Posted by Amanda Marcotte November 11, 2007 in Sports, Music, Boggles the Mind, Assholes
Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy had a minor, um incident/rant a few weeks ago, where he way overreacted to an article about his team. Considering that he mocked the writer for not having children, one suspects that the strength of his reaction might have had something to do with the sex of the critic that caused him so much pain.
Punkass Marc retorts by remixing the speech with “Eye of the Tiger”. Enjoy!
27 Responses to “Let me make that decision”
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I didn’t get the sexism inherent in the “if you had kids” comment. It was banal, tremendously insulting, and astoundingly immature, given the delivery, but nothing stood out as misogynistic about that.
The fact that he acted like a fucking nine-year-old in response two a critical column from a woman is telling since athletes get panned several times a day by writers, and pathetic meltdowns like this would soon cause heart attacks for coaches across the country if each bad review warrented a spaz attack. So the rant itself seems to betray some sexism.
His supporters (male and female) love it and are oblivious to such an implication, if web comments are any indication.
Here is the offending article:
http://www.newsok.com/article/3131543?pg=1
And a response from the reporter who pissed him off so much, Jenni Carlson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4AisVxShCs
It does seem strange that Gundy would call her a liar and then not elaborate when he’s asked what specific parts of her column were “fiction.” If you’re gonna make that accusation against somebody then you should be prepared to back it up, even if they are mean.
She isn’t mean, relatively speaking. The column’s a little bit snarky in places, but after seeing Gundy’s reaction I expected it to be a merciless hit job from beginning to end, which it certainly isn’t. I don’t know if gender was a factor here, but sports columnists frequently get more critical than this and managers or coaches ignore it. So with Gundy, was it partly because the writer was female? Was this the straw that broke the camel’s back after lots of other criticisms of his team or his players? Was it because Reid apparently burst into tears after reading it? I don’t know.
Finally, anybody who puts her- or himself out there to be judged, whether playing sports or running for public office or performing on a stage, has to have a thick skin because not everybody is going to go easy on them. If Reid took the column as hard as Gundy says, then I feel sorry for him, but if he’s that sensitive then he should reconsider playing football. People–fans, not just the press–will boo you and heckle you if you suck or even if you just screw up. Bill Buckner was a very good baseball player who helped the Red Sox get to the World Series in ‘86, and yet his reputation was destroyed after he made a single costly error that postponed Boston’s World Championship for another 18 years.
I won’t defend Gundy’s behaviour. He threw a temper-tantrum, and that’s not OK, even if he is 40. The problem, though, is that what has been lost in the spectacle of his delivery is that the content of his complaint didn’t actually miss the mark. The fact that he wouldn’t back it up when asked to do so point blank makes him a bit of a dipshit, but it doesn’t make him wrong. And personally, I don’t blame him for just wanting it all to go away.
But I’ve been a sports guy for a very long time, and I have never seen a column that was so personally critical of an individual college athlete as Jenni Carlson’s original article was. The fact, Rob, that she wasn’t “mean” about it doesn’t get her off the hook. She might as well have dispensed with journalistic convention and just written “Bobby Reid is a total pussy” over and over again. I’ve seen plenty of columns that criticized strategies, coaches, player units, on-field performance, or recruiting, I’ve seen plenty that have personally called out professional athletes, and I’ve seen coaches rip into players or officials for whatever reason in ways that I thought were less than classy (one of the many, many reasons I love to beat Texas Tech), but this column, as far as I’m concerned, was way over the line on several counts.
I honestly don’t think gender had anything to do with it. Carlson’s main problem is that her entire premise — that Reid was benched because of attitude, not performance — was demonstrably wrong, and that instead of coming up with a more defensible argument like an honest person would, she decided to spend the better part of a column obliquely accusing a 21-year-old kid of being a malcontented chickenshit mama’s-boy, based on evidence that is tenuous and circumstantial at the absolute best.
As a point of fact, Zac Robinson’s (Reid’s replacement) career statistics are better than Reid’s across the board (completion percentage, TD/INT ratio, yards per completion, rushing yards, and total offense) in ten fewer games played. And having seen both of them play more than once, my subjective impression is also that Robinson is the better player. If I can see that, I can absolutely guarantee that the oSu coaches can see it, too.
But if Gundy’s response was sexist (and I’m not convinced that it is), how is Carlson’s column itself not sexist? She came right out and said, without even bothering to put much whitewash on it, that allowing your mother to feed you in public makes you a sissy.
You should have seen the response Tom Brokaw got when introduced by David Boren at Owen Field during the OU - Nebraska match two years ago.
Jenni Carlson got off easy.
I think people here just hate the press. With a newspaper like the Oklahoma Daily, it’s hard to blame them.
