Mayfield: `Zero' sincerity in Ohio State apology
Baker Mayfield has a vested interest in keeping football fans in Ohio happy.
But the former Oklahomaturned-Cleveland Browns quarter back ruffled some feathers with his latest comments.
In a story on GQ.com that posted Tuesday, Mayfield took back his apology for attempting to plant a flag at midfield of the Horseshoe following the Sooners' 31-16 win at Ohio State on Sept. 9, 2017.
“Zero,” he said when asked, on a scale of one to 10, how heartfelt that apology was. “Zero. Absolutely not.
“Which might hurt some Ohio fans' feelings,” Mayfield continued. “But I think we're all good now.”
May field apologized two days after the game.
“It was an emotional game, and so after the game, I did not mean for it to be disrespectful toward any Ohio State people at all, especially not the team or the players,” Mayfield said then. “They're a great team, a great program, so I didn't mean for it to be disrespectful at all.
“We do the flag thing at OU-Texas, so it was something I got caught up in. Yeah, it should've been something I did in the locker room. I apologize for doing it in the middle of the field.”
Mayfield said he heard from “higher- ups” at Oklahoma telling him he needed to apologize.
“I had done so much and
worked so hard to play for that school, I was just kinda ... almost embarrassed for them to tell me to apologize,” Mayfield said, according to the story.
That runs counter to what Sooners coach Lincoln Riley said in the aftermath of the incident. Riley said on the Paul Finebaum Show the next week that Mayfield's apology was all his idea.
While his comments on the Ohio State situation drew the most attention in Oklahoma, it was what he said about New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones that drew the biggest reaction nationally.
“I c a n n o t b e l i e v e t h e Giants took Daniel Jones,” Mayfield said in the story. “Blows my mind.”
Later, Mayfield posted on Instagram that he was taken out of context in his comments on Jones.