A Look at Season Openers under Mike Gundy Where Pokes Have Won 23 Straight at Home

We. are. back. at it, if I can steal a slogan from Carson. Oklahoma State’s football season kicks off tonight, and I am fired up to get things going.

At this time of the year, all things are equal and all teams have an equal (technically speaking) chance to accomplish their goals. Mike Gundy talked about the start to his upcoming 15th year at the helm in Stillwater last Friday and how his team is preparing.

“It’s finally here for everybody,” said Gundy. “This is the time of year that the entire state of Oklahoma is fired up and is ready for football. We’ve had great workouts and our team is excited. We’ve got almost everybody healthy, and up and running.

“As I’ve said throughout the process, I really like where our team is at. We’ll know a lot more in a month. We’re just looking forward to getting started. We’ve got a couple days of light workouts coming up, we’ll take a day off and then one more real practice and we’ll be ready to go.”

Gundy’s teams have been historically ready to go in Week 1, with the Cowboys going 12-2 in season openers during his tenure. His only debut defeats have been to the defending national champs, Florida State, on a neutral field in 2014 and in a road loss to a top 15 Georgia team back in 2007.

Overall, Oklahoma State is 70-41-5 in season openers, and in season openers in Stillwater, it is 49-7-4. The last time the Cowboys lost in Week 1 at home was in 1995 when they got housed by the then-No. 2 Nebraska squad. In home openers, the Cowboys have and won 23 straight including all 14 since Gundy took the reins.

Under Gundy, OSU teams haven’t always cut their teeth against the sharpest of competitors, but he has opened against ranked opponents thrice, those No. 1-ranked Seminoles in 2014, and a pair of Georgia teams in 2007 and 2009 that each started the season ranked 13th.

OSU has started the year ranked in the AP poll five times under Gundy starting in 2009, when Zac Robinson, Dez Bryant, Kendall Hunter and Keith Toston exacted revenge on the Bulldogs for the 2007 defeat. Since that year OSU has only been unranked to start the year four times, this year is No. 4.

All of that being said, OSU is in little danger of breaking Gundy’s home opener streak or raising the blood pressure of many of the loyal and true inside Boone Pickens Stadium when it takes on the Missouri State Bears on Thursday night.

The Bears and Cowboys have faced off in three season openers namely an historic overtime game the Cowboys won in 1996 — the first ever played by a Division I team as Scott Wright of The Oklahoman wrote about — which was bookended by thrashings of then-named Southwest Missouri State, 45-7 in 1993 and 52-10 in 2006.

If all things go as planned, this game should more closely resemble the ’93 and ’06 editions — let’s hope. And there will be plenty of time to lament the scheduling practices of the mulleted one. But for now, I’m just happy that actual football is back.