. You wanna treat a 21-year-old man as a fucking baby. Go ahead, do it. I hope you are there to hand him the Kleenex when he starts bawling because that meanie Jenni Carlson wrote a shitty column about him.

 

With your final sentence above, I wonder if you have any perspective. If she wrote a horrible column, she shouldn't be defended. Period.

 

The column was a hatchet job on an amateur athlete, who is not a full public figure. Age is irrelevant.

She will be sued for libel. I hope she wins, but it was a piece of shit column.

 

No coach should be allowed to turn a press conference into a bully pulpit. Too many do, and it needs to stop. What do you folks not get?

 

She wrote about his life as it relates to football. He remains a public figure in that realm.

If she had written about Bobby Reid raping coeds, then we're talking about something different.

 

Free speech?

 

Pt. 1 - I've never heard of that. Would like to see an example if you got one.

Pt. 2 - If he's been charged she can write about him all day.

 

I'll give you that a 21-year-old is no longer a kid, but I don't see how you can dispute Whitlock's overriding point that Carlson's column was indefensibly atrocious and deserving of criticism (although not in the ranting lunatic form in which Gundy chose to give it).

I thought Whitlock nailed it when he described the piece as an internet message board attack--it displayed no higher level of journalistic standards than rants you'll see every day on those boards by anonymous screen names. It was purely an attack on the kid's amateur athlete's character based on nothing but bullshit "rumor has it" type sourcing, and asking readers to draw some absurdly unfair negative inferences about the kid amateur athlete--that he must lack guts and competitive fire because he didn't publicly bitch about being benched and instead said he must work harder to get back, that he must be a weak immature mama's boy because he was seen accepting food from his mother, etc.

If you're gonna write a piece that does nothing but attack a college player's character, you better bring more than that and have real sources to back it up.