OSU FOOTBALL
STILLWATER — Try as you might, you’re not likely to find two more disparate personalities than Henry Iba and Mike Gundy.
Iba was fairly no-nonsense. Gundy has no aversion to nonsense.
Iba seemed old, even when he wasn’t. Gundy, even at 57, seems eternally young.
Iba was the Iron Duke; a tough taskmaster who was known for three-a-day workouts during breaks. Gundy long has championed going easy on his players, citing the demands of a long season.
Iba was revered in coaching circles; a certain basketball generation considered Iba the citadel of the sport. Gundy, while respected by most, self-proclaims that he has few friends in the profession. Or out.
But Iba and Gundy are forever linked. They are on the Rushmore of OSU athletics. Gundy as a beloved and record-setting quarterback who turned head coach and has guided the Cowboys through their gridiron glory days. Iba as the 36-year basketball coach who won two NCAA championships and the 35-year athletic director whose crowning achievement was getting OSU into the Big Eight Conference.
Iba and Gundy. Two of the most important people in Cowboy sports history. Let’s see. Iba, Gundy, Mike Holder, John Smith, Eddie Sutton. That’s five for Rushmore. If we’re sticklers for four, it wouldn’t be Iba or Gundy who has to go.
But now, these OSU icons are meshed even more. The back ends of their careers are growing more and more alike. Landmark coaches who struggled to adapt to a suddenly-changing landscape.
First, a disclaimer. The college football transmutation facing Gundy is relatively new. His struggles with it are even newer. Gundy certainly could counter and figure out how to navigate the stormy straits of this crazy sport. I’m not optimistic and frankly don’t know anyone who is, but only a fool would count out Gundy. He’s Captain Comeback.
Still, a long and amazing coaching career is facing a serious challenge as the cornerstones of Gundy’s program — consistency, continuity, player development — have been deemed irrelevant in 2020s football.
Just as Iba’s way of doing things became ineffective, if not obsolete, 60 years ago.
Iba arrived in Stillwater as coach in 1934 and had almost immediate success. His third and fourth teams went a combined 45-6, including 24-2 in the Missouri Valley Conference. Those were the days before post-season basketball, so we’ve got no national guideposts by which to judge him. That soon changed.
Oklahoma A&M (the school’s original name) won NCAA titles in 1945 and 1946, made the national championship game in 1949, reached the national semifinals in 1951 and made the regional finals in 1953, 1954 and 1958.
The Iba Cowboys for that decade and a half were what Kansas or Michigan State are today.
Iba’s teams fell off slightly upon entering the Big Eight after the 1958 season but still were quite competitive, 80-70 overall through the next six seasons.
Then came the coup de grace; Iba’s Cowboys won the 1965 Big Eight and reached the Midwest Regional final. There would be no more such successes.
Iba’s final five OSU teams went 47-80 overall, 17-53 in the Big Eight. Iba retired in March 1970, at age 65.
What happened to Iba? His world changed.
Iba’s basketball success came from a time when recruits came to coaches, not coaches to recruits.
Iba’s first Cowboy star was 7-foot Bob Kurland, from suburban St. Louis. A letter of recommendation from Kurland’s high school coach piqued Iba’s interest, who offered a bus ticket for a recruiting visit. Kurland indeed came to Stillwater and became a legend.
Eddie Sutton was a star shooter in western Kansas, in the hamlet of Bucklin. Sutton would listen to college basketball games on the radio. Tex Winter’s Kansas State Wildcats. Phog Allen’s Kansas Jayhawks, Ralph Miller’s Wichita State Wheatshockers. And Iba’s Oklahoma A&M Aggies.
Sutton chose Oklahoma A&M, without Iba ever coming to Bucklin.
For the better part of three decades, good basketball players migrated to Stillwater, because of Iba’s reputation and contacts.
But the basketball world eventually changed. Black athletes began getting more scholarship opportunities, and in the major metros and throughout the South, they hadn’t been sitting around a frontier radio listening to the games of coaching giants.
The game sped up. Iba’s ball-control system wasn’t appealing to young athletes, and young people in the 1960s didn’t automatically accept the conventions of the past.
Coaches began aggressively recruiting. In the Carolinas, Frank McGuire and Dean Smith went to the big cities of the Northeast for players. At UCLA, John Wooden went to New York and recruited 7-foot-2 superstar Lew Alcindor, who became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and begat a dynasty.
In the Midlands, universities began hiring young, aggressive coaches. Ted Owens at Kansas. Jack Hartman, an Iba protege, at Kansas State. Norm Stewart at Missouri.
