Mike Gundy took a step back from his recent controversial comments about the global COVID-19 pandemic. The Oklahoma State football coach apologized to anyone who was offended by him pushing for a May 1 return date for football because, among other reasons, they “need to run money through the state of Oklahoma.”
Saturday, Gundy issued an apology for offending people with his confusing comments, which came off as tone-deaf and oblivious as he tried to argue why it’s not only safe but also critical for unpaid athletes to return to competition during a global health crisis — even if students are not in class. He also seemed to apologize for offending people and not specifically for dismissing legitimate safety concerns about the coronavirus outbreak and the timeline for attempting to return to normal life.
“I have been made aware that comments from my press conference have offended some,” Gundy said in a prepared statement on Saturday. “It was never my intention to offend anyone and I apologize. My first priority is and will always be the student-athletes and doing what is best for the program and the university.”
While on a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Gundy argued that college football players are young and “healthy and they have the ability to fight this virus off.” So apparently it’s not that big of a deal if they get COVID-19.
That sentiment completely ignores that people of a wide variety of ages, including those in younger demographics, are getting sick and dying from the coronavirus — not to mention that even if someone is healthy enough to fight off the virus, they could still pass it on to others.
As of Saturday, the death toll from the virus in the U.S. surpassed 20,000 people.
Gundy also compared how he’d react to a positive COVID-19 case with his reaction to the flu. He said he believes that with the help of reliable testing, someone on his squad who tests positive could be “quarantined just like we do [with] people that get the flu.”
That’s not how any of this is really working or should work. Testing remains inconsistent and not widespread, and Gundy simply claiming it would be safe and reasonable to bring football back even without students on campus for classes doesn’t make it true.
More of what Gundy said earlier this week via USA TODAY Sports:
“We’ve got to have a plan and so let’s just stay on schedule. Everybody needs to relax, OK? And I’m not taking away from the danger of people getting sick. (If) you have the virus, stay healthy, try to do what we can to help people that are sick and we’re losing lives, which is just terrible. But the second part of it is that we still have to schedule and continue to move forward as life goes on and do everything we can to help those people.”
His May 1 return date was described as “ambitious” by athletics director Mike Holder, and the school issued a similar statement, citing state, federal and Big 12 rules that it will follow when deciding to resume activities.
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