Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy had a hot take last week.
Amid COVID-19 concerns, with the entire sports world shutting down, the coach said he wanted to bring his athletes back to school as soon as possible, as they’re young and strong enough to fight off the virus.
That didn’t sit well with many, and now, Gundy has (somewhat) issued an apology.
“I have been made aware that comments from my press conference have offended some,” Gundy said in a prepared statement, via ESPN. “It was never my intention to offend anyone and I apologize. My first priority is and will always be the student-athletes and doing what is best for the program and the university.”
Still, Gundy doubled-down on his opinion that his Cowboys could be back at school right now. He said he has a plan for how he thinks it could work out.
“We get people that get the flu during the season, we quarantine them, we treat them, we make sure they’re healthy, we bring ’em back,” Gundy said. “It would be the same thing here, but at some point, we’ve got to go back to work. We’ve got to get these guys back in here. … From what I read, the healthy people can fight this, the antibodies make it better. They’re doing some blood transplants now with the people that have already gotten the disease, that have gotten over it that have the antibodies that can fight it. There’s a lot of people who can figure this out. May 1’s our goal. Don’t know if it will happen. Players will come in after that.
“The majority of people in this building who are healthy, and certainly the 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-, 22-year-olds that are healthy, the so-called medical people saying the herd of healthy people that have the antibodies maybe built up and can fight this. We all need to go back to work.”
Of course, it’s not quite up to Gundy when that happens.
Oklahoma State announced it will follow the advice of public health experts as well as federal, state and Big 12 mandates.
