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Even Mike Gundy Can’t Believe How Good Oklahoma State Has Become at Football: ‘Damn, Holy Cow’

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The talented Bill Connelly of SB Nation recently profiled Mike Gundy, and it was fantastic. Connelly’s angle was Gundy’s history with the state of Oklahoma, and he dove deep on his high school playing days and how Stillwater has evolved.

Side note: How many awesome national sportswriters are from Oklahoma between Connelly, Royce Young and Brian Phillips (maybe Brett McMurphy, too?) Pretty crazy.

Anyway, Gundy also talked about how he almost went to OU (one of the greatest what ifs in Big 12 history!), what Boone Pickens has meant to the program and why wrestling was so important to his life. He got quotes from John Smith and Dave Hunziker.

“He’s unbelievably smart,” Hunziker told Connelly of Gundy, “and one of the ways he’s smart is, he’s got a lot of people fooled. They just think he’s this Okie — and I say ‘Okie’ in a stereotypical way. He’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. Every decision he makes, every day, is calculated.”

Gundy was candid and deflected a lot of the credit.

“When I took this thing over,” Gundy told Connelly, “I was 37, and I was just so stubborn and had so much energy and was so confident that I wasn’t smart enough to know this was a damn hard job. I loved OSU, I believed in myself, and I said we could do this.

“Now, once we kind of accomplished it and I got my second contract, I started to look back and think, ‘Man, I’m glad I wasn’t very smart.’ This is really hard. What I had the first three years here was, our athletic director, Mike Holder, he never wavered for one second. Any time something got brought up, he said ‘He’s the right guy, he’s our coach, end of story.’”

You should go read the entire thing, and if you do, you should stay for the excerpts because they’re even better than the actual story. Gundy talks goals (be a top 25 school), parenting (don’t be angry), Boz (‘roided out of his head, but he was a folk hero) and how all he wants to do is coach and be a dad. The best line, though? That would be about how good OSU has become since he took over.

“Oklahoma State football is at a level that nobody ever thought it would be, even me, honestly,” Gundy told Connelly. “I never thought we could be at this point. When they put out things I have to read before we send ’em to recruits, I read them and think, are you shi***** me? I’m honestly like, ‘damn, holy cow.'”

He’s not alone. You could have won all the money in 2005 if you’d said when OSU and Texas play each other in 2017, OSU will have a better record between those two years. Here’s where O-State ranks nationally since Gundy took the helm.

Rank Team W-L Record since 2005 Win %
1 Ohio State 139-25-0 85%
2 Alabama 142-28-0 84%
3 Boise State 136-28-0 83%
4 Oklahoma 128-37-0 78%
5 TCU 123-37-0 77%
6 LSU 125-38-0 77%
7 Wisconsin 125-41-0 75%
8 USC 123-41-0 75%
9 Oregon 123-41-0 75%
10 Clemson 124-44-0 74%
11 Georgia 119-46-0 72%
12 Florida State 118-47-0 72%
13 Florida 116-47-0 71%
14 Virginia Tech 118-49-0 71%
15 Penn State 113-47-0 71%
16 West Virginia 110-50-0 69%
17 Oklahoma State 109-51-0 68%
18 Utah 107-52-0 67%
19 BYU 109-53-0 67%
20 Texas 107-53-0 67%
21 Navy 107-55-0 66%
22 Auburn 107-55-0 66%
23 Houston 107-56-0 66%
24 Louisville 103-56-0 65%
25 Stanford 104-57-0 65%

No. 17 in win-loss percentage since 2005. That’s amazing considering how bad that first year was and how terrible OSU’s facilities used to be.

“I said, ‘okay, what’s realistic for Oklahoma State?'” said Gundy. “If we could become a legitimate top-25 team a majority of the time, and we were talented enough personnel-wise, coaching the guys the right way, that when we play on Saturdays, the fans that come to the game know that if we play well, we can win, then we’ve gotten to the point where we’re successful here at Oklahoma State.”

And here we are.

Go read those excerpts, too.

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