Former Oklahoma State quarterback and now NFL Browns quarterback Brandon Weeden and others have attacked the credibility of Sports Illustrated reporter Thayer Evans and the magazine’s series alleging violations in the Oklahoma State football program.
Weeden, ripped into SI and Evans, calling the SI story “comical for a lot of reasons.” Weeden had this to say about Evans:
“And long story short the guy has always had it out for Oklahoma State. He’s got a track record. You can go look it up. I’m not going to say his name. You can go look and see what he’s done. . . . Here’s what I’m surprised about is that a credible institution like Sports Illustrated would do 10 months of investigation and they have no credible facts to go along with the story.’
Weeden was not alone in his criticism. Tatum Bell, a running back at Oklahoma State from 200 to ’03, called the reports “false.” Former player Aso Pogi says he was “misquoted” in the article, while other former Cowboys players said the allegations are false. LSU coach Les Miles, who was the OSU coach from 2001 to ’04, denied wrongdoing.
Today, Sports Illustrated spokesperson Scott Novak issued the following statement to cleveland.com:
“The facts of the matter are that a team of award-winning reporters conducted a 10-month investigation that included on-the-record recorded interviews with 60-plus individual players from the Oklahoma State program. Any attempt to discredit an individual reporter is an attempt to deflect the matter at hand.”
Weeden blasted Sports Illustrated and Evans for the article that alleges Oklahoma State players were paid by coaches on an incentive basis from 2001-11, saying it’s comical and that he laughed throughout the whole thing.The first part of the five-part series “The Dirty Game” was released Tuesday. It’s called “The Money.” Wednesday, the second part was published, called “The Academics.”
Weeden, who played at Oklahoma State from 2008-11, said he never saw any wrongdoing, and trashed the credibility of one of the two writers, Evans. The other writer is George Dohrman.
“I’m glad you asked,” Weeden responded when a reporter questioned him about the article.
And then he went off.
“I’ve read the first story that came out and literally I laughed throughout the entire thing,” he said. “It’s comical for a lot of reasons and I won’t go through the whole deal, but obviously it’s dealing more with before I got there. First of all, clean slate, I didn’t take any money or do anything like that. That wasn’t the issue.”
Despite being at OSU for four seasons the article covers, Weeden said, “It all happened before I got there. But the guys that they did question were not very good sources to question because they are kids that got kicked off the team for drugs or for whatever it might be. They were dismissed and so these are guys that aren’t real credible. And the guy who wrote the article (Evans), we had a little run-in at Texas. He’s an OU guy. He’s always had it out for Oklahoma State, so he comes up to me after we beat Texas and he said, ‘when’s it going to happen? When’s Okie State going to pull it’s Okie choke? Like they always do.’ I laughed and said, ‘Who is this clown?’ to our SID guys.”
He furthered skewered Evans.
“And long story short the guy has always had it out for Oklahoma State. He’s got a track record. You can go look it up. I’m not going to say his name. You can go look and see what he’s done. But he’s had it out for us, so it’s comical. The truth will come out. I’m surprised. Here’s what I’m surprised about is that a credible institution like Sports Illustrated would do 10 months of investigation and they have no credible facts to go along with the story. ”
“Like I said, coach (Mike) Gundy does an unbelievable job of running a clean program, and he takes a lot of pride in that. (OU benefactor T. Boone) Pickens is all about keeping everything clean and playing by the rules and doing the right thing. In my five years there, I saw nothing but that. It was a very clean run organization, no wrongdoings of anything that I ever saw and that goes back to when I was a freshman, 23 years old.
“I’m not naive enough to think that stuff doesn’t go on at other universities, but I have to say that I never saw anything go on and it’s comical. It really is and I can’t wait to read the other four, I really can’t. I’m not going to say the guy’s name but he knows who he is and he knows his agenda. He’s got a wrong one.”
Follow