Mike Gundy's DUI comments are insane thing for college football coach to say

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.