Mike Gundy Has Not Seen Justin Blackmon Since The 2012 Fiesta Bowl

Justin Blackmon was profiled today on The Ringer by Jordan Ritter Conn. Conn is a dog so I knew the story would be great (and it was). Blackmon is portrayed as a bit of a tortured, lost soul by Conn who went to Oklahoma for a week to talk to Mike Gundy and others who knew Blackmon.

The entire thing is sad and great, but this was probably the most heartbreaking part.

That January the Cowboys traveled to Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl, where they beat Stanford, 41–38. Afterward, Gundy and Blackmon sat together at a podium for a postgame presser, and for a moment together, they laughed, an image captured by a photographer and now plastered on a wall in Boone Pickens Stadium.

Gundy thinks often of that moment, the two of them lingering there, enjoying one of the biggest wins of either of their careers. Soon the press conference ended and they walked away from the podium, each one whisked away to various other postgame responsibilities. “Maybe,” says Gundy, “I should have gone to him and said something. ‘I’ll see you soon.’ Something like that.” Gundy hasn’t seen him since.

It’s also very clear (as if it wasn’t before) that Blackmon has issues with alcohol.

While we were talking, the bar’s manager, Gigi Powell, approached our table and asked me, “Are you taking notes?” When I told her I was, she looked to my notepad, then to my eyes. “I have kicked him out of this bar three times,” she said. “We have been in here just screaming at each other. And every single time, he has walked in the next day, and he has come up to me, and he has said, ‘I am so sorry.’ Every time.” Then she paused, and before she returned to the bar, she looked at me and she smiled and she said, “If you write a single bad word about him, I swear — I will find you.”

The whole thing is intense and intensely glum. One of the all-time greats who might have been the only one who didn’t care that he was an all-time great. It’s an important read though. One that stirs memories and brings hope, if only by revealing what was lost.

Go give it a read. And stay until the very end.