Controversy at OSU
(Written by kencraw)
Not our Pac-10’s OSU, but the Big 12’s Oklahoma State University.
The controversy is over head coach Mike Gundy’s comments about a newspaper column at his post game interview. You can see those comments in this YouTube video. You can read the column that has him so upset at The Oklahoman, byline Jenni Carlson. This was all pretty much regional news until CBSSportsLine’s Dennis Dodd jumps in the fray with his column.
On the one hand, I like the fact that coach Gundy stood up for his players and refused to ignore what I believe to be a very childish column. Seriously, bringing up his mom feeding him after the game? That’s bad form. Write about his performance on the field. Reading a couple of Ms. Carlson’s other articles, she seems to be one of those writers who loves to act like she knows everything, has good insight and has no sense of integrity or what is appropriate to discuss about college football. I’m making a snap judgement based on 2 video articles and 3 written columns, but that’s the way it appears based on my limited exposure to her work. I suspect this was not the first column that upset coach Gundy for its crossing the line into personal attacks.
At the same time, it was childish to refuse to do a press-conference at all and spend his time berating a single writer, a slightly over-weight young woman, and tell her that “she obviously doesn’t have any children.” Does he know her well enough to know whether that may be a very painful subject for her? And if so, why is he calling her out in public instead of having a closed room meeting? If you’ve got a complaint about a writer, the right place to air those complaints is with the writer themselves or if they’re being completely unreasonable with their editor. In fact, it’s probably wise to raise the complaint to the athletic director and let them address the matter.
Nevertheless, Dodd steps into a situation he either knows too little about to speak with any authority or he is too close to the situation to speak objectively. He completely mis-characterizes the nature of the column just noting it as being critical of the team, which is a ridiculous understatement and entirely focuses on the excesses of coach Gundy’s statement.
To me this seems to be a situation where it is best for everyone’s bosses to call them into their offices and tell them to let the issue die, and by the way, don’t be so hot headed in the future. Stay away from the personal attacks next time, all of you.
September 24th, 2007 at 10:31 am
I would chalk it up to small town journalism. She should have known better but I have seen simular before. Now as far as blasting her in public? She asked for it. I doubt if she will do it again. She should know what’s acceptible to write and what’s not.
I came across an article a few weeks ago in The Mecuary News by a female journalist who wrote a story after the UT game about the tree huggers and some UT fans. She happened to find a few UT fans that sympathized with the tree people and then put a political Democrats vs Republicans spin on it. I had talked to several of their fans and nobody I talked to, was on their side. but she found a few and wrote an article that made it sound like half the UT fans were.
If you are going to write crap expect it to be thrown back in your face!
September 24th, 2007 at 10:40 am
I understand your perspective bar20. I’m a real big fan of taking the high road, which would have been to deal with the matter privately, even if the coach was justified in berating her in public. Even still I’d call it a marginally too strong reaction to an article that was over the line. Perhaps if he had spoke for half the time and not spent the entire time staring her down, it wouldn’t have been too much.
As for the tree-sitters and the Merc article, it amazes me that people still read articles with “man on the street” interviews. How long will it take for people to realize that if you stand on a corner long enough asking questions, no matter what you’re asking, you’re eventually going to find some nutball who says what you want? I think the journalists see it as a way to validate an opinion, and perhaps in the minds of readers who don’t realize that they can alway find a nutball to support them, it does, but in reality the “man on the street” interview is the biggest waste of… here’s some irony for you… cutting down trees for paper, in the history of journalism.
September 24th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Obviously there’s more going on here than one article and one incident. The CBS SportsLine column alludes to a pattern of behavior. I, quite frankly, don’t think the Oklahoman column was over the line at all.
And who should define “what’s acceptible to write and what’s not”? The head coach of the football team a journalist is covering? No, I don’t think so.
Bar20, what’s your point about the second article being written by a female journalist? How does the gender of that writer matter in the slightest? And if it doesn’t matter, why did you specify that it was a female writer?
Forgive me if I don’t accept “she asked for it” as an answer under any context, especially in a comment that reeks of sexism.
September 25th, 2007 at 5:04 am
I disagree with everyone!
First off, Jason is correct, the sex and weight issues of any journalist should never have any relevance of the quality of their work. I’d particularly like to thank Ken for pointing out that she was slightly overweight…
That being said, yeah, she asked for it. She basically threw him under the bus for no good reason. Who cares if his mom feeds him chicken after every game. Donovan McNabb’s mother feeds him chunky Campbells soup but no one every mentions it after he has a bad game…
My particular favorite moment of the video was at the end after he stormed out, that one journalist whose face took up like 85% of the screen had this uncomfortable “damnit, I know I’m on TV, and now it looks like I wrote that article because the camera just zoomed in on me…”
September 25th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Well we can always count on my brother to disagree with everyone.