Iba never adjusted. Probably never wanted to adjust. OSU fell behind the times. The quarter century between Iba’s final Big Eight title team, 1965, and Sutton’s 1990 return, Cowboy basketball was mostly an abyss.
OSU football in the 1980s had been more than competitive. The Cowboys were Big Eight stalwarts, if not championship contenders, most years. Then NCAA probation in 1989 crippled OSU football.
That void was filled by Sutton’s return, and Sutton’s basketball frenzy became a source of pride in Stillwater, as well as an economic salvation.
And when Sutton retired in 2006, amid a drunk-driving scandal, Gundy, the hero quarterback of the 1980s, already was back as football coach. By 2010, the Cowboys were Big 12 contenders, in 2011 the Cowboys were national contenders and OSU has been a wild ride of fun, success and excitement ever since.
But the 2024 season crashed mightily, with a nine-game losing streak, all in conference play, and the college football culture of just a few years ago is gone.
Instant eligibility for transfers and paying players has changed the game. Extreme roster makeover is the norm. Players’ top priority often is money, and who can blame them, considering the flow of cash to everyone else involved in the sport?
Gundy’s team ran counter to that in 2024. He returned 19 starters from a team that made the 2023 Big 12 Championship Game and won the final scheduled Bedlam.
Yet OSU finished 3-9 and was non-competitive down the stretch. Only three of its nine Big 12 losses were by single digits, and the season finale was an alarming 52-0 shutout by Colorado, coached by Deion Sanders, whose unconventional model of roster building is in stark contrast to everything Gundy has done.
If Gundy has a plan for winning football in the mid-2020s, we don’t know what it is.
Turning unrefined prospects into quality ballplayers, building trust in a culture, winning games by turning boys into men, maybe that still can be a road to success. But maybe not.
The blueprint now has holes. Can Gundy patch them? He’s paid handsomely to win football games, so win he must, to keep his job.
But in some ways, Gundy and coaches of his ilk deserve some slack. Their world was orderly and understandable. Now it’s chaotic and cloudy.
Almost 60 years ago, Henry Iba knew the feeling.
Berry Tramel: Henry Iba didn't adapt to a changing landscape; can Mike Gundy?
- Jan 4, 2025 Updated 11 hrs ago
Berry Tramel
Sports ColumnistSTILLWATER — Try as you might, you’re not likely to find two more disparate personalities than Henry Iba and Mike Gundy.
Iba was fairly no-nonsense. Gundy has no aversion to nonsense.
Iba seemed old, even when he wasn’t. Gundy, even at 57, seems eternally young.
Iba was the Iron Duke; a tough taskmaster who was known for three-a-day workouts during breaks. Gundy long has championed going easy on his players, citing the demands of a long season.
Iba was revered in coaching circles; a certain basketball generation considered Iba the citadel of the sport. Gundy, while respected by most, self-proclaims that he has few friends in the profession. Or out.
But Iba and Gundy are forever linked. They are on the Rushmore of OSU athletics. Gundy as a beloved and record-setting quarterback who turned head coach and has guided the Cowboys through their gridiron glory days. Iba as the 36-year basketball coach who won two NCAA championships and the 35-year athletic director whose crowning achievement was getting OSU into the Big Eight Conference.
Iba and Gundy. Two of the most important people in Cowboy sports history. Let’s see. Iba, Gundy, Mike Holder, John Smith, Eddie Sutton. That’s five for Rushmore. If we’re sticklers for four, it wouldn’t be Iba or Gundy who has to go.
But now, these OSU icons are meshed even more. The back ends of their careers are growing more and more alike. Landmark coaches who struggled to adapt to a suddenly-changing landscape.
First, a disclaimer. The college football transmutation facing Gundy is relatively new. His struggles with it are even newer. Gundy certainly could counter and figure out how to navigate the stormy straits of this crazy sport. I’m not optimistic and frankly don’t know anyone who is, but only a fool would count out Gundy. He’s Captain Comeback.
Still, a long and amazing coaching career is facing a serious challenge as the cornerstones of Gundy’s program — consistency, continuity, player development — have been deemed irrelevant in 2020s football.
Just as Iba’s way of doing things became ineffective, if not obsolete, 60 years ago.
Iba arrived in Stillwater as coach in 1934 and had almost immediate success. His third and fourth teams went a combined 45-6, including 24-2 in the Missouri Valley Conference. Those were the days before post-season basketball, so we’ve got no national guideposts by which to judge him. That soon changed.
