Will Oklahoma State football do away with spring game? Here's what coach Mike Gundy says
Scott WrightThe Oklahoman
STILLWATER — The Oklahoma State football team is finishing up spring practice this weekend, and for the second year in a row, it concludes without the fanfare of a game at Boone Pickens Stadium.
The bleachers on the south side of BPS are under construction, and the playing surface is covered with protective material to allow a crane to operate inside the stadium without damaging the turf.
Even before the stadium renovations — which were being done on the north side of the stadium at this time a year ago — prevented a spring game for the past two years, OSU coach Mike Gundy’s opinion of such a spectacle had begun to diminish.
And now that he’s experienced two years without a spring game, Gundy seems to like it.
“What’s happened here the last two years is almost like what happened during COVID,” Gundy said, speaking anecdotally about new ideas that emerged during the pandemic. “A lot of stuff during COVID, we were like, ‘That’s a pretty good idea. I can stay home. I don’t ever have to go to the office. I don’t have to get out of my PJs.’”
And he suggested abandoning the traditional spring game might fit that category.
NCAA rules allow 15 spring workouts, and the game counts as one of those.
Because Gundy tries to protect his players in spring, avoiding game-style full contact in many practice situations, he feels the need to rein in the amount of tackling done in a spring game, too. And to him, that eliminates some of the fun for the fans.
He prefers the vast majority of his practices be behind closed doors. This spring, all practices have been closed to the public, and the media has been allowed in for roughly the first 15 minutes of one workout in each of the five weeks of spring ball — or about 75 minutes total.
So in a spring game, Gundy feels compelled to limit what he’s showing in public. That takes away a lot of what his team could gain instead with an additional practice in the Sherman Smith Training Center.
Prior to last year, Gundy’s opinion was already trending away from the spring game. One year, he elected to simply hold what was billed as a “spring finale,” because the team didn’t have enough offensive linemen to hold a true game.
Another year, they had only two quarterbacks available, so one team was led by a bottom-of-the-depth-chart player, which limited the group’s ability to get viable work done.
“Unless you’re gonna play a real game and say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna go tackle and not worry about injuries,’ it’s not really a football game,” Gundy said. “It’s hard to watch. It’s hard for me to watch.
“It’s not really that great in my opinion, unless you say, go play, and make it all tackle. We could do that. I can’t get over that hump.”
So, with the on-field product being watered down — Gundy compared it to an NFL Pro Bowl or NBA All-Star game for its limited competitiveness — the Cowboys might be better off doing something entirely different.
In lieu of a traditional spring game this year, Ole Miss held what it called the Grove Bowl Games, which included 7-on-7 competition, skills challenges, a slam dunk contest and other non-football activities.
It was a fan-centric event that relied little on actual football.
Perhaps Gundy will be pulled toward a similar trend in Stillwater, or maybe he’ll come up with something entirely different.
But his thoughts shared earlier this month suggest it’s unlikely the Cowboys will return to a traditional spring game in the future.
What about the recruiting angle?
With the changing recruiting calendar that has heavily increased the importance of spring visits, every weekend is crucial. Coaches aren’t waiting around to have as many recruits as possible on campus for one weekend, but instead, loading up each weekend as much as they can.
Gundy says the recruits enjoy watching a practice more than a spring game, because they can see their potential position coaches in action, observe drills, team behaviors and other aspects of day-to-day operations that are more impactful on their decisions.
The numbers seem to back what Gundy says. OSU gained five commitments in the 2025 recruiting class over the first 15 days of April, all from early spring visits.
“It actually works better for us the way we’ve set it up,” Gundy said. “We can do a lot more things. It gives us time. They can come to my house, they can use the pool, all that stuff. And it actually works better now than it did with a spring game.
“I think we’ve learned that not having a spring game, other than not engaging the fans — it used to be the fans and the recruits. Now the recruits are fine. It’s just the fans. So we might have to implement something for the fans. But it’s certainly more advantageous for us to have a practice.”
