Oklahoma State Football with Mike Gundy - Orange Power Podcast

we're with Coach Gundy ready to kick off the 2024 season number 20 for Coach Gundy as head coach at Oklahoma State this is a question I don't know if you can answer this but I'm curious when you started this do you did you think you might be doing this into your late 50s or did you think boy I'll do this for 15 years and be done or whatever well when I started it I was just trying to make it to year three or four to where we could actually get another contract and have a little bit of job security because when you start you really don't have a lot of job security because nobody knows if you can perform as a head coach and unfortunately in this business by about year three if you're not showing signs Andor being successful then you're not going to make it so I said well if I can just get to a second contract where myself and some assistant coaches could get a little job security maybe we can get this thing going in the direction that it needs to be and never did I think about 10 years 15 years and certainly not 20 years yeah when I the first time I met with Les Miles in 2001 I asked him what's the biggest challenge you face with this job and he said immediately creating a winning mood MH it seemed like he started that obviously with with you as the offensive coordinator winning against Oklahoma back-to-back years and having success how do you feel like you carried that forward and took that even further creating that winning mood that's led to the sellout in tickets this year etc etc what you're saying is correct we we started it with those two games we had two Bowl years backto back bowls but beating Oklahoma those two years when they were ranked at a decent in a decent position that really kind of started the ball rolling and then of course he left we still had an overall losing record but once we got through mean and myself and our staff year four or five um we made it to New Year's Day bowls we started playing competitively against just about anybody in the country people started to respect us a little bit bit and then the culture that we have and the winning started to take care of itself and then once we got into years 8 to 10 people saw us as a contender across the country and then that led to better recruiting more of a culture and then it just took a long time but over a period of time people started to believe that we could win you have a lot of guys returning and a lot of guys who have played a lot together that probably doesn't guarantee anything from a chemistry and cohesive standpoint but is this group as tightly knit as they seem to be that's that's sure the appearance from the outside looking in they're doing a really good job with their leadership and coming together as a group and you and I have been together a long time and we talk about this every team is different and I'm not sure that anybody has the ingredients to create a cohesive team that cares about each other and want to be unselfish particularly challenging now in the individualism that's coming out in college football with the revenue sharing the nil and the portal and such and it's to nobody's fault or anybody to blame but that happens that's human nature when you involve free agency and you involve money that's just a fact I don't care what business it is so the the team has done a good job of preparing in the last month in my opinion and putting aside the money side of it which allows them to become closer as you mentioned as coaches we have to deal with it I say coaches not necessarily our assistance I have to deal with it because we have a lot of planning and prep work that goes into if this all goes through with Revenue sharing but at this particular time the football players have done a good job of just playing football you know last year when you started Alan Bowman You' never started a transfer quarterback in fact you would played quarterbacks who had been in the system a long time and that was a constant point that you made throughout your tenure they need to be in the system for a while he wasn't you end up winning 10 games how can he be even better now that he's had a year in your system what what will we see from him he's actually in a little better condition in my opinion but I think the the key ingredient there is the experience in our system as you mentioned in my opinion he looks more fluid in practice because of the games that he played and he was clearly the best quarterback coming out of Spring ball so he's got he has gotten the reps with the ones in Fall Ball a year ago that wasn't evident we we couldn't just say you're the guy because he didn't take the Reigns it wasn't there we hadn't seen it because of that he's gotten a lot more quality work which allows him to learn more about our system those things should show up early in the season are you a little more comfortable going into this opener against a very good South Dakota State team because of all the experience you have versus taking a team into a game like that where you didn't have much experience no question um this is obviously a team that can and and has played very competitive against what would be power four teams so it's a good challenge for our team um our our entire non-conference preseason is challenging and each one of them in different ways so I feel better about where we're at because of that experience which is good because we're playing a team that is going to play very competitive in this game that's coach Gundy it's the Cowboys in South Dakota State this weekend at we'll see you next week