Mason Rudolph Never Really Thought He Would Actually Come to Stillwater

On a day for great profiles, ESPN’s Chris Low wrote a great one of Mason Rudolph. The thing in it that really stood out to me was how ambivalent schools were about his recruitment and how ambivalent he was in return about heading to Stillwater to play for Mike Gundy and Co.

“Mason’s offers during his junior season were LSU and Virginia Tech,” his high school coach Kyle Richardson told ESPN. “We sent out film to everybody, too. I don’t know if he got tagged as a system quarterback as much as it was some people looking at it like it was easy to do what we do in our system because Justin also put up incredible numbers. But it’s not easy to just wake up and throw for 4,000 yards.”

I liked that quote. And can’t you just see him sitting in the pocket for a revamped Tennessee or a reloaded Georgia and having his way? Thankfully, Tennessee and Georgia didn’t see things that way. So Rudolph headed west.

“(Oklahoma State was) my third or fourth offer, right after my junior year,” he said. “I didn’t give it much thought and really sort of shrugged it off because I thought, ‘I’ll never go that far away to school.’ But the more I learned about Oklahoma State, the more I liked it. The offense was what I wanted. The quarterback depth chart offered the chance for early playing time, and then when I came out here and met everybody, I knew it’s where I belonged.”

The allure of Stillwater.

Rudolph has a chance to build upon that allure onSaturday night as he tries to add to his 12-1 record as OSU’s starter and beat the only Big 12 team he’s never beaten … 14 games into his college football career.

Finally, this from Gundy was hilarious. This is literally the only kind of QB you’ve been around, Mike!

“I didn’t know he was going to be so far along so early in his career,” Gundy said. “It’s on those rare occasions that players participate and play better in games than you thought they would because you’re usually going to get what you see in practice. He was OK in practice. But in games, he was a better player than we thought. I’ve not been around many guys like that where they played better earlier than we thought.”

You should go read the whole thing.