I think the weight and sex of the reporter are very relevant for two reasons:
1. For her being a woman, call me old fashion but men have a larger responsibility to treat women with dignity than they do other men. Berating a young woman is entirely different than berating another man. It’s not because women are lesser or shouldn’t have their work judged equally to men, but because chivelry and being a gentleman demands it. I won’t comment on bar20’s statement about the Mercury reporter’s sex because I didn’t make it and am not sure why he mentioned it, although without additional context provided by bar20, it does seem to be an irrelevant detail in that case.
2. For her weight… did you not watch the clip? Tell me that when he says “or says he’s fat!?!” with emphasis more than the rest of his list of reasons the kid comes home crying, that it isn’t relevant that she’s slightly overweigth. That’s why I brought it up. It seems to me that coach Gundy is not only attacking her article but also her as a person including both her marital/family status and her weight.
Jason, I completely agree that this was definitely a situation where her articles have been bugging the coach for a long time. Definitely this was the one that broke the camel’s back because based on this article alone, I don’t see a coach getting that worked up, despite the fact that I think the whole “fed chicken” and coddled aspect crosses the line.
September 25th, 2007 at 7:59 am
I finally read the article… at first I thought Gundy went overboard… but after reading the article… damn… that was one of the most poorly written, petty, slanderous articles I’ve ever written. That type of thing belongs in the National Inquirer… not on the front page of the Sports section.
I posted a response on her blog… looks like tons of people have done the same.
http://blog.newsok.com/jennicarlson/2007/09/22/its-savage-no-hunter/#comments
September 25th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Trust me, Danzig, it’s not an either-or. Gundy didn’t just go overboard, he punctured the bottom of the boat and set it on fire before jumping over.
Am I a big fan of journalists psychoanalyzing their subjects? No. Am I a big fan of sports journalism in general? No. Would I (as a professional journalist) have written the story the way that the Oklahoman reporter would have written it? No. But I think reasonable people can differ about the quality of that piece — I didn’t love it but didn’t think it really crossed any lines of indecency.
There are lots of things going on here.
1) Sexist comments about female reporters. There’s no excuse for that.
2) Bash-the-media comments, including suggestions that the coach was right to rip into a reporter because the media cross the line too often. I disagree, as you might expect — coaches are always trying to manipulate and cow the media. It’s not the media’s job to report what coaches, schools, athletes, and fans want them to report about. Sometimes — especially in sports, where fandom is rabid — that gets forgotten.
3) This coach and his meltdown in public. Completely inappropriate, and as you said to start this off, Ken, the right thing to do if you’re his boss is to call him in and say, don’t ever lose it like this in public again. It’s unprofessional and embarrassing to yourself, the program, and the university. Even if you agree with what he had to say, the way he said it was atrocious.
4) The protection of the student athlete. This came up ’round these parts during the old Joe Ayoob days. Some people feel that student athletes are just kids and should never be criticized. Others felt free to make incredibly nasty personal insults in Ayoob’s direction. Me, I’m in the middle (as usual). I don’t think student athletes should be immune from criticism. They’re playing in high-profiles sports, get free educations, get special tutors, special training facilities, and the adulation of fans. Part of the deal that comes with that raised profile includes media scrutiny. That said, I don’t think anyone really deserves personal attacks, be they students or not. Nor do they really deserve the sort of made-up psychoanalysis that sportswriters often try to use to generate material, unless the person you’re writing about has a history of deeply bizarre behavior, where their weird behavior is the story, and not poor play.
Anyway.
September 25th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Well I read her article, watched the YouTube videos.
Carlson was way out of line. She made Reid out to be a complete wet blanket. She questions his thoughness, “Then, there have been the injuries. No doubt some of Reid’s ailments have been severe, including an injured shoulder that required surgery and forced him to redshirt. Other times, though, Reid has been nicked in games and sat it out instead of gutting it out.” (BTW what writer writes ‘nicked’)
If she gets to say those things about player than the coach has every right to defend his team. Gundy did a good job too. Any reference to her weight or sex wasn’t nearly as direct as the things she implied about the QB.
September 26th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
As a former journalist I’ve always felt that if a celebrity or athlete didn’t want public scruntiny about every aspect of their life they’d have become a computer engineer like my brother, or an accountant, or any other profession that no one wants to talk to you about while at a bar. That being said, who cares if his mom feeds him chicken every night? The issue at hand is that he’s a crappy QB and he got benched. Because I guarentee you if he was throwing 8 touchdowns a game, this article wouldn’t have been written. Or if it was, something tells me that there would be a lot more chicken dinners served by mothers next week…
Back to the issue of her weight. I saw a snippet of her Good Morning America interview on ESPN this morning while I was eating breakfast and she’s not overweight. Granted she’s not a rail, but in terms of people living in Oklahoma and my “never been there” perception of middle america that drives their SUV to the Mickey D’s that’s across the street from their strip mall officeplace, she’s actually in pretty good shape. She’s overweight just like Britney Spears at the VMA’s was overweight. IE not in the greatest shape… but not exactly Camryn Manheim or Kathy Bates.
September 26th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
By the way, the sexism I’ve been referring to is not Gundy’s. It’s the comments made by commenter #1 in this thread. I’m sure Gundy’s behavior was not motivated by the gender of the sportswriter in question.