Mike Gundy's comments on RB Ollie Gordon's drunk driving are bizarre

Mike Gundy’s four-minute explanation of why he’s not suspending Oklahoma State star running back Ollie Gordon for a recent DUI is so bizarre, so convoluted, and so utterly devoid of anything resembling a fully formed adult thought process that there are only two conclusions to be drawn from it.

The first is that Gundy, now entering his 20th season at Oklahoma State, has way too much job security and knows it.

The second thing – and to be honest, this is just me trying to make some sense of the insane – is that Gundy is a master troll who is using a potentially dangerous situation to make a stupid remark about athletes’ name, image and likeness rights.

The headline in the controversy came from Gundy’s comments on an ESPN+ show Tuesday during Big 12 Media Days in Las Vegas. Trying to untangle the logic behind his decision not to publicly punish Gordon, Gundy surmised — based on his extensive Google searches — that Gordon’s .10 BAC could have translated into “two or three beers, or four” for a 215-pound man.

“I’m not justifying what Ollie did, I’m just telling you what decision I made,” Gundy said. “I thought, ‘OK, I’ve probably done this 1,000 times in my life and it was great, I got lucky. People get lucky.'”

It’s obviously a foolish thing for someone to say that. It’s especially foolish — and, in some places, a potentially fireable thing — for a college football coach to do, given that he has the responsibility of supervising more than 100 young men whose behavior is under intense scrutiny because of their high profile in the community.

There’s simply no way to justify talking about drunk driving in a context that allows for excuses, and Gundy failed to clear that very easy bar. But that’s hardly surprising coming from Gundy, whose arrogance and PR savvy nearly led to a player mutiny in the summer of 2020 when he publicly promoted the far-right One America News network, which trafficked in conspiracy theories and destroyed the Black Lives Matter movement.

For a few days, Gundy was in real trouble as players boycotted team activities for a short time and some former players spoke of disturbing anecdotes about the racial climate in the Oklahoma State football program.

Humiliated and desolate – perhaps for the first time in his entire career – Gundy saved his job and was forced to take a million-dollar pay cut.

Then, over the next four seasons, he finished in the top 20 three times and got another contract extension, and then another. He’s back in the dugout. That’s how college football works. That’s how it’s done.

Over the next few days, Gundy will face another round of blows, because a top coach glossing over a drunken driving incident while talking so cavalierly about his own experiences behind the wheel after a few drinks is bad business.

Now 56, one might have hoped that Gundy would have emphasized the terrible judgment he made as a young man and expressed regret for putting lives at risk — if he had those regrets — rather than trying to calculate in his mind how many beers Gordon would have had to consume to be kept out of a game against South Dakota State.

But that’s all pretty obvious. What’s not so clear is why Gundy repeatedly on Tuesday referenced the amount of money Gordon makes as a college football player to try to explain his approach to a disciplinary issue he was going to address at Big 12 media days and then hope would disappear from the conversation by the start of the season.

“You could say these guys aren’t employees, but they are employees,” Gundy said, as he began to descend into absurdity. “These guys get paid a lot of money, which is great, but they have to be able to, for lack of a better word, take responsibility.”

In Gundy’s world, that means Gordon would be punished with a free trip to Las Vegas, where he would have to publicly apologize and answer some questions from the media. If Gundy feels that’s more embarrassing and corrective than forcing Gordon to miss football games, so be it. It’s probably not worth getting upset about either way.

But what does being an employee have to do with it? Does Gundy realize that for many people, especially those in high-profile public positions, driving under the influence would result in at least a suspension?

“Ollie made a decision, he wished he could have done better, but when I talked to Ollie, I told him he was lucky he got away with it because he was making a lot of money playing football,” Gundy said. “At the time, it would have been hard for a college player to cover the costs of the legal process. It’s not for him. Now, I’m not speaking for him, but I’m saying it’s not a problem for him. So nobody got hurt.”

Again…huh?

College coaches have long used the idea that being publicly embarrassed by a bad title is a worse punishment than being ejected from games, so you might as well put them on the field so they can help you win games. Gundy is far from the first to make that calculation, selfish as it may be.

But why bring up the idea that players today are earning, in some cases, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on NIL contracts to play college football? Is Gundy suggesting that because these players are now de facto professionals, he has no legitimacy to administer punishment when they make mistakes off the field?

There is no way Gundy actually believes this or would adhere to it in a circumstance that would significantly reduce his chances of winning a football game.

But what we do know is that Gundy has been at the forefront of coaches whose comments about the current environment of player movement through the transfer portal and NIL payments are tinged with contempt.

Last summer, Gundy told reporters that the two topics were “like religion and politics,” suggesting that his true feelings wouldn’t be helpful to discuss publicly. While acknowledging last year that the NIL was here to stay and was essential to building teams, he lamented that “players used to want to go somewhere to get shiny new facilities and new uniforms and things like that” and would rather take $50,000 than see that money go to building a new training facility.

Last fall, after his team lost 33-7 to South Alabama, Gundy said part of their success was because they “don’t deal with ties and stuff. Guys that go out there to play, they go out there to play football. They’re not going to have that ability. It’s a little different out there. You go out there, you go out there to play football, and when you watch them, that’s the way they play.”

So it doesn’t take a genius to see that Gundy is gritting his teeth during this period while collecting his own $7.75 million salary. But is he so sulky about his lack of control that he’s now decided that the job of a college coach doesn’t include monitoring his players’ off-the-field mischief?

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Mike Gundy’s comments on RB Ollie Gordon’s drunk driving are bizarre

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