{"id":381934,"date":"2025-09-20T04:05:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T04:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/381934\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T04:05:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T04:05:22","slug":"mike-gundy-is-a-man-hes-58-is-it-time-to-come-after-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/381934\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Gundy is a man. He’s 58. Is it time to come after him?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sing along. You know the tune<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I want to talk about this game right here. If anybody hasn\u2019t seen this game \u2014\u00a0 it was a 19-12 loss by Oklahoma State to Tulsa \u2014 this loss was brought to us by a father. Of children. I think this is worth reviewing. Let me tell you why I want to talk about this game. Three-fourths of this was a butt-kicking before Oklahoma State woke up in the fourth. It\u2019s so unbelievable you\u2019d think it\u2019s fiction. Tulsa winning in Stillwater for the first time since 1951 embarrasses the fans involved with Oklahoma State football \u2014 tremendously.<\/p>\n

That game had to have been coached by an all-time great who hasn\u2019t adapted to a rapidly changing sport. A coach who would have taken his team to the national title game in 2011 if not for a Friday night upset. A coach who took over at his alma mater when it was a perennial also-ran and then turned it into one of the most consistent winners in the country for a decade. And he also hunted rattlesnakes.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s all that the coach did. He found hidden gems. He developed them. He raised his program\u2019s floor in ways no one dreamed possible 25 years ago. But he\u2019s a professional; he makes $6.75 million a year. He deserves to be criticized when he isn\u2019t earning that salary.<\/p>\n

If you have an all-time great coach someday, you\u2019ll understand how it feels to watch him go over a professional cliff. But maybe you don\u2019t have your best coach ever down so bad that he\u2019s getting clobbered by Oregon and outclassed by a Tulsa team starting its backup quarterback. Oklahoma State does.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If your coach goes down the street and somebody makes fun of his mullet or yells at him for flirting with every open job for 10 years or gets mad because he said they couldn\u2019t pay their own bills, you\u2019d understand. But you don\u2019t have that coach. Oklahoma State does. Someday, you might. And when your coach wins big but irks the fans and then decides for three seasons not to pay players from the transfer portal when everyone else does, you\u2019ll understand.<\/p>\n

If you want to go after a coach \u2014 one of everyone\u2019s favorite coaches \u2014 you go after one that overhauled his coaching staff this offseason, yet still got out-recruited and out-schemed by the guy who just came to Tulsa from East Tennessee State and still has time to maintain a 1.3 handicap on the golf course. You don\u2019t downgrade that coach just because he got smoked by Oregon. You downgrade him because he got beaten at home by a team that lost at New Mexico State two weeks ago. And now Oklahoma State leaders have to make a decision.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Oklahoma State fans might not want to watch these games. Losing to Tulsa at home is garbage.\u00a0And the coach who would let his team play like that? We\u2019ll let Oklahoma State\u2019s administration decide what it thinks he is now.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma State attacked this professional coach in the offseason. The people in charge gave him an ultimatum. Either he took a pay cut and a buyout cut or he got fired, because he wasn\u2019t doing anything right. He took the pay cut, and then we wrote articles about how he might turn it around because he always seemed to make the right calls before. Every time his back was against the wall, he rallied. Not this time.<\/p>\n

Are you kidding me? Losing to Tulsa at home after getting beat 69-3 in Eugene? GO AFTER THAT COACH! HE\u2019S A MAN! HE\u2019S 58! He\u2019s not a kid. Make a decision. Don\u2019t let this program keep spinning its wheels. IT\u2019S TOO SAD! And don\u2019t say it\u2019s because others are better at buying players, as if it\u2019s not perfectly within the rules to do so. TULSA CAN\u2019T PAY LIKE OKLAHOMA STATE CAN! So get your facts straight.<\/p>\n

And I hope someday you have an all-time great coach and he loses his fastball and you have to look him in the eye and say, \u201cThank you for everything you\u2019ve done for us. But we\u2019ve paid you fairly, and you\u2019re not doing the job effectively anymore.\u201d And then you hand him $15 million dollars to not coach<\/a> and hope he\u2019s not still mad when you want to name the field after him.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Oklahoma State leaders have to decide if they want to say. This probably makes them want to puke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sing along. You know the tune. I want to talk about this game right here. If anybody hasn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,41847,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-381934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-mike-gundy-87-midwest-city","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115234650568327497","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}