Gundy Taking Page from Clemson, Bama to Beef Up Football Analyst Spots

“You have this economic system that is very competitive, where you’re not allowed to pay the producers,” Smith College sports economist Andrew Zimbalist recently told the New York Times. “So the schools do everything they do to gain a competitive advantage given that they have this artificial restraint.”

“There are cracks in the system. If a crack is hiring someone called an analyst instead of an assistant coach, that’s what you do.”

That’s what Mike Gundy did recently. After employing Brian VanGorder and Bill Clay as defensive analysts and A.J. Ricker as an offensive analyst in 2017, OSU’s analyst staff will presumably go from three to six in 2018.

Ricker left Stillwater for Kansas. VanGorder became the defensive coordinator at Louisville. But as far as I know Clay is still around, and Gundy has added Bob Stitt, Shane Eachus, Brian Rock, MK Taylor and Chris Thurmond.

So this is what OSU’s extra staff is probably going to look like.

Defensive Analysts

Bill Clay
Shane Eachus
Chris Thurmond

Offensive Analysts

Bob Stitt
Brian Rock

Special Teams Analysts

MK Taylor

Analysts, according to this article, cannot “coach athletes, actively coach during games or practices or recruit off campus.” What they can do is scout upcoming opponents, watch film and generally fill in the details where position coaches might not have time to take care of something. It also affords assistants to spend more time crootin because the analysts can pick up some of the slack.

Doubling your analyst staff is probably a wise move in the current landscape, especially considering the fact that a lot of people think there will be a cap put on it in the future.

This is more or less what teams like Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State have been doing for a while. Georgia is doing it with recruiting. It is a clever and legal way to presumably improve your operation while alleviating some of the stress put on assistants. Alabama had 10 analysts last year, and Clemson had five in 2016 (I couldn’t find a 2017 media guide for them), including Mason Rudolph’s high school coach Kyle Richardson.

“They call it best practices,” Tom Herman told the NYT (aside: for a supposed genius, Herman often sounds sort of dense). “You go to Alabama, you go to Ohio State, you go to Clemson, you say: ‘What do you got? What’re you doing?’ And one of the things that certainly jumped off the page was the amount of support staff those elite programs had both in recruiting and off-the-field analysts.

“If we say we want to compete on the field with those teams, we have to do business the way business is done.”

“I’m not smart enough to figure out two opponents at the same time, so I encourage our entire staff to focus on the game, win it, and then go on to the next game,” Dana Holgorsen added. “Well, in the meantime, I’ve got three guys now that can move on to the game and get us ahead for the next week.”

This is the world Gundy is entering, and it’s smart. He was not a trailblazer here like he has been in a number of other areas, but it’s yet another indication that OSU has the resources and the self-awareness to do what it takes to become and remain a national contender year in and year out.