Why Oklahoma State Running Back Ollie Gordon is Always Smiling

Even through a TV screen and a facemask, Ollie Gordon’s smile is always visible.

After covering the Oklahoma State running back for a year and attaching pictures of him to stories all offseason, I realized Gordon nearly always has a smile on his face. And he has a lot of good reasons to. He’s the reigning Doak Walker Award winner after leading the country in rushing yards last season. When he touches the ball, his team almost always succeeds, finishing last season 10-3 after a turnaround that ultimately came down to settling on one quarterback and giving Gordon more carries. And I know they say money doesn’t buy happiness, but it certainly helps, and players as special as Gordon aren’t cheap in today’s NIL world.

“It’s always been like that,” Gordon said of his positive demeanor.

Gordon isn’t lying. Even during the 2022 season, when the Cowboys were 7-6 and Gordon was barely touching the ball, Gordon was still positive. He flashed his talent, even rushing for 138 yards against West Virginia in the regular season finale, but he still stayed put in Stillwater because he was positive about the future of his situation. He made the same decision to stay at OSU this past offseason.

“It’s really my mom,” Gordon said. “My mom raised me like this. She’s just a great woman. She’s always telling me you gotta see the positive in people and always think positive about everything. And who would I be to always walk around with an attitude? Then nobody would like me, you know? I like to carry myself different.”

Gordon, in a sea of Cowboy fans on the field at Boone Pickens Stadium, swam through them to find his mom to celebrate OSU’s Bedlam victory last year. He had fans, alumni and pom squad girls wanting pictures with the new Bedlam legend along the way. It was perhaps the climax of Gordon’s spectacular sophomore season. And that admiration from fans for their star running back only grew as he won the Doak Walker, appeared at as many university functions as Pistol Pete, and chose to ignore the piles of money elsewhere and stay a Cowboy. That fondness then extended beyond Stillwater, as the entire country spent the offseason raving about that running back at Oklahoma State.

Then the positive affirmations halted. Gordon was arrested on June 30 for suspicion of driving under the influence and other possible charges. That then became the headlines that featured Gordon’s name. Just over a week later, as the new face of the program, Gordon’s coach had him still attend Big 12 media days to face the music. Gordon put out a statement just before, but that’s like breaking up with someone over a text. Mike Gundy, instead, encouraged attending media to grill Gordon on the incident.

“Truthfully, the easiest thing for me to do, and the easiest thing for Ollie to do was for me to say, ‘Look, I have no comment,’” Gundy said then. “And ‘Ollie, you’re staying home, and you’re gonna train and you’re gonna do everything and you’re not talking to anybody, the media, you’re not doing any TV. And then after the first game, you can say, I’ll take all questions that directly related to football. I will not speak to anything else.’ And then I could’ve just come out here and said, ‘Hey, I’m not talking about it.’

“But I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. I think we’re in a different time. I think that he owes some sort of message to his fans, his family. And my job is to give some sort of explanation for what I think is right. Doesn’t mean I am right. Doesn’t mean he’s right. That’s just my explanation.”

It was at OSU’s media day when I asked Gordon about his usually positive attitude. By then, whether someone agrees or not, the talk of Gordon’s arrest was muted. He faced the music at Big 12 media days and had also met with local media since. According to court records, Gordon still has a court appearance scheduled for Sept. 11, but at least publicly, Gordon seems to have come out on the other side of his mistake.

And Ollie Gordon, once again, is always smiling.

“With lows, just take it as there’s gonna be another day,” Gordon said. “You’re never gonna be in a bad place for too long. It’ll be for a day, maybe for a couple of hours, maybe a couple of minutes, but you look on the bright side of things. There are gonna be brighter days.”