The bottom of this webpage under “Health” is interesting as compared to Coronavirus. Everyone should use your brain, but I also choose not to live my life in fear, because what kind of life is that?
1 Like
I don’t post here often anymore, but seeing the comments I couldn’t resist. I’m honestly really surprised at how many people are so aligned with Gundy here. I agree that Porter’s writing is a little harsh, but most of the criticisms themselves are fair.
Gundy has done amazing things for OSU, and despite my periodic frustrations with him I think he’s a great coach. There’s nothing wrong with “a bit of optimism”, but what he said was over the line.
While athletic 18-23 year olds are generally at low risk for complications with the coronavirus, this misses the point. The virus is extremely contagious, and by having hundreds of people congregate every day, hit each other, lick each other’s sweat, etc., they are going to spread it not only to each other but to plenty of other people they come into contact with. Is the university going to prevent the football team from visiting their parents? Going to the store? Are they going to put the entire team in total isolation? Are they going to be tested daily? The players are not high risk, but they will come into contact with people who are.
Here we have Gundy coaching at a university that grants doctoral degrees and has a medical school, and he’s talking about antibodies and susceptibility and a timeline for when it’ll be a good idea for the team to practice? To borrow a phrase from Anthony Fauci, “You don’t make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline.”
Football is great, getting back to work is great, but now is the time to listen to medical experts. The overwhelming majority of them insist that the coronavirus must be taken seriously, as if the military vehicles hauling dead bodies out of the overflowing morgues in Northern Italy were not enough on their own or the 32 prominent economists from the bipartisian Economic Strategy Group who argue that saving lives is vitally important to saving the economy. There are dozens of faculty members at OSU who could weigh in much better than our de facto representative coming up with his own theories. And this is where Porter is right: Gundy’s power affords him the position to posit his theories while people who are better suited to talk about such things remain unheard.
Now here is a hilarious paradox: we have a football coach who laughs at people on the internet who think they coach a football team better than he can – and he laughs rightly so – yet that same coach has gobs of ideas he loves to share about epidemiology, youth sociology, and climate change. Seriously?
Setting arbitrary dates undermines the work of experts who are doing everything they can to save lives and get society back to normal. There’s nothing wrong with being optimistic, but we ought to be optimistic about the right things: defeating the virus, saving lives, getting people healthy, supporting people who are out of work, being a good neighbor and friend as much as it is possible, and for most of us, staying home. I want Gundy chomping at the bit to play football, but I also want to see more tact when it comes to non-football issues.
6 Likes
I have no problem with Gundys comments We have to at some point look forward to getting economy going, we can’t hide forever. I don’t always agree with Gundy, but he has at least brought us out of the darkest days of football.
Kyle your headline was clickbait for me. I expected to see bashing from every FB in America. I haven’t seen it. I like reading PFB, I read it everyday. But I didn’t enjoy this one.
1 Like
Dear Kyle,
I think PFB has got out of its world with this article. I know you guys run a business and want to get eye balls on your site. With no sports on and not even on the calendar, you want to still get people to come to your site which obviously is what you want. However, this article seems opportunistic to say the least in your attempt to get attention. You need to understand that most people who come to your site and therefore are the eyeballs that generate revenues for you are OSU fans. Gundy’s comments have been completely overblown and to the point you have inadvertently brought disrepute to OSU and its head coach in football. Although everyone has a right to have an opinion on what has been said, media also has some responsibility in shaping public opinion particularly during these dark times. The world is on fire with this virus. It is best not to exploit situations and people like Gundy who are merely trying to fight the impact of it.
4 Likes
One of the more absurd and embarrassing days from media covering OSU athletics in a long time.
Kyle is smart, but this is click bait trash and he knows it. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
PFB never misses the opportunity to fall in line with the national media hacks, which is disappointing. Be better.
3 Likes
WTF is wrong with Gundy, OKSTATE has plenty of Asian American Students, calling it the “Chinese Virus” in no way helps him, the students, the university, that is just pure ignorance. Spewing Trump/Fox News talking point, dude needs to educate himself. I can understand why we may never win a championship again with him, why would an athlete want to play for such an ignorant coach or parent want to send their kids to play for him.
