Mike Gundy Goes on Pat McAfee Show Talking NIL, Ollie Gordon and More

When I saw that Mike Gundy was slated to appear on the Pat McAfee Show, I figured it’d either go rather poorly or incredibly well. The latter prevailed.

Oklahoma State’s coach on Wednesday made an appearance on McAfee’s show that appears on ESPN. Gundy talked everything from the mullet, to South Dakota State, to NIL, to Ollie Gordon with McAfee and his crew.

One of McAfee’s guys (some stooge named Boston Connor), rocks a mullet, so the crew was disappointed to see that Gundy’s hair was shorter than it usually is. Gundy said he is in the process of growing his mullet back out after Gage Gundy, his youngest son, noted that people his age (aka of recruiting age) think it’s cool.

It wasn’t long before the ‘I’m a man, I’m 40″ rant got brought up.

“Way past being a man,” Gundy said. “I wish I was back to being a man. I’m an old man now.”

After those pleasantries, McAfee and Gundy got into a quote Gundy gave last week that made some national headlines. When fielding questions after the Cowboys’ practice last Thursday, Gundy when discussing NIL said he told players to, “tell your agent to quit calling us and asking for more money.” The point of Gundy’s remark seemed to be moreso him saying let’s play football, but it’s still somewhat shocking to hear a college coach openly discuss monetary negotiations with players because the NIL concept is still relatively new. Well, Gundy got to further discuss what he was talking about with McAfee.

“Tell your agent to quit calling us and asking for more money. It’s nonnegotiable now. It’ll start again in December… Now, we’re able to direct ourselves just to Football, and that part has been fun.”

Mike Gundy is happy the season is underway. pic.twitter.com/JbGXQEmSKA

— Cayden McFarland (@caydenmc) August 15, 2024

“It’s interesting that there’s negotiation that’s going on in college football now, but essentially, it stops when the portal closes unless the young man is just gonna hold out until next year or go play in the Canadian league,” Gundy said. “Essentially what I shared with them is that with coaches and players — everybody, including myself — all the negotiations, all the money is off the table. We pay our players very well here. They have certain functions that they have to take care of to be able to get their money through the NIL concepts, but the big challenge is to get players who are not used to making money to say, ‘Look, the negotiations are over.’ When the portal opens back up, whether we like it or not, I think you’re gonna see more players going in the portal to negotiate not necessarily to try and leave. That’ll be the big change.”

For a while now, Gundy has said he thinks college athletes will soon be considered employees. He gave some further clarification on that, as well.

“I don’t think there’s any question, Pat, that we’re heading towards college football players being employees,” Gundy said. “And the reason I say that is because we’re gonna be negotiating seven-figure contracts. I don’t know anywhere in the world where there’s seven-figure contracts that are negotiated without a contract.”

Gundy and McAfee then discussed how McAfee, who played at West Virginia, saw his university be built off the backs of Pat White and Steve Slaton. McAfee said White and Slaton drew eyes to WVU, which led to increased enrollment and new buildings starting to pop up around Morgantown.

Gundy concurred, saying when football has success (he also noted one of Eddie Sutton’s Final Four runs), it usually results in marketing for the university.

Then came discussions about reigning Doak Walker winner Ollie Gordon. Gundy told of how the team was in a rough spot early last season before the Cowboys elected to go all in on Gordon. It worked out. Gordon led the nation in rushing and was a consensus All-American as a sophomore after carrying just 19 times total in the Cowboys’ first three games.

“The one area that Ollie really excels in is he’s a workhorse,” Gundy said. “He’s old school. We pumped it to him 30 times a game, you don’t really see that a lot. He was able to carry the load throughout the season and then consistently do it week in and week out.

“The thing about him that people don’t know much is Ollie’s really young. Ollie, he’s not 21, as you know. He’s gotta lot of development. We didn’t have the luxury of redshirting him, we had to play him early in his career. He’s very intelligent. He played a lot of quarterback in high school. They’d snap the ball to him, and he’d run it, which is smart. He’s very intelligent. He’s gotta unbelievable magnetic personality. I mean, people love to be around Ollie, and the branding and the NIL market is huge for him because of his personality and the way people are drawn to him.”

Toward the end of the chat, Gundy and the guys started discussing OSU’s season opener against South Dakota State. The Jack Rabbits have won the past two FCS national titles. Tone Digs, who McAfee often credits helping prepare him for College Gameday, referenced a time when Matt Rhule came onto talk and Rhule said he told the Nebraska AD to not schedule any of the Dakotas.

Gundy added that many of the nonconference games are scheduled so far in advance that it makes it tough to know what you’re getting into.

“We play Alabama, I think in two years maybe [in 2028 and 2029],” Gundy said. “When they came to me with that about 10 years ago, I thought, ‘Well, hell, we’ll just schedule them. I won’t be coaching that long anyway. That’ll be on somebody else’s plate.’ …

“I’ve shared with the team and coaching staff, I said, ‘Guys, it’s been so long since [South Dakota State] lost a game, they ain’t gonna do anything different other than what they’re doing.’ They’re not scared of us. In fact, a few years ago, I think the last game they lost, they played Iowa. And Iowa ended up in the Top 25 in the country that year, and they lost like [7-3] to Iowa. … If we were doing scheduling a year in advance, probably wouldn’t have scheduled them.”

The video from Gundy’s interview on the show should be up in full at some point Wednesday.