Notes on the OSU Media Golf Tournament at Karsten Creek

Everyone has their “wait, this is definitely the start of football season” date. For some, it’s Big 12 Media Days. For others, it’s the first day of fall camp. For a handful, it may be the actual first day of football season (the Oregon State game). For me, it’s probably the OSU media golf tournament.

Every July OSU graciously hosts us at Karsten Creek for a round of golf, hearty lunch and Kasey Dunn’s annual state of the union interviews with assistant coaches. For the last three, I’ve been teamed up with fellow PFBers Kyle Boone and Carson Cunningham. We always think we’re going to play well and never do. This year, I thought we were going to play poorly and we shot a 62. Hashtag expectations.

We didn’t win (or even place), but we did make an eagle on the first hole when Boone hit it to 3 feet from 190 out. We played with Koy McFarland, who came from Louisiana Tech to be in defensive quality control for OSU. He was easy to talk to, laid back and I think we all had a pretty great time.

Our guy Heath Vessels did a great job capturing the day and spliced together this video from the festivities (my sauce > my swing). In what I imagine is a fun on-field (and off-camera) rivalry, Dan Hammerschmidt’s group topped Kasey Dunn’s group to finish at 13 under and take the title. My highlight of the day was telling Heath “well, I’m probably going to hit this out of bounds, but you’re going to get a legit club twirl,” which is exactly what happened (see below).

The birdies were plentiful and so were the good with the @pistolsguys. Thanks again @CowboyFB and @KarstenCreek. @kasey_dunn said he wants to be on our team next year. ? pic.twitter.com/kmXPJUBSXb

— Carson Cunningham (@KOCOCarson) July 30, 2019

Thanks to everyone who came out for our annual media golf outing yesterday! #okstate pic.twitter.com/JrR65RriuA

— Cowboy Football (@CowboyFB) July 30, 2019

The day is always full of plenty of non-golf stuff, too, and I thought I’d share some musings from what I saw, heard and talked to people about on Monday.

• Obviously nobody is going to say anything remotely controversial about QB1 on the record, but nobody we talked to said anything remotely controversial or interesting off the record either. Maybe Gundy’s tentacles reach that deep into all of this, but when you’re at an event where the beer is flowing and everyone is away from the facilities and the pressure of it all, you’d expect to at least walk away with an idea. Instead, nothing. Which makes me think there’s real value in Dru Brown at 2-1 odds and no value at all in Spencer Sanders at 1-3. 

• Dunn is awesome. On the record, off the record, talking about records, whatever. He’s approachable, candid and generous with his time and his quotes. If you’re a media member, that’s the trifecta. It’s very easy to see him interviewing well for a higher-level job either at OSU or somewhere else.

• It’s also easy to see why he recruits well. In fact .. there’s a pretty decent correlation between dynamic, kind personalities in interviews and how good coaches are at recruiting. It’s not perfect, but if you were to do a power ranking of OSU coaches by personality and by their ability to recruit, I would imagine the two lists would look similar.

• I didn’t talk to new offensive coordinator Sean Gleeson, but one person who did talk to the 34-year-old supposed wunderkind said, “Welp, Gundy’s done it again.”

• The consensus seems to be that OSU is going to (finally?) be deeper at corner and A.J. Green and Rodarius Williams will (finally?) be able to get a little rest on that side. Consensus at a golf tournament in July is much different than decision-making in a Big 12 game in mid-October, but there’s at least some optimism there.

• Nobody has ever looked more like an offensive line coach more than Charlie Dickey looks like an offensive line coach. Also very approachable though! I envisioned something out of Evan Epstein’s worst mistake-making nightmare when I introduced myself, but he was quite gracious (which makes sense given how he’s started off recruiting). 

• I know the whole Cowboy Culture thing is easy to roll your eyes at from the outside, but it’s clear that everyone inside the building is bought in. I’m not just talking about what they say on camera either. And while it’s fun for a giggle or two, it’s also not unimportant that when the most difficult thing in the world to do is get hundreds of humans on the same page moving in the same direction, Mike Gundy seems to have been able to do just that.

• I asked one staffer how much he thought LSU’s new locker room cost. His response: “Probably a billion dollars,” which made me laugh pretty hard.

• There may or may not have been chatter about a media member basketball game in which players cover the event and ask us difficult questions after we turn the ball over and shoot 15 percent from the field. I am always subscribed to these ideas.

• A quote from somebody who is around the team a lot: “Tylan does some things in practice that I have never seen before.”

• Best line of the day was from Dunn, who was ahead of us on the course. We got to the last hole, where he and his group (who were 12 under) were watching. He said, “What are you guys at?” I said, “9 under, why?” He said, “Oh that’s too bad, I was hoping this eagle putt you have was going to mean something.”

All in all, the event was — as it always is — a blast. Karsten is a hard but fun place for a scramble and mixing it up with the assistants and staffers every year is (hopefully) beneficial for all parties. My only hope is that by this time next year my game is in better shape than my sauce.