The College Court | Criticism of athletes shoud stay on field

Emma Carmichael Columnist

On Saturday, Sept. 22, the Cowboys, Oklahoma State University’s football team, took the field against the heavily favored Texas Tech University Red Raiders and came away with an impressive 49-45 win. But in the post-game news conference, the Cowboys’ Head Coach Mike Gundy made no mention of his players’ efforts, such as Brandon Pettigrew’s game-winning touchdown reception or the fact that three of his backs rushed for over 100 yards. Instead, Gundy went on a three- and-a-half minute tirade against The Oklahoman columnist Jenni Carlson’s game-day piece that attacked his recently demoted quarterback, Bobby Reid. As he paced back and forth across the platform, Gundy’s eyes bulged and his voice gathered volume, erupting in outbursts such as “Get your facts straight!” and “Makes me wanna puke,” before storming out of the room.

It is undeniable that Carlson’s column was competely out of line. In it, she questions not Reid’s playing abilities, but rather his tenacity. She cites a recent embarrassing Cowboys loss, during which Reid “[threw] his cap in disgust after a missed play” but was later filmed “on the sidelines laughing” with an assistant coach.

Her biggest critique, though, is that after a recent game, Reid’s mother was seen feeding him chicken from a boxed lunch. The sighting seemed to perturb Carlson because it connoted a lack of maturity and masculinity. She wrote, “Does [Reid] want to be coddled, babied, perhaps even fed chicken? The scene in the parking lot…said so much about Reid.”

But Carlson fails to identify exactly what this says about Reid, not to mention what it says about her perceptions of male football players. Because 21-year-old Bobby Reid puts on his pads and his helmet and trots onto the gridiron once a week to subject himself to the hazards of football, is he expected to also be an emotionless and perhaps motherless robot? Does his position as a high-level Division I quarterback mean that his every action depends on his successes or failures on the field?

Interestingly, much of this particular squabble has focused on the sexist undertones of Gundy’s speech, as opposed to those in Carlson’s column. Carol Slezak of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote a piece entitled “Was Gundy mad at a columnist or a woman?” in which she said that she “[couldn’t] imagine Gundy going off on a man the way he did on Carlson.” Indeed, much of Gundy’s rant was oddly centered on the fact that Carlson is childless.

“That article had to be written by a person that doesn’t have a child,” bellowed Gundy. He later said that “If you [Carlson] have a child someday, you’ll understand how it feels, but you obviously don’t have a child. I do. If your child goes down the street and somebody makes fun of him because he drops a pass in a pickup game or says he’s fat and he comes home crying to his mommy, you’ll understand.”

In her column, Slezak makes an interesting point: Would Gundy have substituted the word “daddy” for “mommy” had the article been written by a male sportswriter? And would he have even made the effort to mention children?

Here we find ourselves at an interesting juncture. Carlson’s original column exposes her own sexist views on the role of a football player: the masculinity she expects someone like Reid to put forth and the emotional side she expects him to suppress. Meanwhile, Gundy’s diatribe is evidence of his own sexism, which is highlighted by his inability to grasp the concept of a female sportswriter attacking one of his male football players.

Consider the fact that Carlson was in the media room during the press conference and that Gundy furiously stared her down from his platform during his tirade—would he have been comfortable doing the same thing had a man written the piece? At the end of his speech, and at what seemed to be his emotional peak, he dared her to “Come after me! I’m a man! I’m 40!” While he wanted to stress that Reid was just a “kid,” the emphasis on his maleness is quite conspicuous, yet overlooked by the public.

Much of the public criticism directed toward Carlson has been focused on whether or not journalists should be permitted to criticize college athletes for anything besides their playing performances, and whether or not Gundy’s outburst (which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube) was appropriate. I believe that the answers to each of these matters are quite obvious.

While it seems acceptable for journalists to question a player’s attitude and personality in relation to how he or she plays on the field, it is both tactless and ineffective to do so in comparison to his or her personal life. Above all else, Reid is a college student and does not deserve to be subjected to embarrassing and potentially damaging public critiques, especially those from the lips or the pen of an outsider.

Carlson was wrong to relate the “chicken incident” to Reid’s abilities as a football player. There is simply no connection between his relationship with his mother and how he throws the football. In order to restore her reputation and credibility, Carlson should extend a sincere apology to Reid and his family, and recognize the sexism that may have triggered her critique.

However, Carlson’s mistakes do not absolve Gundy of his own. While it is admirable that the coach-player bond is strong enough to elicit such a response, he could have handled the situation in a more respectful manner. It may not have been necessary for him to address Carlson in private, as some commentators have suggested, but Gundy surely could have controlled his somewhat irrational anger.

The way in which he publicly condemned Carlson seemed more like a threat than anything else. He literally stood behind the safety of a press platform and berated her, while she sat outnumbered in a room of mostly men. His constant allusions to the fact that she has no children reflect his confusion when encountering a woman in an unfamiliar role.

In this case, though, apologies are not going to be enough. The public will still reject the notions of both emotional or dependent football players, and female journalists who are covering and criticizing a sport so defined by masculinity. If Carlson does indeed have a child one day and, as Gundy wished, “somebody downgrades him, and belittles him, and you have to look him in the eye and say ‘It’s okay,’” then I hope that Carlson will in fact tell him, or her, that just as in this case, it’s not okay.

Emma Carmichael ’10 is an Urban Studies major and a member of the Vassar women’s basketball team. This semester she is editorializing on issues in all divisions of college-level athletics.