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The O’Colly advantage and Gundy’s preposterousness

OSU has done a good job controlling the message in most areas. Not this one.

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On Friday afternoon the O’Colly noted that Desmond Roland would be kept out of Saturday’s game with Missouri State. We had wondered all week if No. 26 would play and Kieran Steckley confirmed that he would not over 24 hours before kickoff.

This was not, obviously, an OSU-sanctioned story. Steckley had a source (probably more than one) and rolled with it. There’s no reason to not trust the reporting — Roland isn’t going to play.

But did you see what happened in The Oklahoman later on in the day?

Here’s the quote from Kyle Fredrickson’s story:

As of Friday afternoon, an OSU athletic department spokesman declined to comment on Roland’s status to The Oklahoman, per coach Mike Gundy’s request to not release injury updates.

Okay. So…what does that mean?

Look, you remember being in college. You knew, or knew somebody who knew, or knew somebody who knew somebody who knew basically every single person on campus.

Information like Roland’s injury is going to trickle out whether OSU likes it or not — especially to folks who work at the student newspaper.

Oklahoma State, in the last few years, has done a tremendous job of controlling their message. As someone who is nostalgic about newspapers that’s a bummer to me. But as someone who is a proponent of good businesses, it’s smart.[1. And as somebody who runs a blog that functions without this information first-hand, this is my reaction.]

If you’re OSU and it’s 2014 and you have the Internet and smart people at your disposal it’s stupid to not try and control everything — every message, every interview, every…injury report.

Gundy needs to start owning these things — it’s absurd not to and you create more confusion and angst among players, fans, and media by letting student reporters do their job and get info than by just distributing it yourself.

The irony of not disclosing injury updates and depth charts is that Gundy (and I presume, by extension, OSU) wants to be in control of things but instead it creates situations in which the message gets out anyway and he’s not the one disseminating it.

I’m guessing that won’t change anytime soon, but it certainly should.

Totally Tickets is your source for Oklahoma State football tickets.

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