Gundy Announces Cowboys Will Play Spring Game Instead of Open Practice

STILLWATER — Mike Gundy knows how to keep everyone on their toes.

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma State head coach announced halfway through his weekly press conference that the Cowboys would, in fact, host a spring scrimmage on Saturday as opposed to an open spring practice.

“This team needs to play a game,” Gundy said. “I need to see them play a game. And I made that decision yesterday, and I haven’t shared it with the staff. In fact, this is the first time I mentioned it.”

Oklahoma State previously planned to host an open practice in front of fans on Saturday between 1 p.m. with an estimated end around 2:15.

Gundy estimates Saturday’s game will take roughly the same amount of time, though if the chances of afternoon thunderstorms remain high, the Cowboys coach said the scrimmage could begin at 11 a.m.

Although Gundy didn’t have a final format available when he broke the news, the head coach said he initially thought the Cowboys would play three 15-minute quarters with no halftime.

“To me, halftimes on spring games are bummers,” Gundy said. “Lot of people leave and everybody’s just sitting around. Mom’s got little kids, and they’re, you know, they’re wanting down on the field.”

Gundy said the coaches would split up and draft players to coach throughout the scrimmage.

“We’ll have a kickoff,” Gundy said. “We’ll do kick return. We’ll do punt, punt return. I want to see everything right now with these guys. There’s so many new players that have played and competed well in practice, and I don’t know anything about them, so I want to see them play in a game.”

Just a few months ago, Gundy described all the reasons spring games don’t work for college football in the era of the transfer portal. Most of those remain in place, though the head coach said this group is unusually healthy in the trenches for this time of year and could go three-deep on the offensive line and 2.5-deep on the defensive line.

“You worry about poaching, you worry about somebody getting feeling like you established a depth chart and left me off the depth chart and you worry about getting somebody banged up,” Gundy said, rattling off reasons why the Cowboys shouldn’t play a spring game on Tuesday. “I get all that. And those are a concern of mine. You know, as a head coach, those things keep you up at night.”

Despite all of that, the unknown proved to be a bigger downside to Gundy, who must replace most of his starters on both sides of the ball this offseason while also implementing new systems.

“I haven’t seen thirty-two of these guys play,” he said. “And in my mind, just counting roughly 26 of the 32 guys that are here are going to be in a position to maybe contribute to help us next year. And I need to see them play in  a game some because I’m trying to figure out whenever we have a personnel meeting on offense and defense when they tell me what they think, I need to know if I agree with them or not.”