Why this grown juvenile is still coaching is beyond us.
Let’s just go ahead and say it; Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy is indicative of some of the worse things about college football. Back in 2007, when he burst onto cable television with his famed ‘I’m a man! I’m 40!” tirade, Gundy seemed something of an unabashed country ball coach who spoke with a twang and a little bit of slang.
https://youtu.be/TMp7DsKRpCQ
He seemed like a protector who wanted to insulate his players from the world. Now, in 2018, he seems like some egomaniacal despot who gets his kicks out of pushing around college students with no mechanism to defend themselves against his B.S. Well, they USED to not have any mechanism, that is, until the NCAA lightened up the transfer rules.
Now, as is normally the case when someone who is all-powerful within his domain has to secede power to those who were once powerless by comparison, Gundy is having a hard time keeping it cordial.
Back in September he was accused of threatening a group of reporters.
Zero national titles, zero playoff appearances, one Big 12 championship in 13 seasons, yet Gundy feels privileged and empowered enough to say whatever zany thing comes to mind.
When asked about safety Thabo Mwaniki’s Sunday tweet alluding to transferring out of the school, Gundy expressed disdain for the rule changes, and society-at-large for the transfer, and not the lackluster program he’s running.
Mike Gundy's full quote in response to a question about players today and transfers. "I think we live in a world where people are non-committal. We allow liberalism to say, 'Hey, I can just do what I want and I don't have to really be tough and fight through it.'" #okstate pic.twitter.com/vWWEhhTpAF
— Mark Cooper (@mark_cooperjr) November 12, 2018
Gundy is right. There is a sense of entitlement in college football, but that sense of entitlement is emanating from these big time head coaches like radioactive isotopes from a hunk of plutonium. Like that radiation, the entitlement can be cancerous.
“I’m a firm believer in the snowflake,” he continued, Gundy, clarifying that he wasn’t referring to Mwaniki, who hasn’t played since starting the first four games of the season. Gundy said he was “talking about every millennial, young person. Generation Z, I think is what they call ’em. It’s the world we live in because if they say, ‘Well, it’s a little bit hard,’ then we say, ‘Okay, well, let’s go try something else’ versus ‘Hey, let’s bear down and let’s fight and do this.’ So you see a lot of that nowadays.”
White men often go on fuming rampages about how bad things are compared to how they used to be, Gundy just kept right on going with his good ol’ boy logic.
“That’s just in general in society, even if you’re working down here at Walmart,” said Gundy, whose salary is $5 million this season. “Your boss gets after you and tells you that you’re not doing a good job, you may go home and cry and tell your mom, and (she) says it’s okay. That’s just kind of the facts of life, the world we live in today.”
Gundy sounds like the millions of white men who voted for Donald Trump, despite the fact that he has never held office before and has been outed as a fraud and poor businessman years ago. Despite every indicator showing otherwise, Gundy believes liberalism and young people who don’t wish to work hard are the bane of society.
It’s people like him who should be corralled and not the hopes and dreams of millennials.
