Oklahoma State Can Join 100/10 Club With Historic Season

We all know Oklahoma State has been one of the best teams in the country over the last five and 10 years, but do you know just how good the Pokes have been? Because of a leaky 2014 season OSU has fallen out of the prestigious 50/5 club (50 wins over the last five years), but they’re still one of just 18 Power 5 schools to win two-thirds of their games over the last five seasons.

Records in last five years (Since 2012)

Better than USC, Notre Dame and Texas A&M? I’ll take it. Also, how insane is the 60/5 club that Clemson, Ohio State and Alabama are in? My gosh. Now let’s take a look at the last 10 years. Again this is Power 5 teams only (TCU and Utah cross both lines, but I decided to keep them in).

Records in last 10 years (Since 2007)

There are six 100/10 clubs, and they’re all elite programs.

When I talk about how we maybe underrate what Mike Gundy has done in his time at OSU, this is what I’m talking about. Consider this: Since Gundy took over in 2005 Oklahoma State and Texas (Texas!) have the exact same record. Can you imagine telling the version of yourself watching that Texas-SC Rose Bowl that this would be the case in 2017?

“It’s an exciting time for all of us,” Mike Gundy said last week. “I was thinking flying down (to Big 12 Media Days) this morning just how we evolved at Oklahoma State and the culture that we’ve created with the young men and how fun it is for myself and our staff, the guys that were on the plane. They’ve been such great leaders for us. We’ve evolved into something really special at Oklahoma State.”

This is true. Gundy went on to explain just how OSU has done this.

“At first when I got this job, I guess I wasn’t smart enough to realize how hard it was,” continued Gundy. “So we just never stopped. We moved forward. We tried to make the best decisions with the resources we had. We tried to be on the cutting edge, not only Xs and Os-wise, but from the science behind football, different ways to do things, cutting back on practices, not having full-scale tackle practices or scrimmages in the fall and spring.

“But then as we matured as a program, I realized that the most important thing we’ve done is we’ve created a culture at Oklahoma State for success in all different areas. We have some structure. We have certain ways that we expect our players to operate to be a part of our team and that we’re all lucky that we’re here, myself included, and that Oklahoma State football is by far bigger than any one person in our program, and we live by that.

“We’re very disciplined. We’re very structured. Accountability is important. We’re unselfish. We respect our opponents, but we don’t fear anybody. I think that we’ve stayed with that, and we’ve created a culture where players understand success.”

This is apparent, and don’t look now, but with a 14-win season this year (???) OSU can join that aforementioned 100/10 group next year (they’re 86-31 in the last nine years).

A hundred wins in 10 years. That would have seemed laughable just a decade ago. But now OSU is one historic season from making it happen.