As he's shown the door, we're left to wonder what really happened between Mike Gundy and the Cowboys
I want to know
I want to know what happened between Dec. 27, 2023, and Sept. 28, 2024, because whatever it was it’s the reason Mike Gundy became a dead man walking following Oklahoma State’s 69-3 loss at Oregon two Saturdays ago and the reason Cowboy athletic director Chad Weiberg informed Gundy on Tuesday morning his coaching services would no longer be required.
For those requiring a history lesson, the first of those dates was the day OSU triumphed 31-23 over Texas A&M at the Texas Bowl, securing the program’s eighth double-digit-win season over Gundy’s then 19-year tenure as Cowboy skipper.
It came 25 days after OSU fell 49-21 at the Big 12 championship game to Texas. A lopsided loss, sure, but no huge disappointment. The victory, a big one, was getting there, one achieved a week prior when the Cowboys survived a 40-34 double-overtime classic, topping BYU.
It was a great season, one of several under the direction of the old Cowboy quarterback.
The second date, or thereabouts, was the day it all came crashing down.
One season after winning 10 games, after returning many good players, Ollie Gordon included, after being made the No. 3 team in the Big 12’s preseason media poll behind Utah and Kansas State, after a 3-0 non-conference start to the new campaign and an 0-1 conference start following a field-goal loss to the Utes, OSU was spanked 42-20 at Kansas State.
The rest is history, but not explanation.
What happened between Gundy and his coaching staff?
What happened between Gundy and his players?
What happened between Gundy and Gundy?
What the heck happened?
Gundy has talked plenty since about OSU’s lack of NIL resources and if he’s capable of real honesty he’d surely admit he and his program were caught flat-footed by the tyranny of the transfer portal.
So there’s that.
Yet, none of that answers what happened, because the 2024 Cowboys did not have to die. They did not have to die the way they died at Kansas State, nor the way they died seven days later on their home field, routed 38-14 by West Virginia, nor the way they died to close the season, falling 52-0 at Colorado.
Nor did they have to lose every conference game in between, nine in all, every one, leading to a complete assistant coach makeover and a big foray into the portal, yet only worse results: a 66-point loss at Oregon, a home-field loss to Tulsa, a firing that might have been put off a few weeks, but for no good reason because once you know, you know, and the Cowboy brass knew.
It means OSU gets a head start on picking up the pieces.
It means it can start talking to potential future coaches, all without actually talking to potential future coaches because that’s still verboten as the season’s ongoing.
It means there’s no longer confusion over who’s going to do the hiring and, apparently, who the future athletic director will be. The Pokes had to get that straight before doing what they did on Tuesday and if you thought Chad Weiberg was a lame duck, think again.
Though still working without a contract, Weiberg asserted the next coach is his to hire and he’s on very good terms with university president Jim Hess and the regents for whom they both work.
For his part, Hess offered Weiberg a solid, saying he’s appreciative of “Chad Weiberg’s leadership” which could be more full-throated but I’m still buying it.
A popular thing to say on the radio Tuesday was Gundy found himself fired now and not later because he’d let his arrogance overtake him too often, treated too many people too poorly, burned too many bridges.
I mean, he’s done all that, but I’m not sure it cost him Tuesday.
Though he was made to renegotiate his contract to keep his job last season, agreeing to take a million less annually for the privilege, he still kept it after saying this about his own fans.
“Most cases, the people that are negative and voicing their opinion are the same ones that can’t pay their own bills. They’re not taking care of themselves. They’re not taking care of their own family.
“They’re not taking care of their own job. But they have an obligation to speak out and complain about others because it makes them feel better.
“But then, in the end, when they go to bed at night, they’re the same failure that they were before they said anything negative about anybody else.”
A long-time go-to for Gundy, attacking the poor.
What a guy.
It couldn’t have done him any favors, but in what world was he ever surviving turning a promising season into an historic disaster, losing nine straight conference games, followed by a 66-point loss to any team the second game of the next season, followed by a home-field loss to Tulsa?
“When I was hired to take this job, ever since that day, I’ve put my heart and soul into this,” Gundy said Monday, when the job remained his. “And I will continue to do that until at some point if I say I don’t want to do it, or if somebody else says we don’t want you to do it.”
What happened was, that heart and soul quit reaching other hearts and souls.
Still, the question is why.
Had his heart turned dark?
Had his soul turned problematic?
And over what?
I don’t know.
All I know is something happened between Dec. 27, 2023 and Sept. 28, 2024 and Gundy, nor his team, ever recovered.
I still want to know.