Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy trying to prove 'things don't fix themselves'
Jenni CarlsonOklahoman
ARLINGTON, Texas ― Mike Gundy ditched the suit.
Every other football coach attending the first day of Big 12 Media Days went formal. Some wore a sport coat and slacks while others went with suits. Some sported a tie while others were sans one. A couple even rocked pocket squares.
Not Gundy.
Still sporting salt-and-pepper facial hair rapidly becoming more salt than pepper, the Oklahoma State coach went casual Wednesday at JerryWorld. Bright orange polo. Tailored gray pants. Stylish orange-and-black Nikes.
“It’s hot,” Gundy explained.
And he wasn’t talking about the triple-digit heat blanketing the southern half of the country.
“We get on a small plane, sweat all the way down here,” he said, “and then we go into all these rooms underneath here and it’s hot.
“I would be soaked in sweat, so I said, ‘I’m not doing it.’”
Gundy, you could say, learned his lesson.
He hopes he did the same last season.
On the day that unofficially starts the season, no program is more ready to turn the page than OSU. The Cowboys had one of the most disappointing seasons in all of college football a year ago. Disappointing because they went from top 10 to free fall. Disappointing because they were a possible College Football Playoff team in mid-October and a Texas Bowl hopeful in December.
Gundy didn’t show it during the season ― he didn’t exactly show it Wednesday either; there's no wailing and gnashing of teeth with Gundy ― but he didn’t like the way things went last fall. Instead, he talked about how the house wasn’t on fire when clearly flames were coming out the windows and smoke was billowing through the roof.
“Everybody needs to relax,” Gundy said the week after OSU lost to Kansas 37-16, which came a week after it lost to Kansas State 48-0. “It’s fine. Everything’s gonna be fine.”
The Cowboys beat Iowa State later that week, then lost their last three, dropping five of its last six games.
Lots of fans were frustrated with the Cowboys and down right angry with Gundy.
Everybody needs to relax? Everything’s gonna be fine?
Gundy explained his approach this way Wednesday: “At one point, we were relatively healthy, and then at one point, we weren’t. We could have played better down the stretch if we had the ability rush the football.
“We didn’t, so that’s what we get.”
Cowboy fans, before you spit out your breakfast cereal or start throwing things at your screen, Gundy wasn’t trying to brush off what happened.
“I learned,” he said, “to not put myself in that situation again.”
Yes, Gundy says he intends to do everything in his power to avoid what happened to his Cowboys last season from happening again. And one of the biggest things he believes he can do is change the way OSU prepares to run the ball. How it recruits for it. How it schemes it. How it practices it.
“We’re allocating more time and going back to the way it used to be years ago in rushing the football,” Gundy said.
“If we put time into it and work it and we’re still not as good, I can live with it. But if you don’t try, things don’t fix themselves, right?”
Gundy, who’s never met an analogy he didn’t love, popped out one to illustrate his mindset.
“You drive down the road, there’s a knock underneath your car and you turn the radio up and you hope it goes away,” he said. “It’s not going to fix itself. You’re going to end up on the side of the road most of the time, right?
“Well, it’s the same thing with us, so we’re going to allocate time and fix issues that we had make it better, and I’m fairly confident it’ll be better. But if we don’t say, ‘How do we make it better?’ then we’re not very smart.”
Gundy believes OSU’s inability to run the football late last season was actually the accumulation of a slow but steady slide. It happened over several years. Maybe even a decade. But as long as the Cowboys have run the spread offense, there’s been a dependence on throwing the ball.
And the overall results of the offense were hard to argue.
Even as the rushing yards went down, Gundy had a difficult time pushing for more focus on the run game.
“You think, ‘I can see this happening, but I’m OK. We’re averaging 49 points a game,’” he said.
He knows blame ultimately falls to him, but he has the power to make change, too. He intends for the Cowboys to solidify the run game, pushing his offensive staff to remedy the problem and making sure OSU isn’t felled by the same virus that afflicted it last season.
Gundy learned his lesson and is doing something about it.
Just like he did something about that pesky suit and tie at media days.
“I’m not a suit guy anyway,” he said, “so I said, ‘I’m gonna relax and be a little cooler and not have to deal with it.’”
He hopes he can say the same about the run game this season ― he doesn’t want to have to deal with it going kersplat again.