I think there’s a lot going on below the surface here that might not be obvious to those who are far from central Oklahoma (in fact, this year, I, too, am far from central Oklahoma…but since I’m usually found there, I might just be able to add a little detail).
First, I think it’s fair to generalize that most area sports fans deeply disrespect Jenni Carlson. This certainly has something to do with gender. Read any of the OU fan boards (which, perhaps not surprisingly, tend to be steeped in misogyny and homophobia) and you’ll see all kinds of gender-based insults heaped on Carlson. But if the disrespect of Carlson takes the form of misogyny, its root cause seems to be the fact that she’s not a very good sports columnist. As a number of people have noted upthread, the column in question is, in fact, unfair. Add to this that she works for the very powerful but also deeply disrespected Daily Oklahoman, OKC’s (and the state’s) biggest newspaper and the deserved recipient of the Worst Daily Newspaper in America title from the Columbia Journalism Review. In short, attacking Jenni Carlson is likely to find a receptive audience in Oklahoma; my sense (from afar) is that Gundy’s rant did just that.
Second, OSU football is, always has been, and always will be second fiddle to OU football in the state of Oklahoma. In recent years, thanks to $165 million in gifts from alum T. Boone Pickens, Cowboy football has been rolling in bucks. Its stadium has been improved. It’s spent a ton of money on building its fan base. But, at the end of the day, the Pokes are still mired in mediocrity. Now admittedly my view of these things is from Norman, home to the University of Oklahoma, and is thus more than slightly jaundiced. Nonetheless, OSU football is the butt of nearly constant joking. The game after which Gundy had his tirade was an unexpected victory over Texas Tech, whose coach, the softspoken but bitingly funny Mike Leach, had delivered an insult to OSU at a press conference earlier in the weak by making fun of publicity materials OSU had put out ridiculously calling itself “the most powerful offense in the world.” My guess is that Gundy was really feeling his oats following that victory.
Third, and this should be obvious by now, nearly everyone in the state of Oklahoma cares far too much about football.
Finally, and most importantly, last week, another OSU football player, linebacker Chris Collins, Jr, pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault. The victim was a twelve-year-old girl. Collins had been given a scholarship to OSU with this indictment looming over his head, a move that prompted much deserved criticism of Gundy and the OSU athletic program. Now that he’s pleaded guilty, Gundy has still not removed Collins from the team. This has made a lot of folks feel that Gundy has little business talking (or ranting) about character.
Sorry for all the detail…hope some of it is interesting to those far from the Big XII!
What Dan said is spot on. I don’t think Amanda actually read the article that the writer put out. Calling his reply “mysogynistic” is a hell of a reach. “Knee jerk reaction” would be more accurate and it’s a late one at that. This story already has a mold on it…
So, um, for those of use who know diddily about sports, don’t bother following sports, and have never bothered reading a sports page in their lives, could someone summarize?
I read the article, and she seemed down on some guy. Is that really unusual in sports reporting? What I mean is, I mostly follow political news, and what she wrote, from the context of what I usually read, seemed restrained, dignified, and not at all unpleasant. Do they really baby atheletes so much that a not very nasty at all column can provoke a screaming fit?
Because, looking at this from the perspective of someone who’s never read the sports section before, it seems like there’s got to be more going on than the article itself. It was *tame* compared to the crap they throw at even local politicians. Which leads me, as a non-sports following person, to suspect that there’s another reason the coach threw a temper tantrum, like maybe the fact that she’s a woman reporting on a male dominated field.
Well, I’m handicapped because I don’t like to rely on listening to Youtube and other such Internet audio-video to get the content of what people allegedly said (since I’m nearly deaf and so poor quality audio tends to be unintelligible to me, and I would be trying to listen in my workplace) so I don’t view the clips. (And I’m getting alarmed at how more and more Pandagonia relies on these things…)
Also sportswriting and sports in general are totally alien to me, as much as it is possible for a boy raised in the USA anyway. I don’t give a damn about any sport, in and of itself, only on how they might impact on things I do care about–like say gender roles, where they have tremendous negative impact in maintaining traditional “masculinity,” and some good impact insofar as women’s sports are empowering of women. (I might therefore be persuaded to attend a women’s basketball game for instance, but it would be a pure political gesture of solidarity.)
But at first the misogyny seemed obvious; how often do coaches challenge male sportswriters like that? It would seem to be a total non-sequitur to try to bring down a man like that; his parental status is assumed to be irrelevant. Whereas challenging a woman like that simultaneously seeks to demean her as a woman and remind everyone she is a woman, intruding “out of her place.” That’s what the short description of the incident looks like. It appears to be all about gender roles.