Oklahoma A&M (the school’s original name) won NCAA titles in 1945 and 1946, made the national championship game in 1949, reached the national semifinals in 1951 and made the regional finals in 1953, 1954 and 1958.
The Iba Cowboys for that decade and a half were what Kansas or Michigan State are today.
Iba’s teams fell off slightly upon entering the Big Eight after the 1958 season but still were quite competitive, 80-70 overall through the next six seasons.
Then came the coup de grace; Iba’s Cowboys won the 1965 Big Eight and reached the Midwest Regional final. There would be no more such successes.
Iba’s final five OSU teams went 47-80 overall, 17-53 in the Big Eight. Iba retired in March 1970, at age 65.
What happened to Iba? His world changed.
Iba’s basketball success came from a time when recruits came to coaches, not coaches to recruits.
Iba’s first Cowboy star was 7-foot Bob Kurland, from suburban St. Louis. A letter of recommendation from Kurland’s high school coach piqued Iba’s interest, who offered a bus ticket for a recruiting visit. Kurland indeed came to Stillwater and became a legend.
Eddie Sutton was a star shooter in western Kansas, in the hamlet of Bucklin. Sutton would listen to college basketball games on the radio. Tex Winter’s Kansas State Wildcats. Phog Allen’s Kansas Jayhawks, Ralph Miller’s Wichita State Wheatshockers. And Iba’s Oklahoma A&M Aggies.
Sutton chose Oklahoma A&M, without Iba ever coming to Bucklin.
For the better part of three decades, good basketball players migrated to Stillwater, because of Iba’s reputation and contacts.
But the basketball world eventually changed. Black athletes began getting more scholarship opportunities, and in the major metros and throughout the South, they hadn’t been sitting around a frontier radio listening to the games of coaching giants.
The game sped up. Iba’s ball-control system wasn’t appealing to young athletes, and young people in the 1960s didn’t automatically accept the conventions of the past.
Coaches began aggressively recruiting. In the Carolinas, Frank McGuire and Dean Smith went to the big cities of the Northeast for players. At UCLA, John Wooden went to New York and recruited 7-foot-2 superstar Lew Alcindor, who became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and begat a dynasty.
In the Midlands, universities began hiring young, aggressive coaches. Ted Owens at Kansas. Jack Hartman, an Iba protege, at Kansas State. Norm Stewart at Missouri.
Iba never adjusted. Probably never wanted to adjust. OSU fell behind the times. The quarter century between Iba’s final Big Eight title team, 1965, and Sutton’s 1990 return, Cowboy basketball was mostly an abyss.
OSU football in the 1980s had been more than competitive. The Cowboys were Big Eight stalwarts, if not championship contenders, most years. Then NCAA probation in 1989 crippled OSU football.
That void was filled by Sutton’s return, and Sutton’s basketball frenzy became a source of pride in Stillwater, as well as an economic salvation.
And when Sutton retired in 2006, amid a drunk-driving scandal, Gundy, the hero quarterback of the 1980s, already was back as football coach. By 2010, the Cowboys were Big 12 contenders, in 2011 the Cowboys were national contenders and OSU has been a wild ride of fun, success and excitement ever since.
But the 2024 season crashed mightily, with a nine-game losing streak, all in conference play, and the college football culture of just a few years ago is gone.
Instant eligibility for transfers and paying players has changed the game. Extreme roster makeover is the norm. Players’ top priority often is money, and who can blame them, considering the flow of cash to everyone else involved in the sport?
Gundy’s team ran counter to that in 2024. He returned 19 starters from a team that made the 2023 Big 12 Championship Game and won the final scheduled Bedlam.
Yet OSU finished 3-9 and was non-competitive down the stretch. Only three of its nine Big 12 losses were by single digits, and the season finale was an alarming 52-0 shutout by Colorado, coached by Deion Sanders, whose unconventional model of roster building is in stark contrast to everything Gundy has done.
If Gundy has a plan for winning football in the mid-2020s, we don’t know what it is.
Turning unrefined prospects into quality ballplayers, building trust in a culture, winning games by turning boys into men, maybe that still can be a road to success. But maybe not.
The blueprint now has holes. Can Gundy patch them? He’s paid handsomely to win football games, so win he must, to keep his job.
But in some ways, Gundy and coaches of his ilk deserve some slack. Their world was orderly and understandable. Now it’s chaotic and cloudy.
Almost 60 years ago, Henry Iba knew the feeling.
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