Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy is known by many for his “I’m a man, I’m 40” rant. Unfortunately, he may now be known for being woefully out of touch with the realities of the coronavirus pandemic.
On Tuesday, Gundy advocated for a May return for his players, saying they are young and healthy and can fight off the virus. Gundy then added, “We need to run money through the state of Oklahoma.”
These comments came on the heels of Clemson coach Dabo Swinney insisting that the college football season would not be impacted by the coronavirus, saying, “I have zero doubt that we're going to be playing and the stands are going to be packed.”
Brandon Tierney believes this is a bad look for both coaches.
“Mike Gundy or Dabo Swinney, even if rooted in good intentions, you are, I think, patently irresponsible to believe that you are the one that should be providing this timeline,” Tierney said on Tiki & Tierney. “It’s negligent.”
Gundy, who is 129-64 at Oklahoma State, said he wants employees to return to the facility first before bringing players back “slowly but surely.” His solution to fending off the coronavirus? Testing everyone in the program, even though results aren’t exactly instant.
“He’s talking about things that don’t exist right now,” Tiki Barber said. “We know that these rapid tests are being developed, but we don’t know how reliable they can be yet. It’s too soon to be saying, ‘We’re going to test 100 people on our staff, and we’re going to decide right then if they’re okay to come into the building.’”
As coronavirus patients can attest, it doesn’t work that way. An Oklahoma State employee could be tested but not learn his or her results until days later. What happens if that employee tests positive? What happens if that employee infects other employees during the time between taking the test and getting the result? What happens if those employees infect players?
“He makes it sound too easy,” Barber said. “What we’ve found regarding this coronavirus and the spread is that it’s not easy to understand. As much as we’ve talked about why some people get mildly sick and some people get seriously sick, there’s some immune system issues we haven’t talked about. Some people might just have strong immune systems and others don’t. You can’t know that. You don’t know that until you get sick. . . . We don’t know what could potentially be harming a lot of these kids and these 100 employees that you think are going to come back into work a month from now.”