Let’s Re-Visit Those Boone Pickens Quotes From The Beginning of The Year

OSU is 2-2, and Boone Pickens has already fired a couple of shots in Mike Gundy’s direction before October. The first came before the Southeastern Louisiana game when Pickens called out Gundy for his OU record. It was a big deal at the time, but maybe not as big of a deal as it should have been. You can read about that here.

Carson Cunningham and I talked to Bill Haisten of the Tulsa World on our podcast about the entire thing. I thought what he said was incredibly intriguing, but I didn’t want to write about them in detail and stir the pot if this was an isolated incident. It would have felt a little like spiking the ball in the end zone after a touchdown.

Turns out, it definitely wasn’t an isolated incident. Pickens called out Gundy again on Tuesday.

“I don’t have any conversations with Gundy. I don’t know, but Mike doesn’t handle people relationships very well,” Pickens told the Austin American-Statesman. “And he gets mad about things. I’ve heard he’s written some notes about me that weren’t very complimentary.”

So let’s re-visit that conversation we had with Haisten earlier this month because now I feel like it’s more fair to call what is happening between Pickens and Gundy another rift of sorts. You can listen to the whole thing below, but I pulled the most interesting stuff from Pickens talking about Gundy’s poor Bedlam record and Gundy’s reaction which only Haisten saw.

“Boone hesitated after he responded to an expansion question,” said Haisten. “He paused just for a second and he said, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘it’s been 11 years since I gave my big gift. I never said they had to win. I said they had to be competitive. And they’re competitive against everybody but OU.’

“I just thought, ‘what?!’ This is a guy that wanted to make a statement. He wanted to come here and say this for whatever reason 17 months after the peace accord at the practice facility. Within the context of OSU football, [that peace accord] was a big deal. I remember quoting an OSU official, and he said ‘I think we will remember this as having been a really important day.’ Because those guys hadn’t spoken, hadn’t made eye contact, in over three years at that point. There was this Cold War rift.

“For Boone to roll that back out there [before Southeastern Louisiana] I thought was staggering. I was surprised Boone did it. I’m not sure what purpose it served. I thought OSU’s media people might brief Mike before his postgame. They didn’t. He wasn’t asked about it. I wasn’t going to ask him about it until I walked him to the locker room. I did walk him down the hall, and I mentioned it to him. He was upset. He wouldn’t comment on the record, but he was obviously bothered by it. Whether there’s been any dialogue between the OSU football office and Dallas subsequent to that, I don’t know.”

You can listen to the entire thing below from 34:30 to 39:00 below.

There obviously has not been much dialogue since before that Southeastern Louisiana game because Pickens would not have said what he said if there had been. I’m not going to pretend like I know what goes on behind the scenes, but it does feel a little chilly, if not downright cold, again in here. The 2-2 start doesn’t help things, I’m sure.

I guess the question for me is, “why now?” What happened between the peace accord in the spring of 2015 until now? Lots of teams don’t beat OU. Gundy is literally two plays from being 4-7 against them which would be historically great for OSU. He’s a program builder. He’s, ahem, done everything right. What was the catalyst here? Surely there has to be more to the story than what we’re hearing.

Until then we wait. Grab a sweater. You might need it.