Sports Illustrated's tortured exposé into the Oklahoma State football program took another hit Friday. A former member of the Orange Pride hostesses—a group accused of using sex (or of being used themselves) to entice recruits into the drug-infested and academically-helpful den of iniquity that is apparently Stillwater, Oklahoma—said the group was never encouraged to have sex with recruits and they were never one-on-one with them.
An Orange Pride member from 2003-2005, Jena Beth Teel disputed many of the claims in the SI piece, noting that the group was as much for the recruits as it was for the recruits' families. SI asked her if prettier girls got to hang out with the high-profile recruits—the implication from SI here apparently being that "favoritism" manifested itself in being able to have sex with elite recruits—and whether Teel felt uncomfortable meeting with Les Miles.
"I was very quick to make sure that she understood that we were supposed to be not only professional on our end, but also we weren't there just for the recruits, we were there for the family, too," Teel said. "We were never, like, one-on-one alone with recruits during formal recruiting and that kind of thing, or even informal recruiting."
...
"Never at one time did I ever hear of any encouragement to be sexually active with any football players or recruits," Teel said. "If anything, it was always the opposite, to not even socialize with them outside of our Orange Pride events."
Obviously, none of this precludes Orange Pride members from meeting up at a party and doing whatever they wanted with recruits, but that's kind of the whole problem with this story. College kids doing shit at parties they may or may not regret later (just like drug use and academic leniency in a major college football program) is not exactly a Woodward and Bernstein scoop. Anyway, this is a member of the group for the time period in question disputing that there was an element at OSU that encouraged sexing up the recruits.
Which brings us to SI's Orange Pride source, Chantal Sanders. She apparently was not enrolled at OSU during the time she was quoted to be. SI said she was part of Orange Pride for the 2003-2004 academic year, which begins in the fall of 2003. A school spokesman said she was only enrolled for two semesters, the spring and summer semesters of 2003.
Former OSU Orange Pride Member: 'We Were Never 1-On-1 With Recruits' [NewsOn6]