“Every time I get on facebook—it’s just like, you know, those little instant messages, it’s just like so many,” McCoy said. “I’m like, ‘Can I just get on, check my messages and get off. And anybody who reads this—I don’t know what [news organization] this is going to be on—I’m sorry if I don’t respond to you, but there’s so many that pop up, I can’t respond to you.”
What kinds of questions do people ask?
“[They ask] will Sam play, how you feeling, are you all right, are you sick, are you hungry, you need something to drink?” McCoy jokingly said during post practice interviews.
His response?
“Just watch the game.”
It was an amusing topic of conversation with McCoy, but there’s a reason it came up as one of the most ridiculous topics ever to be discussed both after practice and at Tuesday’s weekly media press conference with OU head coach Bob Stoops.
This all surfaced because a couple of Texas Tech players foolishly “Tweeted” information regarding the team and their business.
Linebacker Marlon Williams, using the Twitter social networking site, wrote a comment asking why he must attend a meeting if “the head coach can’t even be on time,” according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
Then, following the Red Raiders’ 29-28 loss to Houston, offensive lineman Brandon Carter posted “This is not how I saw our season” on his account.
Carter was ultimately suspended indefinitely following his comments.
So, how does it apply to OU?
Any team with hopes of a legitimate national championship run, like the Sooners, must be smart both on and off the field.
It’s not that players should be unwilling to talk to people outside of the team in off-the-field situations, but rather, they must be smart about what they say, so as to keep the group as tight-knit as possible.
These types of comments made by two Texas Tech football players can’t be classified as smart, and Stoops talked during the presser about how he addressed their implications on OU’s situation.
“Just yesterday I asked after reading all that, I asked our team, this group right before we left the field, ‘Does anybody have a twitter account?’ Nobody put their hand up,” Stoops said. “It’s my understanding since I asked if they had an account that they don’t since no one said they did.”
It’s a matter of togetherness within the team, Stoops said.
“’Obviously either your loyalty is to us and we’re a family here and what happens here is between us or we’ll start inviting everybody, and, or, maybe you’ll have your own team, and you’ll be able to do it wherever you want to do it,’” Stoops said he told the team.
McCoy said that’s not anything new.
Rather it’s been instilled in the Sooners for a long time.
“Whatever happens in this room or whatever we do stays with us,” McCoy said. “He told us that from day one. When you are a freshman walking through the door and we have our first team meeting, he tells us that.”
And that’s the Sooners’ Twitter update.
Normally such a trivial topic would stay out of the college football arena, but not for the Sooners and the rest of college football this week.