Mike Gundy clarifies viral statement on Ollie Gordon II’s DUI arrest
After star running back Ollie Gordon II was arrested under suspicion of DUI June 30, both Gordon and Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy spoke about the incident at media days.
Gundy decided not to suspend Gordon, and in explaining his decision, he said that two-to-three beers might put someone over the legal limit to drive.
“I thought, I’ve probably done that about 1,000 times in my life, and it’s just fine. I got lucky, people get lucky,” he told ESPN.
It didn’t take long for the comment to go viral on social media, prompting Gundy to attempt to clarify his point in a post on X/Twitter. He said that he had not been referring to anything specific, just that, “We are all guilty of making bad decisions.”
My intended point today at Big 12 media days was that we are all guilty of making bad decisions. It was not a reference to something specific.
— Mike Gundy (@CoachGundy) July 9, 2024
TCU hopes new-look defense will help in return to 2022 glory
After an unlikely trip to the national championship game in 2022, TCU didn’t make a bowl game this past season. Now, the program looks to reload and return to its CFP days, and new defensive coordinator Andy Avalos is one of its keys to do so.
Avalos brings with him a new four-man front, as opposed to the three-man front the Horned Frogs previously used, which head coach Sonny Dykes said will give them more versatility and improve both their pass-rushing and run defense, two areas of improvement for TCU.
“I think that that’s going to be the biggest area of improvement for us is pressuring the quarterback. When you pressure the quarterback, that changes the game,” he said. “And we’re going to be able to throw a lot of different body types out there and guys who can run and guys who can be aggressive and we can create some good match-ups on the edge and also hold up against the run as a four-down as well.”
Joey McGuire thinks Deion Sanders can lead Colorado to success
As it turns out, Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire and Colorado head coach Deion Sanders go way back. Before Sanders was “Coach Prime,” he was just a dad in the stands at Cedar Hill, where McGuire coached Sanders’ eldest son.
“Man, I love Deion,” McGuire said. “I always tell everybody, I coached Bucky, his oldest son, in high school. He’s honestly the best dad of a player that I’ve ever had.”
Now, McGuire looks forward to when Colorado will come to Jones AT&T Stadium in November, when “one of the best quarterbacks in the nation” will face the top-rated 2024 recruiting class in the Big 12.
“[Sanders] brings a lot of excitement that I think Colorado is going to be really good,” McGuire said. “What he brings, he’s who he is. He doesn’t make any excuses, and he doesn’t take anything back. He’s going to say what he believes in and say what he thinks.”
Big 12 looks forward to new era of parity
With Texas and Oklahoma departing for the SEC, many coaches lauded the parity of the Big 12 and the opportunity to start fresh.
“If you look at the Big Ten, you look at the SEC, you look at the ACC, the same teams have represented those leagues year in, year out in the conference championship games,” Dykes said. “We’re [TCU is] like everybody else. It’s a new league. There’s going to be a lot of things that are going to be different. New additions to the league. A lot of uncertainty, but I love our mentality.”
“Last year we brought in four teams that basically were Group of Five teams,” Cincinnati head coach Scott Satterfield said of the league’s new additions. “Now the teams we’re bringing in have already been playing at the power level and amongst that competition level.”
“In my opinion, as we move forward, there’s going to be a lot of parity,” Gundy said, also noting the potential effects of revenue sharing. “I think that we’ve got a number of teams in this league that have an opportunity to make a move nationally. Whether anybody can take over and dominate for an extended period of time would be hard to tell at this point.”
“It’s exciting because this league probably has more diversity in terms of defensive scheme than any league I’ve ever been in,” Arizona’s Kenny Dillingham said. “Most leagues I’ve been in have one or two flavors. This league has a variety of flavors.”
New additions look to make their mark
Kenny Dillingham, 34 years old and in his second year at Arizona State, said that of all the Big 12′s coaches, he’d want to go golfing with Kyle Whittingham. Whittingham, 64, started at Utah in 1994 and became the head coach while Dillingham was still in high school.
Meanwhile, Utah, one year removed from back-to-back conference championships, earned the top spot in this year’s preseason poll, while Arizona State finished dead last.
None of that matters, though, as they enter the Big 12 on equal standing, leading former Pac-12 programs into a new league and new era of college sports. At media days, they seemed up for the challenge.
“This is actually the fourth conference I’ve been in since I’ve been at Utah. We were in the WAC, the Mountain West and the Pac-12, and now the Big 12. So nothing new for me personally as far as changing leagues. But we feel like we’ve got a roster that’s equipped to compete right away,” Whittingham said. “If you don’t adapt and update with the times, you’re going to get left behind and you’re going to be eliminated.”
“I think you have to learn how to win. I think learning how to win, you never know when it’s going to happen. It’s very, very difficult,” Dillingham said. “I think the obstacles we’ll overcome I don’t know about yet. I think that’s part of the sport. I think that’s the part of everything, is you can prepare for whatever you want to prepare for, but there’s going to be situations that you have to be ready to adapt to.”
All press conference transcripts courtesy of ASAP Sports. Click here for the full transcript.
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