By Mike DeArmond
McClatchy Newspapers
July 23, 2008 08:18 am
—
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Mike Gundy is still a man. And he's still 40.
"I am for about two weeks," said Gundy, the Oklahoma State football coach, after, for some reason, checking his watch.
If you don't know what Gundy was talking about, come out from under that rock. Call up YouTube and do a search on Mike Gundy.
What you'll discover is Gundy's rant of Sept. 22, 2007, against columnist Jenni Carlson of The Oklahoman.
Hundreds of thousands of people have done just that, something Gundy rather good-naturedly acknowledged Tuesday at the second of three Big 12 media days in Kansas City.
"I've been a pretty popular guy over the last year," Gundy said.
Infamous is another word that comes to mind.
Go back to your computer and do a search on the term "I'm 40!" and you'll get all kinds of takeoffs on Gundy's postgame claim.
One site claims "I'm 40 ... And hung over or maybe still drunk."
There's another advertising an "I'm a man. I'm 40" T-shirt.
And then there is the ultimate takeoff:
"I'm 40 weeks ... but no contraction."
Oh, baby!
Gundy originally went off after Oklahoma State's 49-45 victory over Texas Tech in Stillwater, Okla. His rant was allegedly in defense of now former Cowboys quarterback Bobby Reid, whose toughness had been questioned by a strong use of innuendo by Carlson, including Reid being fed fried chicken by his mother outside the team bus.
Gundy implies he'd do it again.
"The only thing is that my volume level, as it went on, increased," Gundy said. "My anger grew. If I had to do it all over again ... I would have kept it to a monotone level."
After the season, Reid transferred to Texas Southern. Zac Robinson, who took over as Cowboys quarterback last season, was one of two players from a BCS-qualifying conference to rush for more than 800 yards and pass for more than 2,500 yards in 2007.
The other was Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow of Florida.
Robinson hemmed and hawed a bit when asked about the team's reaction to Gundy's outburst.
"Honestly," Robinson said, "we didn't talk about it a whole lot. Coach Gundy came in the next day and said he'd be willing to stick up for any one of us.
"The guys liked it."
Gundy doesn't count the experience as either good or bad, leaving that judgment to others. He's busy trying to get Oklahoma State's defense on the same page as the offense.
The Big 12 South is a tough nut to crack, with Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech the general 1-2-3 predicted pecking order.
On Aug. 12, Gundy will have aged beyond his original rant. He'll be 41.
Until then, Gundy can have at least a semblance of fun out of his emergence into the national spotlight.
"I'm not a big computer guy," Gundy said. "I've not once in my life been on YouTube. I don't know how to get on it.
"I guess you could Google it. Sometimes I Google things. Like fertilizer and stuff that I want to put on my lawn."
That drew a laugh, as did Gundy's claim that the video drew the sixth-most hits for the year on YouTube.
Gundy said he didn't get around to viewing the video replay until January, when someone else pulled it up on the computer and showed it to him.
"I didn't need to see the replay," Gundy said. "I did it."
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