Mike Gundy on How Coaching is Like Parenting

One of my favorite things to do every week is to peruse Mike Gundy’s Monday presser quotes to see what kind of gems got buried in the avalanche of Spencer Sanders and Chuba Hubbard news.

Because Gundy is a character — for which I am (and this business is) grateful — some of the throwaway quotes take on a more hilarious tone. There’s more weight and more humor there because Gundy has been around so long and because we feel like we know him or at the very least we know the caricature of him.

One example of this is when he goes down the parental advice path. Part of the reason for this is because, well, I’m a parent. The other is because it’s always enjoyable to think about this mulleted man who once wore zip-away ski pants to coach Bedlam in (#neverforget) parenting three kids of his own in a home I’m sure he often feels like he’s lost control of.

Anyway, he talked this week about how Sean Gleeson is acclimating to FBS ball and how that’s actually a lot like being a parent for the first time.

“I thought he was good,” Gundy said.

Sean, your thoughts?

“There’s a difference between being emotional and being erratically emotional and out of control. He gets emotional during football games. It’s like parenting.”

Go on.

“When you’re raising your first kid, you get emotional when they do things wrong and you overreact. Then you come back later and you’re like, ‘That wasn’t worth all that.'”

This is quite true.

“You’re better off just chilling and then teaching them after a while. Coaching is the same thing. Sean gets excited but then he can get right back into it and focus; some coaches go and lose their marbles, but he doesn’t.”

I loved all of this, and I think it says a lot about Gleeson. He was, uh, clearly jacked up during the Texas game last week so to hear Gundy say he could get it all back together quickly is encouraging.

One of the biggest (fairest) frustrations of the Mike Yurcich era was in-game adjustments. I don’t know if that was because of emotions or something else — and I also don’t want to crown Gleeson after he handed it to Chuba 203 times in a row for 3.3 yards a pop in Austin — but I did enjoy the comp and am generally excited about the Gleeson era.

Not the Gundy + Gleeson era … but the Gleeson + Gleeson era.