Old Accusations Coming Back from Colorado at Mike Gundy
STILLWATER -- I was the reporter for KFOR-TV and I remember the Cowboys 41-17 loss at Lewis Field in Stillwater to a stout Colorado team that would go on to win the Big 12 (7-0) and then lose in the Orange Bowl to No. 4 Notre Dame 21-6 dropping from their perch at No. 1 in the rankings. Oklahoma State was in the first season of the probation the NCAA placed Oklahoma State on in January of that year. Senior quarterback Mike Gundy did not have the weapons he'd enjoyed like Barry Sanders and Hart Lee Dykes. The Cowboys finished 4-7.
In that Colorado game, Gundy was roughed up pretty good and I rememeber being on the sidelines there was a lot of trash talking, but there always was with Colorado. They were notorious for that back in those days.
Now, with Mike Gundy under fire from the t-shirt that he wore fishing a week ago at Lake Texhoma that promoted the One America News network and the criticism from his players led by All-American running back Chuba Hubbard, Gundy is catching it from virtually every angle. Skeletons are flying out of the closet. That includes this story from 1989. Then Colorado defensive end and a former Denver Bronco Alfred Williams is now on radio in Denver and he told Pro Football Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe now on Fox Sports that after he and Kanavis McGhee sacked Gundy in that 1989 game that Gundy called them the n-word.
I was working at Channel 4 in Oklahoma City and then next Monday after the game at the regular weekly media day, I was with the late Bob Barry Sr. and we asked Gundy about the report that had surfaced in the Big Eight and College Football notes column written by Jim Thomas in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
According to Colorado safety Tim James, Gundy called several Buffaloes players n------, wrote Thomas.
"I can't count the number of times that he used that word, James said. "He has no class. There's no place for that in sports."
"I hope not very many people raise their children to be like him," said Alfred Williams. "He said things he had no business saying to anybody."
Gundy was quoted after the game.
"It's not true," he told the media. "They were doing the talking. Why would I say those things? I've been here four years and half my friends (on the team) are black. It makes no sense."
We spoke with Gundy on Monday and this was his response.
"It did upset me and I have many friends that are black," Gundy told our NewsChannel 4 camera. "The people around here know that and they don't concern themselves with it because they know I'm not that way. I'd like to put an end to it and let people know I'm not that way, the people that don't know me. It may have been something their players started and I don't know why they'd do that. It's embarrassing to me, but then again it doesn't really hurt because I know that I carry myself in the way that I should carry. Plus, if I ever said something like that my mom would probably run me out of the house."
I spoke to former Oklahoma State head coach Pat Jones today about this topic and Jones told me he got a note after the game from then University of Colorado President E. Gordon Gee, who is now the President of West Virginia University. Jones said Gee's note said he should talk to his quarterback about using language he shouldn't have used that was directed at Colorado players.
Jones told me he went to Gundy and spoke to him.
"He said, 'Coach, you should have heard what they were saying to me. What they were saying about my mother,'" Jones said as Gundy denied it as he did in the media.
"I sent a note back to Gee telling him that he might want to worry about the language his player were using about our quarterback's mother. I'll tell you what it was, and Robert you know about this, it was bottom of the pile gutter talk."
