Mike Gundy uses officiating blunder to teach players that life is unfair
Mike Gundy knew the topic would come up.
The college football world continues to debate how a misapplication of a rule should be handled, like the one that cost Gundy’s Oklahoma State team a win against Central Michigan Saturday. Naturally, the coach was still fielding questions about it on the Big 12 weekly teleconference, even as his Cowboys have begun preparations for another challenging contest against 2-0 Pittsburgh.
Gundy issued a statement Sunday in which he accepted responsibility for calling a play that could have been interpreted as intentional grounding but also expressing disappointment that no official present was clear on how the rule should have been applied. Ultimately, of course, CMU was erroneously allowed to run an untimed play that resulted in the game-winning touchdown.
Gundy went on to say in Sunday’s statement that he wanted to close the book on the game and move forward, but he admitted Monday he had expected more discussion of the unusual ending.
“I certainly didn’t think I’d get away with not talking about it today like we are now,” he said, when asked why he had taken the unusual step of issuing a statement Sunday. “I felt like the public wanted my opinion on what happened, and I didn’t want questions about it to keep coming up during the week. I felt like I could deflect some of that from the players. We never want our players answering questions about the officiating.”
As for the outcome itself, he said he hoped his players would use it as a learning experience. “We just tried to look at this as an opportunity to teach these young men that sometimes life doesn’t go the way you want it to.”
Gundy did say he’d prefer to see interleague games overseen by Big 12 officiating crews moving forward. “Those discussions are ongoing,” he said.
Asked whether there should be some process to handle rules errors that might give some entity the authority to overturn results in such situations, Gundy simply said, “I’d be open to that.”