Mike Gundy Has the Opening He Needs, Will Oklahoma State Capitalize?

Charlie Weis’ last season as head coach of Notre Dame was in 2009. He went on to become the Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator and Florida offensive coordinator after that before taking the head job at Kansas. Cincinnati’s Brian Kelly took the job in South Bend for the 2010 season. It was a position approximately 12,000 people were rumored for including Bob Stoops who had just had his worst season since 1999 as OU went 8-5.

A fun game to play is, “How many Big 12 titles would Oklahoma State have if Bob Stoops had taken the Notre Dame job in 2010 instead of Brian Kelly?”

Nobody knows the answer, but you could reasonably make the case that OSU would have four of those things, and nobody would really bat an eye. That staggering alternate reality has just merged with our present actual reality to create a future for Oklahoma State that looks as opulent as a future has ever looked.

I wrote on Wednesday after Bob Stoops retired that I think he made Oklahoma State better as a football program. I truly and vociferously believe that. I will always believe that. Mike Gundy had no idea what he was doing when he took over — no head coach ever does — and Stoops provided a blueprint for how to be awesome in the state of Oklahoma. The result is that OSU has, outside of that wily late-season game in Stillwater or Norman, more or less met OU stride for stride over the last decade.

I also think Gundy is going to eject from this business in more or less the same manner Stoops did. He is going to be 50 in 65 days, is not a lifer, has more money than Wild Bill can ever charge him for and has submerged himself into a grind that is both 1. Unknown to coaches of yesteryear and 2. Likely unhealthy for a human being to withstand in the long term.

Gundy will hang around for one final monstrous contract, negotiate for some Bass Pro stock, groom somebody new, hand over the reins much like Stoops and drive his tractor west down Highway 51 towards the setting sun. This is how it will go.

What happens in the interim, however, will define his legacy.

Gundy has won 104 games in his career at Oklahoma State. He is its most successful football coach by 10 miles and is on the Mt. Rushmore of OSU coaches (and maybe people) generally. Off the top of my head: Gundy, Gary Ward, Mike Holder, John Smith, Mr. Iba and Eddie Sutton. I don’t know who you’re taking off the mountain of that list of six, but it probably shouldn’t be Gundy. He has been the best coach in the most important sport at a time when the competition in that sport has never been deeper.

And now he has a chance to ice the cake.

There is an inane faction of Oklahoma State fans undeterred by the fact that Oklahoma State has played for four of the last six Big 12 championships (and five of seven if you include 2010 when the Bedlam winner went on to the Big 12 title game). This is an enormous deal. Playing for one conference title is difficult. Doing it four times in six years is a preposterous mark of consistency OSU has never known on the football field.

But Gundy also only has one Big 12 championship to his name after 12 seasons of coaching the Pokes. A singular wondrous night in December 2011 in which Brandon Weeden, Justin Blackmon and Joe Randle put to bed all the demons and all the ghosts of so many fruitless Bedlam gatherings. OSU should have won in 2013, could have won in 2015 and outright put No. 10 in Bob Stoops rain coat pocket in 2016.

It’s a new time for the Big 12, though. The head coaches of Texas, Baylor and OU — those teams have won or shared 12 of the last 13 titles (the only team to win it outright in that time was OSU in 2011) — have a combined 0 wins at their current schools.

The logic, specifically as it relates to OU, is as follows: Unless you believe that 33-year-old Lincoln Riley will be 100 percent as good as (or better than) the best football coach in Big 12 history (Bob Stoops), then you must believe some sort of drop off is coming for the Boomers. If that is true, then the conclusion for me is that Oklahoma State is going to have a chance to win a handful of Big 12 titles in the coming years, starting with 2017.

Think about it. How much worse would OU have had to be since 2010 for OSU to have just 2-3 more titles? 10 percent worse? 15 percent? 5 percent? We can all agree (OU fans included) that even a minuscule step down from the crimson and cream would have meant a largesse for the Pokes. They are currently (and have been) next in line to Stoops’ throne.

Hey, maybe Riley is the next Stoops. Maybe he will rock. But the chasm between telling Baker Mayfield to roll out and hit 260-pound tight ends and leading one of the premiere football programs in a hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars industry is wide enough that I’m not sure even Uncle Rico could hit the other side on a post route. He’s one year older than I am. I can barely run a blog, and this guy is going to not skip a beat as the coach of OU? I’m dubious.

And maybe Tom Herman will flip Texas and they will intercept the scepter that Oklahoma State fans badly want. But Texas has proven time and time again that it is a conglomerate that looks nice to investors and does well financially but has trouble letting real change wash over itself. Texas, might I remind you, has one more Big 12 title than Baylor in the history of the conference.

So everything is coming up for Gundy in 2017 and beyond. He rode Stoops’ rising tide, and now he is arguably the best head coach in the league (depending on how you feel about Bill Snyder and Gary Patterson). He is in a position to take the mantle from Stoops. This season is big, though. If Oklahoma State can perform the way most of us think it will perform, it will put a stake in the ground. The Big 12 title could run through Stillwater for the foreseeable future.

And that’s a nice reward for the Mullet Man after a decade of labor. He spent the first six years laying a foundation and the next six building his kingdom. Hopefully in this final six(ish) he’ll get to enjoy the fruits of his effort because in the wake of Stoops success and OU’s renaissance as a program, a Big 12 title or three would be mighty tasty.