2 Likes
So only write things that OSU fans like? Got it.
How do you measure your success? By the number of clicks/engagement you get, or by people saying that PFB is their favorite site to visit for OSU news/content? If it is the former, then your focus should be to write the most controversial articles, but if it is the latter, then you should care about how your audience responds to your articles. All he is saying here is know your audience. That doesn’t mean you can’t ever write bad things about OSU when our sports teams suck or MG makes a poor decision in coaching, but in this case MG didn’t do or saying anything objectively wrong. To eviscerate him for a difference of opinion is irresponsible as an Oklahoma state website.
5 Likes
Porter’s job is to report OSU news and besides the mullet worshipers on here the majority of the responses were negative. Porter’s reporting on this has been spot on.
2 Likes
Neither.
1 Like
This is exactly why I think PFB is the best place to get OKstate news, why I pay money to support this blog, and a big reason for their success over the years. They don’t cuddle any OSU figure like all the other OSU sites. If you make a mistake, you get called out on it. Gundy says his dumb unfiltered thoughts. This is who he is and a big reason why he is so popular. I wish he didn’t because I don’t think it helps our football team, but that is just my opinion. BTW I am one of the so called Gundy apologist.
2 Likes
https://twitter.com/jacobunruh/status/1247888129375105024?s=21 Here is the full statement transcript if anyone wants to read its entirety
1 Like
Interesting. I thought that as a content creator you would care to measure how your audience reacts to your content, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and use that as a factor when measuring success. But I’m getting a little out of my world here because I do not write or create content. Maybe a question for another day.
I agree with you that PFB has been the best place for independent Oklahoma state coverage. I guess the problem I have is the website trumpeting his comments as an embarrassment for OSU, when I think it comes down to simply a difference of opinion. MG didn’t say anything false, didn’t minimize the steps taken so far, and thankfully he didn’t invoke any conspiracies. If OSU went 4-8 next year? Sure that’s an embarrassment. MG gets into legal trouble? Yep that’s an embarrassment. MG speaking about the importance of college football to the economy for Oklahoma and the financial well-being of millions of Americans, and saying that we can must weigh the importance of that along with the risk of a coronavirus resurgence in September? I don’t think that is an embarrassment. You, or I, may disagree with his thoughts or just think it was a poor delivery, but that doesn’t mean he is wrong.
5 Likes
Umm what conspiracy blog are you following?
Dude, no one has a problem with you writing about the story. It’s the clickbaity way you did it. Calling a spade a spade.
Didn’t know this blog would get so political? Clearly, this was politically and personally driven too, and so are all the responses. Unfortunate all the way around.
Kyle,
I almost never post on PFB these days but I feel a need to voice my opinion. Pretty sure you won’t read this and, like Gundy, may not give a rats a$$ about my opinion but… Gundy is a football coach that wants to coach football. He wants to do his job and is frustrated by the situation caused by this virus. I think that everyone has moments when they feel the same way and share similar sentiments over the past few weeks. Here’s the thing. A football coach, even with a large salary, should not be held to the same level of scrutiny as politicians and other government leaders… He is a freaking football coach and you are raking the guy the coals for having the opinion that this has to end at some point in the future and life needs to get to whatever the new normal is going to be. Actually, his comments are more moderate and reasonable than what we have been getting from POTUS who seems to say whatever the hell pops in his mind. I think your reaction is overreaching and far to critical. Again, he is a football coach that has no responsibility in whatever decisions are made by the state, conference, or university. Yes, his timing was bad and it was a not the best decision to voice his opinions on public safety. That said, he is entitled to his opinion and people are free to listen or not listen. Personally, I find his thoughts to be interesting and while I don’t agree, there is nothing there to warrant the tone of your comments.
Just my two cents
2 Likes
I like this point of view, and I think it’s a reasonable take.
My issue was more with the tone and timing of the comments as well as the fact that he’s a powerful person that people actually do listen to. Go listen to Josh Holliday and Mike Boynton on the pod over the last few weeks. Empathy, respect, humility and optimism. They’ve been great with this stuff. Gundy has not. Usually that’s an inconsequential reality (Ws and Ls). In this case, it might not be.
6 Likes
Well said.