The Colorado Buffaloes will cap off the 2024 season with a highly-anticipated home finale against the Oklahoma State Cowboys on Black Friday, November 29. The Cowboys, under the leadership of head coach Mike Gundy since 2005, have established themselves as a contender in college football. While Gundy has always been outspoken, he expressed excitement about the return of Colorado and its head coach, Deion Sanders, at the start of Big 12 Media Days in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Gundy acknowledges the impact Sanders and the Buffaloes have on the conference, noting that Sanders brings increased attention, fans, and viewership to the conference. “I think that we’re lucky in our league that (Sanders) is with us because he brings more people, notoriety, and viewers to the Big 12 Conference,” Gundy told BuffsBeat reporter Jason Jones in the main press conference. He emphasized the importance of viewership for the conference’s success, highlighting that having high-profile figures like Sanders is beneficial for everyone involved.
The matchup between Colorado and Oklahoma State is expected to be a thrilling conclusion to the regular season. Gundy is particularly looking forward to the competition, expressing his enthusiasm for having Colorado back in the Big 12 and the opportunity to face off against Sanders. “It’ll be fun to have him in our league. It’s fun for me to have Colorado back in our league and to be able to compete against him. I can only imagine what his competitive level is, so that’ll be fun,” Gundy said. The Buffaloes and Cowboys are expected to be the closest rivals and many are excited to see how they will perform in this exciting showdown.
But not everyone held the same level of enthusiasm about Gundy’s tone-deaf defense of Ollie Gordon II’s recent DUI arrest. He was asked about the incident and clearly didn’t hold back in his response. Gundy told ESPN that Gordon blew a 0.10 BrAC, which is narrowly over the 0.08 legal limit. After looking up the metric, which he claimed could be “two or three beers,” Gundy said that he easily could have been guilty of that a “thousand times” and was lucky nothing happened to him. “One thing that I can say in Year 20 as a head coach that I probably wouldn’t say in Year 2 is, everyone needs to look in the mirror and think, have I done that and not gotten caught?” Gundy said. “Have I had two or three beers and drove a car? Because two or three beers can put you over the legal limit. People need to put some thought into that and not throw stones through glass windows. Not that it’s right, and I want him to understand the seriousness as a parent, and I think he did.”
After receiving criticism for his remarks, Gundy took to Twitter to clarify his statement. “My intended point today at Big 12 media days was that we are all guilty of making bad decisions,” Gundy wrote. “It was not a reference to something specific.” While Gordon could face internal penalties, Gundy said he views the matter as settled. “I’ve been with Ollie a considerable number of times and listened to him,” Gundy said. “He was remorseful and knew how serious it could have been. That allowed me to make a decision. I have to make a decision and there’s a lot of people involved in this decision, not just him. I wanted it to be over with today, other than what he has to deal with from a legal standpoint. But for our team and me, it’s over today and we try to regroup heading forward.”
BuffsBeat reporter Kris Miller caught up with Gordon for a one-on-one interview in Las Vegas. The Cowboys rusher and Heisman hopeful wants to leave OSU by chasing Barry Sanders. “I want to be known as one of the best backs to ever come through Stillwater,” Gordon told Miller. The Buffs and Cowboys will resume a conference rivalry for the first time in 15 years, as the two last played as conference opponents in 2009. CU leads the all-time series 26-20-1 and 13-8 in Boulder. The two also met in the 2016 Alamo Bowl, with Oklahoma State notching a 38-8 win.
Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy clarified his controversial remarks on drunk driving in a post to X on Tuesday, June 9. “My intended point today at Big 12 media days was that we are all guilty of making bad decisions,” Gundy, 56, wrote via X on Tuesday, June 9. “It was not a reference to something specific.” Gundy defended OK State running back Ollie Gordon II following Gordon’s recent DUI arrest. Gordon, 20, was pulled over by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol for speeding and swerving through traffic lanes, per CBS Sports. The college athlete was charged with DUI under the age of 21, transporting open alcohol containers, failure to maintain his line and driving over the speed limit.
During an interview aired on ESPN, Gundy — who is entering his 20th season — explained he had no plans to suspend Gordon. The coach claimed that after doing his own research, Gordon’s reported BAC level of .10 would equal out to “two or three beers, or four” based on the football player’s weight. “I’m not justifying what Ollie did, I’m telling you what decision I made,” Gundy said. “I thought, ‘OK, I’ve probably done that 1,000 times in my life and it was just fine so I got lucky. People get lucky.’” The football coach also shared that he didn’t see the point of suspending Gordon for one game because he didn’t think that would do anything to teach him a lesson. When broaching the idea of benching Gordon for six games, Gundy shared that he didn’t think it was “fair” for the whole team.
“I made a decision that was best for everybody involved,” Gundy said. “And from this point moving forward, he needs to try to be better like we all do.” Gundy didn’t stop there. He explained that he decided to bring Gordon along to Big 12 Media Day, which took place in Las Vegas, to address his arrest to the media and make a public apology. “Ollie made a decision he [wished] he could have done better, but when I talked to Ollie, I told him you’re lucky you got out light because you make a lot of money to play football,” Gundy stated. “So back in the day, being able to cover the cost of what he’s going to go through [with the legal process] would be difficult for a college player. It’s not for him. Now, I’m not speaking for him but I’m saying that’s not an issue for him. So nobody got hurt.”
