The Top 5 Quotes from Mike Gundy’s Pre-West Virginia News Conference

STILLWATER — The Cowboys are flirting with being out of Big 12 title contention at the beginning of October, which would’ve sounded like crazy talk before the season.

Oklahoma State is 0-2 in Big 12 play for the first time since Mike Gundy’s first season in charge back in 2005. The Cowboys host West Virginia at 3 p.m. Saturday, as they look to avoid an 0-3 start. Gundy met with the media Monday for his weekly media luncheon. Here are five things he said with his full news conference in video format below.

1. Bowman ‘Was Much Better than His Play Against Utah’

Alan Bowman hasn’t dealt with a ton of heat in the pocket this season, having been sacked once, but social media has turned up the temperature on OSU’s starting quarterback the past few weekends.

Bowman was pulled at halftime in OSU’s loss to the Utes. He played the entire game against Kansas State on Saturday despite the score getting away from the Pokes. In those two games, Bowman has gone 42-for-83 (51%) for 570 yards, three touchdowns and four interceptions. When asked Saturday why Bowman played the entire K-State game, Gundy said he didn’t think it was best for “what we’re trying to get accomplished offensively.”

Monday, Gundy said Bowman was better in Manhattan than he was against Utah.

“There’s things that we’ll coach him on,” Gundy said. “I’ll be really honest with you, there were four or five plays that would make the general public look and say, ‘He was really bad.’ When the other 55 plays he played good. That’s what happens when you play that position. When you make glaring decisions like why did that happen, at crucial times, that can happen. When I graded him Saturday night, that’s what I saw. When I watched it again Sunday with the staff, that pretty much confirmed what I saw. …

“His play in this game was much better than his play against Utah. There’s not even a comparison. There are four or five plays that are glaring that were really bad. One of them ended up being an interception. He’s older and more mature. I saw him yesterday, and I think he’s fine. I really believe that.”

2. Abandoning Run Had to Do with Falling Too Far Behind

Ollie Gordon and the OSU run game showed some juice Saturday for the first time in a while, but it didn’t last.

Gordon, the reigning Doak Walker winner, had 72 rushing yards in the first quarter. He was trucking people, jumping over others and even threw a cement stiff arm at the end of a play. The issue is, though, that Gordon finished the game with 76 rushing yards. After having nine carries in the first quarter, Gordon carried just six times in the final three.

Gundy said Monday that K-State didn’t necessarily adjust to what the Pokes were doing on the ground, but because K-State kept scoring, OSU had to take the clock into account and throw the ball. K-State led 7-3 after the first quarter and 24-13 at halftime.

“My brain has to start working with the clock,” Gundy said. “So the clock’s running. If you stay with the original game plan, the clock’s going to run. So what I have to do — right, wrong or indifferent — I have to figure out, in my head, how many more times we’re going to get the ball and what our success ratio can be to allow us to score enough points to at least tie the game. Based on what they’ve done during the game, you have to say they’re probably going to score at least once because they’ve already scored X number of points through 41 minutes of the game.

“So I have to start adding that up in my head. That’s how that happens. So if you just keep playing the way you’re playing, we don’t get to play until tomorrow. The game’s gonna end when the clock expires. So do you actually give yourself and your team a chance versus just fizzling out and losing by 10 points, and you never had a chance because the clock just began to run? And it’s a little bit more of a factor now with the new clock rules.”

3. ‘College Football Needs a Commissioner’

College football is trying to determine its next steps as an entity as the NCAA still tries to catch up to the modern way of how things are getting done.

ESPN reported Monday morning that the Big Ten and SEC, the two most prominent organizations in the sport (probably more prominent than the NCAA itself), are in talks about a possible scheduling partnership. Such a partnership could provide a further stranglehold on the sport for the two conferences.

Rarely afraid to give his views on where the sport is headed, Gundy said college football needed a commissioner and pointed to former Alabama coach Nick Saban as a potential candidate. With as open as Gundy is on wider scoped topics, he was asked whether he could see himself getting into that world when he retires from coaching. Gundy said it will be hard finding him when he is done coaching.

“College football needs a commissioner,” Gundy said. “And if it’s one of the four guys, now, if it’s the SEC commissioner, I don’t care. We need a commissioner. And then we need the Power Four, Power Five if we go back to it. Those commissioners are under them. And then we need a football oversight rules committee that is going to enforce the whatever rules that we say there are –whether that is recruiting, NIL, salary cap, employment agreements, transfers, whatever those rules are. And they need to follow the NFL model. …

“For the sake of the game, we’re at a real dangerous predicament right now. And I hope somebody, like — I probably need to text Coach (Nick) Saban before I say this, but I hope somebody like that becomes a college football commissioner because he understands the importance of equality, in my opinion, because he’s a smart man that’s been in it for a long time.”

4. Fourth-Down Analytics

Last season, the Cowboys were among the best teams in the country at stopping teams on fourth down, but that down has been unkind to the Pokes the past two weeks.

Utah was 4-for-5 on OSU on fourth down in the Utes’ 22-19 win. Then Kansas State went 2-for-2 on fourth in the Wildcats’ 42-20 win. In those two games, OSU went for it on fourth once — a failed attempt in the fourth quarter against K-State.

In OSU’s three nonconference games, the Cowboys held opponents to just 1-for-9 on the down, so the successes of last season is still in there somewhere. But to this point in the year, OSU has gone for it on fourth down half as many times as its opponents. Here is Gundy talking a little fourth-down analytics.

“That’s been going on for about three or four years now,” Gundy said. “You see a lot of that. I’m not in their corners, so I don’t know what their thought process is. But, some coaches follow that book of analytics. That’s what it’s called, right? Whatever that book is? I don’t follow it. I don’t read. Don’t listen to it, but some people do. Most of the time, that book says go for it because the book doesn’t know the crowd, doesn’t know the field, doesn’t know a lot of things. It just sees numbers. That could be part of what you’re talking about. I don’t know if Chris (Klieman) follows that book. I don’t know if Kyle (Whittingham) — I doubt Kyle does. But either way, that might be the answer.”

5. ‘I Thought They Were Fine Last Year, and That Is the Reason That I Think They’re Fine’

Fortunately (but perhaps actually unfortunately) for the Cowboys, they know they are capable of getting out of a hole early in the season.

Oklahoma State was 2-2 to start last season with that stretch including a disgusting 33-7 loss to South Alabama at home. OSU turned it around and found a way to finish the season at 10-4, making a trip to Arlington for the Big 12 title game and winning the Texas Bowl against Texas A&M. With that experience, Gundy said he thinks his group is “fine.”

“These guys have been good, and part of the process in the culture that we have here is what we accept,” Gundy said. “So the one thing that I think is important is that at the end of the game, whether we’re not being flamboyant because we won the game or whether we’re not trying to show disgust and anger because we lost the game, is that there needs to be a culture where we look and see no matter what we look to improve — even if we win — for the next game. I think that is what we have here, and that is all we accept here. For that reason I think they’re fine. I thought they were fine last year, and that is the reason that I think they’re fine. …

“I think there is a lot of truth to that, and in the back of their mind, ‘We went through this last year, and we’re good.’ Whatever it takes them to get them to that point, I’m good. I just need them to get to that point.”