Will Oklahoma State-Baylor become Big 12's biggest rivalry? Mike Gundy dismisses the talk.
Scott WrightOklahoman
STILLWATER — Mike Gundy sidestepped the idea that a rivalry atmosphere could be emerging between his Oklahoma State football team and the Baylor Bears, who will meet on Saturday for the third time in a 365-day span.
Sixteenth-ranked Baylor hosts the ninth-ranked Cowboys at 2:30 p.m. at McLane Stadium in Waco, Texas, and this matchup won’t carry the heft of the previous one — the 21-16 victory by the Bears in the Big 12 Championship game last December.
But this week’s duel isn’t insignificant, either. In the already-chaotic Big 12 landscape, wins are at a premium. And wins over ranked opponents are gold.
Still, even beyond the current season, these OSU-Baylor games could grow even bigger.
With OU and Texas set to leave the Big 12 no later than 2025, the conference’s biggest rivalries are disappearing, and with the current trajectory, OSU-Baylor could step to the forefront as the Big 12’s biggest rivals.
Gundy has built his program to be in position to compete for Big 12 titles on a regular basis, and Dave Aranda seems to be on the same path at Baylor.
It’s not a natural rivalry, nor is it one created by historical matchups over the years.
Saturday marks the 42nd meeting between the teams, but just the sixth when both have been ranked (all since 2010).
OSU leads the all-time series 22-19, but even that balance is a bit misleading. Baylor dominated the sporadic meetings in the early years, holding an 11-3 edge between 1914 and 1994.
Once the Bears joined the Big 12 in 1996, OSU took over, winning nine straight and 15 of the first 16 conference matchups.
But since then, Baylor has won seven of 11, and of those wins, five have been by 11 points or less.
So the competitiveness is rising, and so are the stakes, even if Gundy doesn’t want to play it up too much to his team.
“Baylor’s a good team and Baylor’s well-coached, and in my opinion, they’re gonna be a good team in this league,” he said. “Hopefully, we can fall in that same category. And when we compete against each other, they’ll be really good games like they were last year.
“I’m just not big on all that (rivalry talk). We need to be able to respect everybody we play. We need to prepare and compete against everybody we play. That’s really what we do, versus trying to hang our hat on who somebody is, because we gotta play next week, too. I’m not gonna put all my cards in over here when we still gotta go play the next week.”
Here’s a look at five key moments that have helped nurture the budding rivalry between OSU and Baylor:
Oct. 29, 2011: Heisman, Schmeisman
The story: Oklahoma State had dominated the rivalry in the Big 12 era to this point, but Baylor was finally showing signs of significance, arriving in Stillwater that day with quarterback Robert Griffin III.He would go on to win the Heisman, but not because of what happened at Boone Pickens Stadium. The Cowboy defense gave him fits all day and the offense steamrolled its way to a 59-24 win.
It was OSU’s 15th win in 16 games as Big 12 opponents, and the Pokes’ sixth straight win over the Bears by an average of 31.7 points.
But between Griffin emerging as a superstar at the time and OSU climbing the polls into national prominence, this game brought a bright light to the series.
Dec. 1, 2012: Baylor breaks through
The story: With the Cowboys coming off a painful overtime loss at OU a week earlier, Baylor pulled off its first significant win in the series during the Big 12 era, 41-34.With Griffin gone to the NFL, unranked Baylor jumped to a 24-3 lead in the second quarter with a lesser-known group of offensive playmakers.
Baylor running back Lache Seastrunk had a 76-yard touchdown run with 5:11 left in the fourth quarter, and quarterback Nick Florence threw for 296 yards in the win.
Nov. 23, 2013: High-profile upset
The story: On a national scale, this was the biggest game in the series to this point, with 11th-ranked OSU knocking off the third-ranked Bears, 49-17.A high-powered Baylor offense, led by quarterback Bryce Petty, managed 453 yards, but found the end zone just twice — both in the fourth quarter after OSU had taken a 35-3 lead.
OSU quarterback Clint Chelf threw for 370 yards, connecting with receiver Tracy Moore five times for 126 and a touchdown.
Nov. 21, 2015: Baylor turns the tables
The story: Reversing the situation from two years earlier, the Bears came into Stillwater as the No. 10 team in the country with OSU at No. 4 — at that point, undefeated at 10-0.Baylor’s starting quarterback, Seth Russell, was already out for the season, and the Cowboys knocked his replacement, Jarrett Stidham, out of the game in the first half. But third-stringer Chris Johnson threw two touchdown passes and rushed for another in a 45-35 victory.
This was the third matchup in six years in which both teams were ranked, and the series began to take shape thanks to that good run of meaningful games.
Dec. 4, 2021: Inches short
The story: The games between 2016 and the regular-season matchup of 2021 were good, with the teams splitting 3-3, though the series wasn’t in quite as bright a spotlight as it had been. Baylor was on its fourth coach since 2015, going from Art Briles to interim stopgap Jim Grobe to Matt Rhule to Dave Aranda.In his second season, Aranda had finally found his footing, landing the ninth-ranked Bears in the Big 12 title game against a one-loss Cowboy squad ranked fifth.
The stakes and the drama of the series were soaring that day at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
And the final play of the game still lives in the brains of OSU fans. Running back Dezmon Jackson was tackled inches away from the end zone pylon as he reached for a game-winning touchdown.
Now, the rivalry is teed up for launch into the new Big 12 — whenever it arrives — as a nationally prominent game on the college football calendar.
