The month of September has been a bad month for Oklahoma State football. After Sports Illustrated published the findings of it’s 10-month investigation of the OSU football program, the 11th ranked Cowboys ended the month with a road loss to West Virginia 30-21 on Saturday. This same West Virginia team lost the previous week to unranked but undefeated Maryland 37-0.
The Sports Illustrated’s Special Investigation was presented in a five-part series. The parts of the series were divided up into money, academics, drugs, sex, and the fallout. Over 60 players were interviewed during the investigation, which covered the time period of 2000-2011.
The money section of the study referred to direct payments to players, bonuses for performance, and players being paid for jobs they didn’t do. The accusations related to academics, was that the program didn’t strive to educate, but to get the players passing grades so they can keep playing. Former players at OSU also said that drug use, as well as drug dealing was prevalent among some players, and some even smoked marijuana before games.
Early in the period investigated, under head coach Les Miles, the football program’s hostess program, Orange Pride, tripled in size, and became a key recruiting tool. Players say that a small number of these girls had sex with players. The fallout or result of all the allegations was that players who became injured, or were not meeting expectations, became expendable, and were dropped from the team, left to fend for themselves, after broken promises during recruitment. Between 2002 and 2010, a whopping 43.5% of football players left OSU before their five years of eligibility ran out.
Of course, we don’t know how many of these accusations are true about the Oklahoma State football program. However, when over 60 players agreed to go on the record with their interviews, and neither Miles, nor Mike Gundy, who has been the head coach since 2005, would comment for the story, it looks bad for them and their program. Hopefully these aren’t the reasons a perennial conference doormat has risen to become a national powerhouse. But if they keep winning, and no NCAA sanctions hit the program, you figure this story might blow over eventually.
Maybe these allegations have affected the football team, considering their surprising loss to West Virginia on Saturday. OSU scored the first touchdown, but then gave up 17 straight points, and trailed at halftime 24-14. The Cowboys scored a touchdown in the third quarter to get within 3 points, but could get no closer. The Mountaineers kicked 2 field goals to finish the scoring at 30-21. OSU hurt themselves with 3 turnovers and 10 penalties during the game.
John Madden, the former Oakland Raiders head coach, and popular professional football color commentator, used to say “Winning is the best deodorant”. While that is very true in sports, it may take more than that for this story to go away for Oklahoma State. If their team starts going downhill, things may snowball in a negative way for the program. I’m sure this isn’t the end of the story, but nevertheless September has been a bad month for Oklahoma State football. Stay tuned for updates on these accusations.
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