John E. Hoover · @johnehoover
25th Oct 2015 from TwitLonger
Mike Gundy's comments on the #OKState tragedy. This is true leadership.
Opening statement:
"I just want to start by saying how sorry our staff, the Oklahoma State family and our team is about the incident earlier today. I don't know a lot of details. At one time, there was some discussion, because of the impact on the families and the people involved, of whether to play the game or not. Those decisions are made kind of higher than me. I was willing to support whatever direction they wanted to go. I don't think that that's something that's up for discussion at this point, but it was really difficult for our coaching staff, our team and myself, being an Oklahoma State alum. It was a very unfortunate situation, so our thoughts and prayers from all of us go out to the families.
“I do want to reiterate that this one incident cannot take away from Oklahoma State University, and it cannot take away from homecoming and the celebration. That's something that's very important to us and to me, to make a point that it is a great time of the year. It's a great weekend and a great day, and there's a tremendous amount of pride and effort that goes into our homecoming, and that's why it has been established the way that it is. I don't want anything to be taken away from that.
On what he said to the team about this morning's incident:
"We told them the truth. That's the way we handle situations in our group, with good news, bad news or any news at all. There's really no comparison to a tragic incident like this morning, but we told them the truth in our pregame conversation before we came to the stadium. Part of the development of young people in our organization is knowing that there are things in our lives that we can control, and there are things that we can't control. Today's incident was something we couldn't do anything about. There was certainly not anything we could do if we were going to play the game. Our players understand that. My message to them was that a decision was made to play the game so we need to play the game. After that, we need to do everything we can to help the people and the families involved."
On if Kansas head coach David Beaty reached out to him before the game:
"Yes. That's the first thing he said. He's a class individual, and he feels the same way. If the same thing would have happened at Kansas, I would have felt the same way that he did. Everybody is concerned, but we're helpless. All we can do now is offer support to the people that were tragically involved."