Introducing the Bobby Knight of Big XII football…Mike Gundy?

There already is an equivalent of Bobby Knight in Big Ten football. He was a guy by the name of Woody Hayes. But up until this point, I though Woody Hayes was the only Bobby Knight of college football. It turned out that I was wrong..by a country mile.

Enter the 40-year old football virgin, Mike Gundy. Here he is, after a 49-45 slugfest over Texas Tech, in which he rips apart Jenna Carlson for her presumed smack-talking of one of the reserve quarterbacks who is benched anyway…and he does an average, if D-grade, effort in delivering the backlash.

I mean, it’s hilarious, and I applaud the fact that he is standing by his words, at the risk of being chewed up like Hank Hill in the first episode of King of the Hill. At least, he didn’t pull out a Don Imus-like impersonation. Carlson can breathe easy, now that she wasn’t painted in the same brush as the runner-ups on the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

But it takes courage to stand by your words, and face the music. Even I have trouble apologizing for my choice of words, because I believe that apologies never reversed the damage done, and it won’t. You gotta hand it to coaches like Mike Gundy. They would bring tears to Bud Kilmer’s eyes, or at least a chuckle or a smirk.

And one wonders if Bobby Knight is impressed by the choice of words, if at all. After all, he now coaches the basketball team from the university that Mike Gundy’s boys defeated the other weekend.

So much for getting the facts straight…



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