Tramel's ScissorTales: Why Derek Mason would extend an OSU football trend with Mike Gundy
Berry Tramel
Oklahoman
Mike Gundy has been OSU’s head coach for 17 seasons. That’s a long time. Almost two decades.
During that time, Gundy has hired 37 assistant coaches. Only two had head-coaching experience.
Those two were Glenn Spencer and Jim Knowles. And those two are Gundy’s most recent defensive coordinators.
Derek Mason would continue the trend. According to reports, the Auburn defensive coordinator has emerged as the front-runner to succeed Knowles, who left for the same job at Ohio State.
The Friday
ScissorTales include a look at the Big 12’s best freshmen basketball players and a potential all-rookie Thunder lineup. But we start with Derek Mason, potentially OSU football’s next defensive coordinator.
Mason was head coach at Vanderbilt for seven seasons, 2014-20, during which his Commodores went 27-55. That seems like a bad record, which it is, unless you apply Vandy standards.
Vanderbilt has employed 11 head coaches since 1974. That’s a half century. Mason’s winning percentage of .329 ranks third on that list, behind only James Franklin (.615, in three seasons) and Gerry DiNardo (.409 in four years).
Vanderbilt is not a place you win. Just ask Fred Pancoast (13-31), George MacIntyre (25-52-1), Watson Brown (10-45), Rod Dowhower (4-18), Woody Widenhofer (14-50), Bobby Johnson (29-66), Robbie Caldwell (2-10) and Clark Lea (2-10), the Commodores’ other head coaches since Steve Sloan departed for Texas Tech after the 1974 season.
Mason, of course, has more coaching chops than just Vanderbilt. He was/is defensive coordinator at both Stanford and Auburn, two successful but wildly-different schools and conferences.
That kind of background seems to appeal to Gundy, who likes to bring in coordinators from out-of-the-box places. Gundy has hired offensive coordinators and/or quarterback coaches from the National Football League (Tim Rattay, Todd Monken),
Princeton (Sean Gleeson), Division II Shippensburg (Mike Yurcich), Houston U. (Dana Holgorsen) and Florida (Larry Fedora).
Knowles certainly fit that description.
Knowles was defensive coordinator at Duke when Gundy hired him away four years ago.
But Knowles had been head coach at Cornell of the Ivy League, where Knowles’ teams went 26-34 in six seasons, from 2004-09.
Spencer had been on Gundy’s staff for five seasons when he was elevated to defensive coordinator in 2013, but long before his Stillwater days, Spencer was head coach at Division II West Georgia, where from 1998-2000 Spencer’s teams went 28-7.
Assistants with head-coaching experience should be a plus to any staff. Gundy’s been at this a long time, and he mostly knows what he wants and how he wants things to run, but it never hurts to have colleagues who have been in the decision-making chair.
Assistants with head-coaching experience can offer their boss a sounding board, on everything from discipline to staff makeup to team morale. A head coach has a bunch of pots on the stove. Never hurts to have sous chefs helping in the kitchen.
Mason would provide that. Coaching at Vanderbilt is a lot different than coaching at OSU. Southeastern Conference vs. Big 12. Private school vs. public. Major metropolis vs. college town. Losing tradition vs. winning tradition.
But head coaches everywhere – from high school to the pros – have similar issues no matter the environment.
Gundy has mostly been on target with his defensive coordinator hires. Vance Bedford didn’t work out, but since then, Tim Beckman was fine, Bill Young and
Spencer were good, and Knowles was great.
No reason to think Mason wouldn’t be a good hire, too. And his head-coaching experience would only help.