Mike Gundy’s four-minute explanation of why he isn’t suspending Oklahoma State’s star running back Ollie Gordon over a recent DUI is so bizarre, so convoluted and so utterly devoid of anything that approaches 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 − and, full disclosure, this is just me reaching for something that makes a little bit of sense out of the senseless − is that Gundy is a master troll using a potentially dangerous situation to make a stupid point about name, image and likeness rights for athletes.
The big headline out of this controversy came via Gundy’s comments on an ESPN+ show Tuesday from Big 12 Media Days in Las Vegas. While trying to untangle his logic for doing nothing publicly to punish Gordon, Gundy surmised − based on his extensive Google searching − that Gordon’s reported blood-alcohol content of 0.10 would have translated to “two or three beers, or four” for a 215-pound man. “I’m not justifying what Ollie did, I’m telling you what decision I made,” Gundy said. “I thought, ‘OK, I’ve probably done that 1,000 times in my life and it was just fine so I got lucky. People get lucky.'”
This is, of course, an insane thing for someone to say. It’s an especially insane thing − and, in some places, a potentially fireable thing − for a college football coach to say when you consider their responsibility in overseeing 100-plus young men whose behavior is highly scrutinized because of their prominence in the community. There’s simply no way to justify talking about drunk driving in any context that gives room for excuses, and Gundy failed to clear that very easy bar. But that’s barely a surprise coming from Gundy, whose arrogance and public relations judgment almost led to a player mutiny in the summer of 2020 when he publicly promoted the extreme right-wing One America News network, which trafficked in conspiracy theories and trashed the Black Lives Matter Movement.
For a couple days, Gundy was in real trouble as players boycotted team activities for a short period of time and some former players spoke up with troubling anecdotes about the racial climate in Oklahoma State’s football program. Humbled and apologetic − maybe for the first time in his entire career − Gundy saved his job and was forced to take a $1 million pay cut. Then over the next four seasons, he posted three more top-20 finishes and got another contract extension and another one after that. Back to being bulletproof. This is how college football works. It is what it is.
Over the next few days, Gundy will face another round of whack-a-mole because a prominent coach glossing over a DUI by talking so cavalierly about his own experiences getting behind the wheel after a few drinks is bad business. Now 56 years old, you’d hope Gundy would have emphasized what terrible judgment he had as a younger man and express regrets about putting lives in danger − if he indeed had those regrets − rather than trying to calculate in his mind how many beers Gordon would have needed to consume to be held out of a game against South Dakota State.
But that’s all pretty obvious stuff. What isn’t so clear is why Gundy, on multiple occasions Tuesday, referenced how much money Gordon makes as a college football player in trying to explain his approach to a disciplinary issue that he was going to address at Big 12 media days and then hope it disappears from the discourse by the time the season starts. “We can say these guys aren’t employees, but they’re really employees,” Gundy said as he started down his road to nonsense. “These guys get paid a lot of money, which is fine, but there needs to be a side to what they do that they have to be able to − for lack of a better term − face the music and own up to things.”
In Gundy’s world, this means that Gordon’s punishment would be a free trip to Las Vegas where he would have to make a public apology and answer a few questions from the media. If Gundy believes that is more embarrassing and more corrective than forcing Gordon to miss football games, so be it. It’s probably not worth getting outraged about one way or the other. But what does being an employee have to do with it? Does Gundy realize that for many people, particularly those in high-profile public jobs, a DUI would result in at least a suspension?
“Ollie made a decision he wish he could have done better, but when I talked to Ollie, I told him you’re lucky you got out light because you make a lot of money to play football,” Gundy said. “So back in the day, being able to cover the cost of what he’s going to go through (with the legal process) would be difficult for a college player. It’s not for him. Now I’m not speaking for him but I’m saying that’s not an issue for him. So nobody got hurt.”
Again … huh? College coaches have long used this idea that being publicly embarrassed by a bad headline is a worse punishment that being held out of games, so you might as well just go ahead and put them on the field so that they can help you win games. Gundy is far from the first to make that calculation, as self-serving as it might be. But why even raise the idea that players are now making, in some cases, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars through NIL deals to play college football? Is Gundy suggesting that because these guys are now de facto professionals that he doesn’t have any standing to administer discipline when they screw up off the field?
There is no way Gundy actually believes that or would adhere to it in a circumstance that significantly impaired his chances of winning a football game. But what we do know is that Gundy has been on the front lines 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 those two topics were “like religion and politics,” suggesting his true feelings would not be helpful to discuss publicly. While acknowledging last year that NIL is here to stay and crucial to team-building, he lamented that “Players used to want to go somewhere for shiny new facilities and new uniforms and things like that” and would rather take $50,000 than have the money go to building a new workout room.
Then last fall after his team lost 33-7 to South Alabama, Gundy said part of their success was because “they don’t deal with NIL and stuff. The guys that go there to play go there to play football. They’re not going to have those capabilities. It’s a little different there. You go there, you go 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 through this era while collecting his own $7.75 million salary. But is he being so pouty about his lack of control that he’s now decided the college coach’s job doesn’t include oversight of his players’ off-field snafus?
Given how much college sports have changed, you could formulate a perfectly coherent argument for that approach. It may not be popular or even correct, but it would at least be intellectually honest. Instead, the only thing that explains the way Gundy handled Tuesday is to look at his comments as passive-aggressive middle finger at NIL. “You like this system? Well, here you go. These guys are rich now, so it ain’t my problem.” If Gundy had simply said that, he’d at least have my respect for being honest. Instead, the major takeaway from his appearance at Big 12 media days is that if you see him behind the wheel somewhere in Stillwater, it would be safer to go the other direction.
Source: BuffsBeat, CBS Sports, ESPN
