The University of Oklahoma should reject the resignation offer of football wide receivers coach Cale Gundy and reinstate him immediately.
Gundy, the longest-tenured coach in the Big 12 Conference, resigned Sunday night from the team he had served since 1999 because he inadvertently read a “shameful” word off of a player’s iPad. Gundy’s abject apology and willingness to fall on his sword is admirable, but if the “incident” occurred as Gundy described it, then the only shameful behavior is that of head coach Brent Venables and school officials for letting him go.
Gundy said that during a film-study session, he noticed a player fiddling with his iPad instead of paying attention, so Gundy “read aloud the words that were written on his screen.”
“In the moment, I did not even realize what I was reading and, as soon as I did, I was horrified,” he said, because “one particular word” on the screen was one he “should never — under any circumstance — have uttered.”
Gundy went on to repeat that “the words that I read aloud from that screen were not my words, What I said was not malicious; it wasn’t even intentional.” Nonetheless, because the word was so offensive, he felt he should resign.
Obviously, all the players in that film session were witnesses to the incident and can confirm or dispute that account. Presumably, they will confirm it. If so, there is no reason the situation should come even close to causing a job loss. Context matters. If the utterance of the offensive word truly and obviously was neither malicious nor even intentional, then a sincere, in-house apology should suffice. There’s not even any need for public notice. His students are, by law, adults, and at a college, no less. If they aren’t mature enough to recognize an inadvertent slip, they are the ones who need to grow up. But what’s worse is the university officials who wouldn’t stand up for a coach in good standing for 23 years who made a very human, relatable, and relatively minor mistake.
It doesn’t matter if the word in question was racial or if it was sexual. For example, let’s assume it was the N-word. It’s a word that should almost never be said. But context matters. The word was appropriate as a way to skewer racists in the movie Blazing Saddles and as an ironic, anti-racist bit of wordplay in the movie Brian’s Song. In literature, when used in the mouths of characters to show their racism or ignorance, the word is important for verisimilitude. It is descriptive of a certain setting and character, not prescriptive. Huckleberry Finn’s use of the word for his friend Jim is part of one of the most eloquent and powerful novelistic jeremiads against slavery ever published. Likewise with its use in To Kill a Mockingbird.
And if a professor is reading aloud from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” well, the power and importance of King’s use of the word is self-evident.
Those examples involved deliberate uses of the word for purposes of art or constructive rhetoric. Even though acceptable, those uses at least come with the foreknowledge that they will raise hackles even if for an ultimate good. Coach Gundy’s unknowing, inadvertent use of an otherwise unacceptable word wasn’t just acceptable-but-edgy; it was innocent. As soon as he realized what he had read aloud, he apologized.
If context and intent are no defense for inadvertent error, then God help us all. Those who luxuriate in being perpetually offended may throw their stones, but reasonable people would be content to let a good man keep coaching.