Rob, Dan, and Ben’s context do put the matter in a somewhat different light; if one of Carlson’s apparently numerous shortcomings as a sportswriter is violating some kind of code of honor that avoids attacking players as persons, then it is easier to imagine that had Carlson been a man Gundy might possibly have said the same thing–taking down Carlson for a lack of empathy and decency that (so the rhetoric implies) any parent would have for their own kids.
Well and good. But I still think that even in that Parallel Earth situation, with Carlson a man instead of a woman, it would probably have sounded weird and tangential to suggest parenthood had anything to do with it, and if the female This Earth Carlson is hated for valid reasons, I also gather that the fact she is a woman greatly compounds the misery of those who love to hate her.
It’s always a bit embarrassing for feminists when women match or exceed the incompetence or mendacity of men, and it seems obvious to me that the misogynistic societies of our world are generally far readier to allow such unfortunate women to get ahead and earn infamy, precisely as an anti-feminist defense mechanism. I’m sure the British Labour party cultivated a fair number of women who might have been great Prime Ministers, but of course it was Margaret Thatcher, Conservative, who became first female PM in Britain. Of course the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court was a right-wing tool (one who fortunately didn’t forget that she was also a woman–but definitely a Republican woman. Ann Coulter is much more widely known than say, Susan Faludi. And so it goes…
That the story is old is completely irrelevant, since the point of the link was the song.
There’s a commercial bit of brutality here too, I feel. The article portrays an athlete as a mama’s boy. Leave aside the other (and already noted) societal implications of that; there are professional implications as well.
The two examples that spring most immediately to mind (for team sports, anyway) are Vince Carter and Eric Lindros. The teams that obtained them obtained two very talented athletes, which was part of the deal. They also obtained over-involved parents, who were not part of the deal, to the point of ongoing organizational frustration, notoriety, and mockery from fans and press. An article like Jenni Carlson’s is like a red warning sticker placed in a scouting report, a very small Mark of Cain that might be the difference as to whether a big league scout or manager decides to take a chance on him. This is doubly so because she has, in effect, branded him as having no athletic heart at the same time, which is an equally damning red sticker.
Gundy’s tirade was tacky, petty, childish, bullying and supremely ungentlemanly. But Ms. Carlson’s article may be a key component in whether or not this fellow ever gets the career that he dreams of and may be eligible for, and that’s worthy of some response.
Darn it! Now you’ve got that Survivor song in my head, where it will stay all bloody day. Curse you!
He’s a good kid!
It’s not intramurals, it’s Division I Football!
They are who we thought they were!
We’re talkin’ bout PRACTICE.
PLAYOFFS?!
Ahhh, I love sports.
All the time. The whole “walk a mile in my shoes!!!” line is a coaching standard.
The reason I commented on his rant is because the video shown there is of the rant without the music. So I clicked on “play” and got the unmodified version.
The mashup is somewhat chuckle-worthy (heh, ok, now that I’ve listened to the second “verse” with the words interchanged, it’s funnier. I guess you gotta hear the whole thing beginning to end for maximum amusement).
There’s a former baseball player who is occasionally brought on one of the sports stations here in Canada to provide opinions on stuff. His name is Jim Traber, and since seeing his first appearance I’ve since learned that he’s pretty conservative (which I’ve found that unfortunately a lot of baseball players are; when Curt Schilling endorsed Dubya after helping the Red Sox win the World Series it totally sucked away all of the happiness I felt for that team and for the long-suffering city of Boston) and kind of a dick–not that those things are mutually exclusive or anything.
Now, why am I bringing up Mr. Traber? Well, when I saw Amanda’s post here, I happened to remember that one of the things Traber had been asked about the last time I saw him on TV was the Gundy rant. So I did a YouTube search for Traber videos to see if I could find it, and in the process I found this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sFHAl1gdjaY
Traber kind of defended Gundy for standing up for his player, as I recall, but in this video we’ve got Traber and that tool Sansone (I didn’t think he was such a tool until I watched this) ridiculing Andrei Kirilenko because of the same kind of irrelevant crap.
So, if this is any indication, talking about athletes’ personal lives and basically calling them pussies is not at all uncommon in sports “reporting”. This is just one example, mind you. I could probably find more, involving other people, if I tried. Or if I just kept watchign sports coverage and reading the paper.
Yeahhhh… I haven’t watched it either, but it reminds of an incident recently when I was at work–we were working with some kind of lame stock photo of a middle-aged woman who looked really crabby, and someone wondered if we should use a different photo (because she looked crabby) and the art director trying to be funny did the woman’s voice like, “Yes, I am bitter and will never have children and I am taking it out on youuuu!”
