Mike Gundy Didn’t Let Summer of Discipline Issues Change the Cowboys or Their Culture

STILLWATER — At one point this summer, Mike Gundy said he felt sick to his stomach thinking about the Cowboys.

It wasn’t thoughts about the quarterback battle, the countless other position battles that headlined fall camp or even the new schemes. With most of the roster new this year, it felt like Cowboy culture was somewhat under attack, and Gundy and his staff were disciplining players all too often.

“I’ll be honest with you, I did not feel good for months and months, just worried about it,” Gundy said.

On Thursday, the head coach acknowledged that at one point this offseason, he even questioned if the foundation of what it means to be a Cowboy needed to change in this new era.

“We had hours and hours and days of conversations about this, and we came right back where we started before we ever started any of it,” Gundy said. “We have a set of core values that we believe in that’s been highly successful for 20 years.”

For most of those 20 years, Gundy could lean on a roster filled with older players in their third, fourth and fifth years in Stillwater to set the example. That couldn’t have been further from the truth this offseason.

Gundy said being coachable is one of the first things every player needs to learn to have success in his program.

“There are guys that are stubborn, right, we’re all different,” Gundy said. “Everybody has their own way of doing things. In most cases with young people, even though they’re 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, whatever, and they make a lot of money, they’re still young people. And either way, sometimes they might resist for a little while. Then, at some point in this organization, you have to decide whether you want to do it or not. As I said, they decided that they wanted to do it.”

On Thursday, Tulsa transfer Kasen Carpenter elaborated on what he believes are some of the foundational aspects behind the culture Gundy and his staff hope to foster this season.

“It is the small details,” Carpenter said. “If you’re not gonna do the small details right, you’re not going to play in the game. So that is the first one. Toughness, everyone thinks physical toughness, but it is more of a mental thing, and if you’re mentally tough, then you’re physically tough, that comes with it. We got to be able to mentally work through everything, not just a hard practice, but when you go home don’t sit down and watch TV, go watch your plays and your unit’s game film. It’s things like that.”

When it comes to reaching players on an individual level, it sounds like older players and time can have the biggest impacts on guys struggling to buy-in to their new surroundings.

“(Players who have been in the system) tell ‘em, ‘Look, you’re going to have to do this, or you’re always be on the Stairmaster,’” Gundy said. “‘They won’t give in.’”

Although Oklahoma State’s coaching staff has undergone a nearly complete overhaul this offseason, some in the room, such as the three offensive line coaches, are all too familiar with what it means to be a Cowboy.

Not that all the former players’ suggestions were good ones.

“They get it,” Gundy said of the culture. “(But) they bring up things I did to them when they were players. ‘Why don’t you do this to ‘em?’ And I said, ‘Well, because they’d can me if I did that to ‘em now.’ … It’s a bigger picture and there’s so many moving parts now. …

“There’s just discipline in place that’s in for a positive way. It’s just like when you discipline your children. You don’t do it because — you do it to help them later. And that’s what we’ve done. And that’s what we’re gonna stick with.”

Less than a week before the team’s opener against UT Martin, Gundy doesn’t have many, if any concerns, over the team’s culture or potential discipline problems.

Gundy got here by attempting to remain constant in what it means to be a Cowboy this offseason, even though practically every circumstance surrounding the sport changed around him. He believes it paid off in recent weeks and told the team as much on Tuesday.

“I’m surprised with how well they’re coming together,” Gundy said. “But I don’t know because I’ve never been in this situation (with so many new players), so maybe that’s to be expected.”

Colorado transfer Taje McCoy is used to fall camp with rooms overflowing with newcomers, given Deion Sanders’ infamous efforts in the transfer portal in recent years.

The outside linebacker said turning a room filled with individuals into one team takes intentional effort from the players to get to know each other.

“Yes, that definitely has to be a priority,” McCoy said. “Especially if we all have, like, the common interest of winning games, you know, winning the Big 12 Championship.”

McCoy said he feels like the defense has done a good job getting on the same page in fall camp, but he doesn’t yet feel like the team has a clearly defined culture.

“Because it’s a lot of new faces,” McCoy said. “So it’s kind of hard to establish a culture when you don’t really have that many guys that’s been in the program. So I feel like we’re just trying to establish that now, and I feel like we’re on the right track to do that, like get it back to what the Cowboy culture is.”

Perhaps anticipating some of those difficulties, Gundy has supposedly been more intentional with his players at the end of practice in recent weeks.

“We sit there on the knee for a good 10-15 minutes, and he talks to us, and what he’s told us is he’s trying to talk more now than ever,” Carpenter said of Gundy. “Because people don’t know him as well, and he’s trying to get us to know him because if you know your coach, and believe in him, then you’re going to play for him. And so he’s done a great job with that.”

Now all that’s left is to see how much of that remains intact once the season gets going.

“They seem to be doing well, but it depends,” Gundy said. “We’ll see when they’re in a tough decision in a game, in whatever game it is, when they rally together and play as a team like we have for 20 years. Then we’ll know that they’ve made that stride.”