Don't let anyone fool you! Things are not well in Stillwater. Despite the fact that head coach Mike Gundy has taken the Cowboys to a level of play that they'd not experienced since the departure of Les Miles there is much dissatisfaction among some of the OSU faithful due to the poor ending to the 2009 season. One such person is Mr. T. Boone Pickens who has given millions of dollars to the university and with Mike Leach floating around as a "consultant" the Boone may be looking to get a bigger bang for his buck. In 2010 Oklahoma State is replacing nine starters on offense and eight on defense which I guess has people on edge as demonstrated by Jamie Blatnik's beat down of his former teammate early Saturday morning. You know they say that money can't buy love and I guess that's true for team chemistry as well.
We've said for a while now that OSU's defense was soft (21.8 points per game last season) and it appears that personality trait applies to the members of that defense as well. Let me give you an example: Blatnik stands 6-3, weighing 270lbs, and broke the orbital bone of former teammate Stephen Denning in a bar brawl over the weekend. You'd think that a guy with that size who was slated to be a starting defensive end would be able to inflict damage with just his bare hands and brute force. Instead he chose to wack his foe upside the head with a beer bottle. It isn't like Denning (a former offensive lineman) had him pancaked on the floor and was wailing on him either. Blatnik chose to instigate the fight (according to witnesses) with the totally non-ninja like blow to the head with the beer bottle.
Even complicating the matter more was the selection of Blatnik to join Mike Gundy in Dallas last week as one of the Ambassadors of the Oklahoma State football program at the Big 12 Media Days. Who knew that a after representing the Cowboys in a leadership position he'd be posing for a mug shot by the weekend. Perhaps he just though it was within his responsibilities as an ambassador to christen the new season by breaking a bottle of beer over the head of a former teammate. That would just be doing his job, right?