Skip the public tantrums and solve this stuff the old-fashioned way

Two recent incidents from the sports world remind us how convoluted and confused we are as a society.

In the first example, Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy went off at a post-game news conference on a local sports columnist who had questioned the toughness and commitment of one of his players.

The column was over the top, but Gundy's tirade was just as bad, accusing the columnist -- a woman -- of not understanding what it was like to have a child who might have his feelings hurt by such prose.

Gundy's reaction was filled with references about how these "kids" aren't "professional athletes" who can handle criticism. Of course, he didn't mention how even programs such as Oklahoma State have football budgets in the millions of dollars and give "kids" like the player in question scholarships and benefits that are no doubt worth six figures in today's over-inflated tuition grab.


Bizarro world of college sports

The sight of Gundy stalking back and forth behind the podium and waving around a newspaper was -- as you might expect -- perfect YouTube fodder. The 3 1/2-minute video is bizarre, filled with non-sequiters and confusing sentence structure as he shouts, stomps, calls the editor "garbage" and says he hopes the columnist has a child someday who is "downgraded" and "belittled."

Gundy -- like everyone involved in big-time college athletics these days -- is living a lie. When it's convenient, they act like their charges are Pop Warner players who need to be protected from the big bad world.

The rest of the time, they are managing major operations that rival the set-ups of professional teams with players who are far more "athlete" than "student"-- all the while raking in huge dollars in salary and perks to ensure they win more than they lose for ol' State U.

Here's a thought for Gundy and other major college coaches ... you want your "kids" to be treated as such? Then how about you play on Friday nights in front of a couple of hundred people rather than on Saturday in front of hundreds of thousands in the stands and on TV?

With the money and the spotlight comes criticism, and if a player is man enough to sign a letter of intent with a major university, well ...

The other situation involves someone who isn't a man at all. Hope Solo (pictured in an AP photo) made headlines this past week when she gave a 30-second interview that completely unraveled her years of work to make the U.S. women's national soccer team as the starting goalkeeper.

Pulled from the starting lineup in the pivotal World Cup semi-final elimination match against Brazil -- for the back-up who had a history of success against the Brazilians -- Solo watched in anguish as her team went down in flames.

On the way to the bus after the loss, Solo was approached by a Canadian TV reporter who asked if she wanted to talk. When a PR person for the U.S. team tried to stop the interview, Solo cut him off and then launched into a brief -- but damaging -- riff on her coach and made some comments that appeared to denigrate her fellow keeper.


If only the team had been as decisive on the field

The response was swift and harsh. Solo was basically banished from the team for the third-place match against Norway and wasn't allowed to take part in any final activities -- even though she apologized personally to her teammates. And she also lost the support of many fans back home in the U.S., who originally had sympathized with her for being placed in such an awkward position by her coach.

Teammates had apparently warned Solo not to share her feelings with the media but perhaps the intrusion of the PR person trying to stop her from commenting pushed her over the edge. We may never know. But her career as the U.S. women's keeper is probably over, as long as Greg Ryan remains the coach.

The bottom line in both of these cases is that there was a better way of handling the frustration and hurt that resulted from others' actions. In our "always on" world, any outburst or extreme reaction is going to get lots of play and it will create an even deeper rift between individuals as people hunker down to defend their position and their actions.

So the question is, if Gundy doesn't like what a columnist writes, why not address those concerns with the journalist directly? Why do it publicly? A phone call to the editor might work, too ... rather than calling him "garbage" in front of the world.

The reality is that his outburst created far more awareness of the article and its criticism. He basically told the world, "hey, everybody, read this column that slams my player!"

At the same time, why didn't Solo take her friends' advice and just say nothing? And why didn't Ryan seek out Solo that next day and make peace in private rather than scapegoating her for the team's fall from grace? In trying to sidestep his own culpability for a poor coaching decision, he hung Solo out to dry twice in a two-day span.

Perhaps what we all need to remember is that being thin-skinned is particularly unbecoming these days. It would be nice to see someone in the public eye manuever these potential pitfalls with aplomb and realize that not every negative comment requires a thermo-nuclear response.

After all, it may be new technology, but we've seen enough to know that diplomacy by YouTube doesn't work too well.