Some final thoughts on a wild Monday

Hell of a day, huh?

I kind of miss the days when all we had to do is argue about whether or not Bill Young should be employed by Oklahoma State or not.

The table has been set (and cleared and reset and cleared again and reset) and the SI cover has likely been printed (?) and now we wait for, oh yeah, the actually story at 9 AM ET on Tuesday morning.

A few final thoughts on the eve of what could be the beginning of a terrible season (and I’m not talking about the next 11 games) for OSU..

1. I whiffed on how big this story would be. Five parts spread out over seven days and (probably) the cover of Sports Illustrated over the NFL?? Penn State and Ohio State just joined hands with Miami and said “man, that’s a big story.”

2. Holder’s work today cannot be understated. It was big time and if the ship goes down he’s going down with it — that’s what you want from your guy. It’s getting play nationally, too:

Kudos to Oklahoma St AD Mike Holder for a tremendous statement ahead of the SI allegations. Clinic on how you do it. Pledge transparency.

— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) September 10, 2013

3. Are we underestimating how much this story will rock the university? I definitely think I was about 24 hours ago and I think it’s really hard to determine its reach in the moment without any distance from it but I wonder if we’ll look back at this and say it was the biggest scandal since the one at The U?

Nobody has even broached this (and this is just me wondering out loud) but I wonder how bad it would have to be for Gundy and/or Holder to be fired.

The quote from SI that came out that you don’t want to see if you’re a Gundy fan is this: The transgressions began under former coach Les Miles, who was the head coach in Stillwater from 2001 to ’04 and is now the head coach at LSU, and continued under current head coach Mike Gundy, who was promoted from offensive coordinator in 2005.

That’s not good.

4. Former players (tenured ones, at that) are absolutely denying all of this so I think it’ll be intriguing to see who does talk — guess is a LOT of disgruntled Les Miles recruits. Of course, this could also be true (though I doubt it given how vociferous all the former Gundy guys have been):

Two ways to look at former player comments: 1) The loyal guys who are true to #okstate or 2) the guys protecting the hands that fed them

— Matt Amilian (@mattamilian) September 9, 2013

5. I’ve been hesitant to criticize the piece solely for the fact that Thayer Evans’ name was attached but here’s the issue…it feels like SI just picked one of, say, 10 schools at random (or “at random”) from a list of schools that have gotten good in the last decade. This tweet pretty much says that:

https://twitter.com/okc_dave/status/377203030212374528

I’m pretty sure Thayer has a thing against OSU (that Chokie State article is still incredible to read) which leads me to believe he was prominent in getting the initial ball rolling.

Could SI have picked Oregon or Wisconsin or Clemson and found similar stuff? Sure, but they didn’t and it just feels like Thayer is one reason why. That doesn’t mean the stuff in the article isn’t true, only that I think the reason all of this got started initially probably had something to do with him.

6. This is a good point:

The good news about the upcoming SI report is fans can have at least some hope because @CharlesRobinson's name hasn't been brought up yet

— Matt Amilian (@mattamilian) September 10, 2013

7. Many people have mentioned this on Twitter and in the comments but Gundy would have looked awfully clever to have taken the Tennessee job. It would have been pretty terrible from a leadership perspective but I’m not totally sure I would have blamed him.

8. This is kind of a walk off:

https://twitter.com/okc_dave/status/377208269011689473

9. Last thing, and I’ll keep this brief, I love OSU and I’ll always love OSU but let’s not be silly in what we say on social media. People who have staked their flags in the “I don’t even care if they have pictures of Boone Pickens murdering a defensive back, I’ll never recant on my love for the Pokes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” camp seem a little foolish right now given that (still) nobody knows what was fully written.

I’ve tried to be completely fair to the story and give my honest opinion on everybody involved and everything said. I don’t condone a systematic organizational failure of these proportions (IF that’s what it is) and I’m not going to blindly tweet or write such a thing before I know the details. Just so you know where I stand on that.

Thanks for hanging with me today, tomorrow should be…something.