Kendall’s dad says trash-talking not son’s style
NORMAN — Around 9 a.m. on Thursday before the Ohio State game, Brian Kendall got a text from a coworker.
Had he seen the video of his son? The one where 18-year-old Austin Kendall called Ohio State’s defense “basic?”
Confused, Brian rewatched the video that he’d seen just a few days earlier. The first time he watched it, he had thoroughly analyzed Austin. What was he wearing? How was he sitting in his chair? Was he speaking clearly? Lost in the critique of his son, he missed a lot of the video’s content.
But once he realized just how Austin had ended the interview, Brian knew his son’s words were about to blow up in a way neither of them ever expected.
“I heard what he said obviously, but it went over my head because as a parent, I was all about critiquing his appearance,” Brian said.
“Then you fast forward a day or two later and all of a sudden, the national media caught it and picked up on the content and I was like, ‘that’s probably not great.’ Now I get it. I get why. It is what it is, college football. He’s a young kid. He didn’t get it. You can tell by his demeanor, he’s not trash talking at all. He has no idea. That’s not his style.”
More than 1,000 miles away in Norman, Austin awoke to a call from his dad in North Carolina. Like most college kids, he was still in bed at 8 a.m. He had no idea that earlier that morning his face and his words were being splashed across social media and debated about by talking heads.
Once his dad told him what was going on, Austin’s reaction was simple: why — why is what he said on an OU produced program directed to OU fans such a big deal?
“His reaction to it on Thursday when it came out was ‘I don’t understand,” Brian said. “He didn’t get it. He literally did not get it. He had no idea that he said anything wrong.”
Austin appeared on Sooner Sports Spotlight, a program produced by