Audio, Transcript of Mike Gundy’s Statements on COVID-19 Pandemic

Everybody has been asking for the Mike Gundy quotes in context after yesterday’s bonanza. The Oklahoman did the work of transcribing the entire thing so you can go there to read it all. I’ll copy a bit of it over, but you’ll have to give them the click for the rest of it. Also, the audio of Gundy’s 20-plus minute opening statement via Fox23 News is at the bottom here. He opens with, “Chinese virus” off the top, and away we go.

“So, I would like to start with, you know, we really have two different situations here. The first being the Chinese virus and all the people that are involved in trying to stop it and help it and so on and so forth. And then I’ll get into the second part of some of the questions, which were concerning all the players personnel, budget, things like that.

“So for me, I’m really proud of the people of Stillwater and Payne County. Obviously statewide, our doctors, nurses, first responders — I’ve had some videos that have gone out on that — food providers for supply carriers, all the different people that have been talked about by a variety of people over the last two to three weeks.

“I’ve watched this really close. I don’t pretend to be a doctor. But when you get up early in the morning, and there’s not a lot to do, so you start to read and study and realize all the people that have been impacted, and people that are on the frontlines fighting this in a different way than others, I’m very appreciative. We all are very appreciative and supporting all those different people.

“I think it’s important that we continue to stay safe. Everybody’s getting a little bit of cabin fever. Obviously, I’m not a guy that likes to stay home. My ranch has helped me. I’ve been able to farm which has kept me busy, but I have teenage boys at the house and it’s not easy to keep young people at home. But I think we have to follow what the President says. We stay our distance, continue to stay home, unless we really need to be out. You know, the washing hands, don’t touch face.”

You can read the rest right here on the Oklahoman or listen to the audio below. The quote that I based my column off of yesterday was apparently after one of the questions that was asked later in the conference call and is not included in these statements. I pulled it from GoPokes.com. Here it is in full.

“So, the question is, if you test your players back in, do you sequester them in a housing community over here while they’re training? Sure you do. We can do that. The NCAA has a rule that you can’t have a so-called athletic dorm and a percentage of the people have to be general student population, that’s been like oh 10, 12, 15 years. Well that rules gotta go out the window. Here’s why, because we’ve never been in a situation like this.

“This goes back to the NCAA, the Presidents of the universities, the conference commissioners, the athletic directors all need to be meeting right now and we need to start coming up with answers. In my opinion, if have to bring our players back, test them. They’re in good shape, they’re all 18, 19, 20, 21, 22-years old and healthy. A lot of them can fight it off with their natural body, their antibodies and build up they have…those that are asymptomatic. If that’s true, then we sequester them. And people say that that’s crazy, no it’s not crazy, because we need to continue to budget and run money through the state of Oklahoma.”