Cale Gundy, an assistant football coach at the Oklahoma University Sooners and the longest-tenured football coach in the Big 12, just resigned from his dream job because he got in trouble for uttering a single word out loud that is completely forbidden.
Although the word itself is never mentioned by the coach in his resignation, it's pretty obvious what the word was.
Gundy shared his resignation on Twitter with an open letter to Sooner Nation:
The letter opens with Gundy's love for the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma football. He went to OU, so did his children, and he's worked for the school for 30 years.
Gundy then goes on to give his side of the story in explaining his resignation:
I owe it to Sooner Nation to be transparent about what led to this decision: Last week, during a film session, I instructed my players to take notes. I noticed a player was distracted and picked up his iPad and read aloud the words that were written on his screen. The words displayed had nothing to do with football.
One particular word that I should never – under any circumstance – have uttered was displayed on the screen. In the moment, I did not even realize what I was reading and, as soon as I did, I was horrified.
I want to be very clear: the words I read aloud from that screen were not my words. What I said was not malicious; it wasn't even intentional. Still, I am more mature enough to know that the word I said was shameful and hurtful.
Okay, I'm only making a guess here, but let's be real, we all know what happened.
Gundy was upset at a player who was messing around on his iPad, and like many teachers back in the day, decided to read whatever was distracting the player out loud for the room.
Unfortunately, either what the player was reading or texting included the N-word. And because Gundy is white, once he uttered those syllables aloud and that ended his entire career.
The player Gundy was disciplining likely used this as a way to get rid of the coach in an act of revenge.
Because, as a football coach you can cheat, you can spy on other teams, you can sleep around, you can say the foulest things to anyone and chew people out mercilessly.
But if you happen to accidentally read something from one of your players that contains the N-word you'll be forced to resign.
Gundy, according to his story, didn't call anyone any name. He simply read the unspeakable word. A word that the player is allowed to read on his iPad, use with his friends, and throw around with impunity.
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