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Mike Gundy Recaps his Hour-Long Phone Call with Les Miles

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5 years ago

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Oklahoma State’s two most recent coaches are at very different stages in life but found time for each other during the Cowboys’ bye week.

Mike Gundy was named to the preseason watch list for the Bobby Dodd Award, given to the nation’s best coach, and Les Miles put out his first Les Is More podcast Wednesday via the Players’ Tribune. Gundy and the Cowboys are trying to find a way into the College Football Playoff, and Miles was fired from his last coaching job at LSU a little over a year ago.

Gundy said that’s not ideal for Miles.

“(He) wants to coach again,” he said. “Really wants to coach again, bad.”

Miles was 141-55 as the coach at OSU and LSU. Gundy has about the same amount of losses but close to 40 fewer wins, and he has never been fired as coach. Miles’ firing was questionable when it came down after an ugly loss to Auburn that pushed the Tigers’ record to 2-2 in the 2016 season. That was the same record Gundy’s Cowboys had at that point last year with a Hail Mary stomach-turner against Central Michigan and another at Baylor, which finished the season 7-6.

Gundy, who was on Miles’ first podcast episode, said a coach’s lifespan is short-lived when you’re not winning.

“I was told by a guy, ‘One day, they’ll name a street after you downtown, and then they’ll run you down it the next day,'” Gundy said. “I think that’s the way sports is, and that’s fine. It’s OK.”

That doesn’t change the fact that Miles is out of coaching and into podcasting, and Gundy said he isn’t naïve enough to think there is no way he could be in that position, too. During the phone call, Gundy said he asked Miles about his interest in farming. He said that’s his fallback if coaching fades away; Miles’ is talking into a microphone. Most of us would agree that’s a dandy choice for him.

Miles told his former offensive coordinator he flies to Chicago on Mondays and elsewhere on Thursdays.

“He says he’s busier now than he was as a head coach,” Gundy said.

Whether Miles is working with pigs on Gundy’s farm or talking about the media and its role in college athletics on a weekly 40-minute pod, the drive to get back on the sideline remains. In march, he told the Omaha World-Herald he wants to coach football again. And though there are only seven Division I-A coaches who match or exceed Miles’ 63 years on Earth, Gundy was confident the Mad Hatter will be seen again someday.

“He’s gonna coach again,” Gundy said.

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