Zane Flores Receives Medical Hardship Waiver for 2024 Season

Zane Flores will be a third-year redshirt freshman when the Cowboys’ 2025 season kicks off this upcoming fall.

Flores received a medical hardship for the 2024 season, an Oklahoma State spokesperson confirmed to PFB.

After the first day of spring practice, Flores explained that he had a stress fracture and a bone fusion in his left foot that gave him trouble. He had surgery during the season and was cleared about a month before spring ball.

“So I had a broken (bone) in my foot, and there’s also a bone fusion that wasn’t supposed to be there,” Flores said. “So fixed the broken bone. It kind of happened from a stress fracture over time, and then it fractured. So, I needed to get that fixed, and then they kind of separated the other two bones. So, kind of a weird thing. …

“I guess because the two bones were fused together on one side, it puts stress on the other side, and that’s what caused it to fracture. Yeah, weird thing, but it’s all good now.”

Flores said the foot was bothering him some last summer and fall camp, but that Week 2 or 3 of the season is when it started to get more painful. He said there were points last year where he wasn’t doing any running, just standing and throwing.

Had Flores not been dealing with that, he almost certainly would’ve played in 2024.

Alan Bowman entered the year as the Cowboys’ starter but was momentarily pulled in the Big 12 opener against Utah. He was taken out again two games later against West Virginia before Garret Rangel took over the starting duties against BYU. It was that week when news broke that Flores would miss the rest of the season with injury, and then Rangel broke his collarbone against the Cougars.

Bowman was re-inserted for the next three games before the Cowboys made the move to true freshman Maealiuaki Smith, who started the final two contests of the year.

Flores entered the spring in a four-horse race with Rangel, Smith and TCU transfer Hauss Hejny to take over the starting job in 2025. Rangel and Smith transferred away (to Virginia Tech and Ole Miss, respectively) after spring ball. That leaves Flores and Hejny, who are now both listed as redshirt freshman because of this medical hardship.