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Mike Gundy Has Figured out Culture, Here’s a Chart to Prove It

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6 years ago

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Mike Gundy sat down recently with USA Today to talk about his Cowboy Culture and why it has paved the way to success for Oklahoma State on a national level. There is an associated video with the article — replete with Gundy cooking breakfast and possibly carrying a hair dryer into Boone Pickens Stadium — and all of it is terrific.

The CEO of Stillwater has come a long way since 2005. He has talked in the past few years about how he can leave for a week and nothing changes in the way the thing runs. The mark of a great organization and a strong culture.

I hate to keep harping on this angle with Gundy because it makes it seem like I’m just blowing smoke for the sake of blowing smoke, but I still think we underrate how difficult it is to create and maintain this type of structure in a 200ish-person organization. We struggle to write 10 blog posts some days!

Anyway, here is the best quote Gundy gave to USA Today.

“They still want to be told what to do,” Gundy told USA Today. “They want structure. They want discipline. They want accountability. But you have to love them. You can’t just tell them to do something. If they don’t think you really care about them, they might do it — but they won’t do it in the manner that they should.”

This (along with having great quarterbacks) is how you take top 35 recruiting classes and turn them into top 10 teams. And Gundy has been as consistently good as anybody in the country over the last 10 years. Look at this chart our guy Chris Knox found on Reddit showing the teams most often ranked in the AP Top 25 since 2008.

And here are the last 150 weeks of the AP Poll in table form. Yes, Bama has been ranked every single week and has spent nearly as much time at No. 1 or No. 2 as Oklahoma State has spent in the top 25.

Rank Team In Top 25 In Top 10 In Top 5 No. 2 No. 1 Points
1 Alabama 150 142 125 34 61 205273
2 Oklahoma 140 71 44 5 6 132269
3 Ohio State 137 105 61 22 12 153116
4 LSU 137 73 34 4 11 127451
5 Oregon 118 84 58 25 8 127491
6 Florida State 115 60 37 11 12 103479
7 Oklahoma State 106 31 12 2 0 78945
8 Clemson 102 55 35 3 6 95001
9 Stanford 102 56 21 0 0 90847
10 Florida 101 52 37 3 15 92664
11 Wisconsin 100 36 7 0 0 70748

Mrs. Pistols and I talk about the business of this blog a lot. It has consumed a lot of our family’s time and resources, which is a good thing. It has provided me with one of my jobs, and I love it. Humorously, and I legitimately cannot believe I’m writing this, we have talked (seriously) about how much I want my organization to be like Gundy’s.

He has put on a master class in how to build something great and how to do it slowly and sustainably (ahem, Baylor). Entrepreneurial pointers from Mike Gundy, what a world.

But this is why Barrett Sallee and Adam Kramer recently called him a “coaching superstar.”

“When I first started coaching, I thought it was all about the player,” Gundy added to USA Today. “Then I realized we have to teach and coach the person first. They’ll realize that wins and losses aren’t nearly as important as what we’ve instilled in them and what they carry on with their wife, their family, their kids, their job, society — to make the world a better place.”

Where are we at in society? Right now, we’re in a pretty great place.

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