I was amazed and irritated that he would go there without a thought, and of course took the opportunity to reply, “Oh yes, you are SO right–I for one am SO bitter every time I enjoy my free time, sleeping in on weekends, and using my disposable income for vacations! Man, you’re right! No WONDER we’re so bitter.”
“You don’t have kids” — the ultimate “insult to women.” Lovely.
I just watched the clip that Rob posted. They’re picking on Kirilenko because his wife manages the finances; and also because she lets him have sex with a fan once a year. And the washed up ex-ballplayer said, “sounds like she’s leading him around bythe you-know-what …”
So he’s not even for “family values.” Because most folks assume that the rule is that monogamous couples have outside partners no times a year. They’re for patriarchy, where the rule is, “I do what I want and she doesn’t find out.” I bet to these guys, if their wives were okay with their affairs, it wouldn’t be the same.
Is it sexist?
Compare the criticism of this college player with the criticism of Lauren Caitlin Upton in the Miss Teen USA competition (the one who had trouble with the question about geography and maps).
Compare the reactions to each criticism.
It’s so funny watching all these MEN try (and fail) to tell us WOMEN why brining kids or a lack thereof into the response wasn’t sexist. Of course it was sexist, give me a fucking break already! You NEVER, EVER hear a man’s parental status brought up in diatribes like this (although you’ll hear a hell of a lot of other things). It couldn’t BE anymore obviously “Get that bitch barefoot and back in the kitchen”.
The coach is clearly taking a gender-based jab at the reporter, but if you read the article it’s clear that the reporter does the same thing in regard to the football player. She all but accuses the footballer of being a mamma’s boy for eating food that his mother prepared — in public, no less. Oh the humanity!
Now contrast this with the story circulating today about Kayne West, who’s mother just died. West was known for having a very close relationship with his mother. No one would dream of suggesting he’s a mamma’s boy or less of a man because he loves his mother, yet this is exactly what the reporter in the football story has done.
She took the low road and fell back on a common gender slur often levied at men who fail to fit the stereotype of what a ‘man’ is supposed to be. Frankly, if my mother was alive today, I’d be proud to eat anything she prepared, in public. She was a hell of a cook and a wonderful woman. That the female reporter would seek to promote a negative gender myth, illuminates her bias and explains, if not justifies, the coache’s scorn for what she did.
The contents of the article are irrelevant to the question of whether Gundy’s remarks were misogynistic. I’m male, and it was blatantly obvious to me. I felt like I was watching Promise Keepers, after the wives decided not to obey them.
Gundy did have some legitimate gripes about the way amateur athletes are treated by the press, but the way he expressed those gripes not only were sexist, they trivialized the views of people who are responsible enough not to have children in an overpopulated world.
The reporter’s a third-rate bitter hack in a fourth-rate market and the coach guy is a laughable douchebag who, it can be argued, thinks it beneath him to take guff from a female sportswriter.
Waiting for this to become a signal moment in American cultural history … waiting … waiting …
Next.
Yeah, Gundy should have backed up his remarks with some evidence to the contrary at least. Oh well, that’s what happens when crappy team talent meets a calling out by the media.
“They’re picking on Kirilenko because his wife manages the finances; and also because she lets him have sex with a fan once a year.”
It’s true that his wife offers the deal but according to him, he never takes her up on it.
“The contents of the article are irrelevant to the question of whether Gundy’s remarks were misogynistic. I’m male, and it was blatantly obvious to me. I felt like I was watching Promise Keepers, after the wives decided not to obey them.”
I think he was getting at the fact that she doesn’t have kids and therefore she doesn’t know that MAKING THEM A MEAL isn’t something to be looked down upon. That was a main point in the article that she twisted around.
So, Camper, it’s completely plausible to you that a male sportswriter would be attacked in just this way if he wrote stuff exactly like Carlson’s article?
You aren’t saying anything I didn’t already address here, upthread,
http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2007/11/11/let-me-make-that-decision/#comment-465660
And others made the point much more succinctly than I did.
The only difference is, if you’re a guy and you call a 20-year-old jock a mama’s boy, you get your ass kicked soundly. If you’re a woman, some not-ready-for-prime-time bozo rants unconvincingly in front of a camera.
I don’t think anyone would argue that Gundy had plenty of reasons to object to Carlson’s column. Carlson’s column wasn’t a very good column (although I am spoiled by the amazing Boston Globe sportswriters, it’s a pretty tendentious and shoddy column by lesser standards as well).
The sexism isn’t in his objecting to Carlson’s sportswriting–it’s in his using sexist tropes and languages to attack her.
If he’d said “This column is junk, and here’s why” that wouldn’t have been sexist at all. In fact, it might have been a useful and interesting discussion. Instead, he went for the “childish” option. FAIL.