Joe Posnanski

You have, by now, undoubtedly seen and heard the rant of Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy. If you are like me (an unlikely proposition) you have seen and heard it many, many times. I don’t think one day has gone by since Gundy went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs that I have not popped over to You Tube, clicked it on, if only to watch a snippet, if only to hear the man say, “This was brought to me by a mother … of children.” It is, possibly, one of the ten funniest things I have ever seen in my life.

Nominees for funniest things I’ve seen in my life include:
– The Stonehenge scene in “Spinal Tap.”
– The Marshall McLuhan scene in “Annie Hall.”
– Richard Pryor’s boxing bit.
– “The sea was angry that day” soliloquy on Seinfeld.
– Bookman’s rant on Seinfeld.
– Any number of Chris Rock routines/rants
– The first AFLAC duck commercial
– Any number of Jon Stewart routines/rants
– The “Zip it” scene in Austin Powers.
– Any number of Homer Simpson lines
– Any number of Norm lines on Cheers
– A joke someone told me at camp when I was 12 years old that I know ended with the punch line, “I said PING PONG balls.”
– This Jake Johannsen bit I once saw about him renting a car.
– The first time I saw/heard Frank Caliendo’s John Madden impression.
– This comedy bit I heard on XM radio where the guy (don’t remember his name) was talking about his 6-year-old daughter and how she was a bleepin’ bleephole.
– The final scene of “Wall Street” when Charlie Sheen turned to his father and, in one of the worst bits of acting I have ever seen in a movie that did not star Sofia Coppola, said: “I’m going to jail Dad, and you know it.” I don’t know why it struck me as funny, but even now I think about it and laugh.
– Any number of Dave Barry lines, one being the time when he was talking about how men and women can’t play softball together because — I’m paraphrasing here because I don’t have the book handy — “men know that if it came down to catching a fly ball or saving an infant’s life, the woman would save the infant without even considering if there were men on base.”
– The introduction to “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.”
– The Black Knight scene in “Holy Grail.”

OK, I don’t know how we got off track there. I could spend all night on this, and I’m supposed to be writing about Mike Gundy. The point I was trying to make, I think, is that I’m easily entertained.

Back to Gundy. I’m not going to rehash the whole story here because that has been done many times already, and you already know it. Quickly, a columnist (and a friend since she was in college) Jenni Carlson wrote a column about the Oklahoma State quarterback that, at best, pushed to the edge of good taste and at worst drove over that edge at about 70 mph. She essentially used observed scenes to call the quarterback a Mama’s boy. Different people reacted different ways. Gundy responded after the game with the now-famous rant.

A lot of people have tried to take a serious look at this situation — what does it mean, how does it explain the combustive reporter-subject relationship, what does it tell us about the media’s treatment of college athletes, have we gone too far, are coaches too controlling, where do women sportswriters stand in today’s society, etc, These are all worthwhile questions, and I applaud anyone who wants to take them on.

It’s just that … well, this rant is so ridiculously funny.

To me, trying to learn lessons about journalism and sportsmanship from this rant is like trying to use “Snakes on a Plane” to discuss the issues of the Airline Industry today (and animal safety) or analyzing Tim Conway’s “Dorf on Golf” to get a deeper understanding of the divide between rich and poor in America.

So, what I want to do instead is publish Mike Gundy’s discussion of journalism ethics and parenting in this free-form prose style. I call it:

I’m a Man
By Mike Gundy

I wanna talk about this article
right here.
If anybody hasn’t read this article
I don’t read it
But this was brought to me
By a mother
Of children.

I think this is worth reading
Let me tell you what I’m talking about
This article
Three fourths of this
Is inaccurate
Fiction.
And this article embarrasses me to be involved
With athletics
Tremendously.

And that article
Had to be written by a person who doesn’t have a child.
And has never had a child
That’s had their heart broken
And come home upset.
And had to deal with the child
When he is upset.

And kick
a person
when he’s down

Here’s all that kid did
He goes
to class
He’s respectful
to the media
He’s respectful
to the public
And he’s a good kid
And he’s not a professional athlete
And he doesn’t deserve to be kicked when he’s down.

If you have a child someday
You’ll understand how it feels
But you obviously don’t have a child
I do

If your child goes down the street
And somebody makes fun of him
because he dropped a pass
in a pickup game
Or says
He’s fat
And he comes home
crying
To his Mom
You’d understand.

But you haven’t had that
But someday you will
And when your child
comes home
You’ll understand.

If you want to go after an athlete
One of my athletes
You go after one
That doesn’t do the right thing
You don’t downgrade him
Because he does everything right
And may not play as well on Saturday

And you
let us
make
that decision

That’s why I don’t read the newspaper!
Because it’s
Garbage.
And the editor that let it come out Is
Garbage.

Attacking an amateur athlete
For doing everything right.
And then you want to write articles
About guys that don’t do things right
And downgrade them
the ones that do make plays.

Are you kidding me?
Where are we at
In society
Today?

Come after me!
I’m a man!
I’m 40!
I’m not a kid.
Write something about me
Or our coaches.

Don’t write about a kid that does everything right
Thats heart’s broken.
And then say that the coaches said
He was scared
That ain’t true!
And then to say
That we made that decision because of Donovan Woods.
Because he threatened to transfer.
That’s not true!
So get your facts straight.

And I hope someday
You have a child
And somebody downgrades him
And belittles him
And you have to look him in the eye and say
“You know what?
“It’s OK.
They’re supposed to be mature adults
But they’re really not.”

Who’s the kid here?
Who’s the kid here?
Are you kidding me?

That’s all I’ve got to say.
Makes me wanna puke.