Doug Gottlieb Talks Poignantly About 2001 Plane Crash

I didn’t get around to posting this last week which is unfortunate especially considering Doug Gottlieb showed up at the Remember the 10 game with Eddie Sutton. But Doug talked to the O’Colly about what the plane crash meant to him.

Carson and I talked about this on our RT10 podcast a little bit, but this quote from the O’Colly floored me. If this had happened in 2000 instead of 2001, Gottlieb might have been one of the people who passed away.

“Denver Mills’ plane was the plane I always used to ride on,” Gottlieb said. “Whether it was because I was perpetually in the doghouse or because there usually wasn’t coaches on that plane ‘cause it was slower.”

I laughed at the “because I was perpetually in the doghouse” part. But I didn’t laugh at the idea. I’ve learned a lot recently about how the things you never think are going to happen sometimes happen.

“I mean, Kurt Budke turns the women’s program around, and I’d always thought to myself, ‘No way anyone I know is ever involved in a plane crash again,’ continued Gottlieb. ‘What is the statistical possibilities? None.’ And yet, sure enough, it happened again.”

He’s right about that. The probability of the three things that have happened in the last 15 years to Oklahoma State is statistically incomprehensible.

“It’s not just 10 people that died in a crash,” Gottlieb said. “It’s that they were 10 individually very special people for very different reasons. I would like, if possible, for them all to be remembered, even if only for one thing, to be remembered individually because that’s how we remember them.”

Great job by Nathan Ruiz for getting those quotes (you should read the whole thing) and good on Gottlieb for perpetually understanding the foundation upon which OSU is built. I hope he gets to talk about it on January 27 in Stillwater for the next dozen or so years (if you know what I mean).