More on the complex case of Oklahoma State WR Tracy Moore

For my pregame story, I wrote about the complex case of Tracy Moore and his desire to be a leader for Oklahoma State. You can read it here.

This was one of those stories where, even after more than 1,000 words, several quotes got left on the cutting room floor.

Here they are:

Tracy Moore

On what qualifies him to be a leader, despite the off-the-field incidents:

“My teammates know I’m not a bad kid…they know I come to work every day at practice and I try to push everybody else to do the same. My personal time is my personal time and what I do with it, they’re not really concerned with. They know what they’re getting.”

On the Twitter hate mail he received after his most recent run-in with Stillwater police, which resulted in him being suspended for the Savannah State game:

“It wasn’t a good feeling at all. It kind of had me thinking I was something that I wasn’t. I deserved it. Really. I can’t be mad at nobody but myself. They weren’t the ones that got me in trouble.”

On if he feels he’s misunderstood:

“To a certain extent, yes. I feel like I’m not what people think I am, just because I’ve got in trouble a couple (of times)…Can’t really control that, just kind of (need to) stay on a straight and narrow now.”

Offensive coordinator Todd Monken

On what Moore needs to do to be a leader:

“You have to smile. You have to compete. You have to push yourself. You can’t be tired and (say), ‘Today Ii just don’t feel like it,’ or, ‘I’ve been out the night before and I don’t play like I can.’ That’s a fact. I don’t know what else to tell you. That’s leading. You got to walk down the line.”

“When you score a touchdown, you can’t immediately look for the camera. You need to go find your offensive linemen and tell them, ‘Thank you for what you did for the protection.’ That’s leading. You got to tell Wes, ‘Great throw.’ You’ve got to bring other people with you. If you look for the camera and it’s about me, or when I’m disappointed during practice or things don’t go my way, my body goes to crap, that’s not leading. That’s selfish. I already told this to him.”

“Do I think he’d like to do it? Yeah. Moving forward, can he be that way? Of course he can. He’s a good player. He’s a good kid. He’s a good-looking guy. He’s charismatic. He’s all the things you’d want in a leader.”

“When you have a guy like that, they’re going to lead in some way, shape or form, because he all those characteristics. Now, you can lead in the right way and do things the right way, or you can lead the other way and be about me and, ‘How I go about it?’ He has a chance to do that, and we’ll see if he really wants to be that way.”