Mike Gundy told Fox Sports Southwest that Sports Illustrated’s five-part investigative report on the football program had no impact whatsoever on his team’s recruiting efforts. Gundy said he only got a handful of questions about the series from parents of recruits, and that many of them hadn’t even read the last couple of installments.
Oklahoma State head coach on SI series: ‘Absolutely zero’ impact
If the Cowboys were hurt by the SI report, it wasn’t on the recruiting trail, at least according to Mike Gundy.
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The Cowboys have added a commitment to their 2014 class, JUCO star Tyreek Hill, since the SI report was published:
“We haven’t heard anything. Absolutely zero. We had 20 players committed, and we now have 21 committed. We don’t even hear about it anymore,” Gundy said.
Academic fraud, lenient drug policies, illegal cash payments and no-show jobs were some of the biggest allegations made in the SI report. It was immediately met with criticism from former players, who refuted some of the assertions and also questioned the motives of some of the ex-players cited as sources in the report.
More criticism came from both media members and Oklahoma State later on, beginning in earnest with ESPN’s discovery of some factual inaccuracies. Interest in the multi-part story seemed to fizzle toward the end of it, which is something Gundy alludes to in his remarks. It may have been NCAA scandal fatigue, the questions raised about SI’s methods or the drawn-out nature of the report, but in any case, it didn’t hit with the impact Sports Illustrated probably thought it would.
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