With Mike Gundy, Culture Remains Vital

I have long been president of the “Mike Gundy is the most underrated outside-the-box thinker in college football coaching circles” fan club. Despite his misdirection — the mullet, the Big Daddy coffee mug, the Carhartt jackets — Gundy is bent on (and good at) building a sustainable culture of success in Stillwater.

We talk about this a lot with Brad Underwood — deservingly so — because Brad Underwood talks about it a lot. He uses the word “culture” like my three-year-olds use the words “can we watch Daniel Tiger.” That is to say, liberally and without any inhibition.

To see what it means to Mike Gundy, though. You have to look a little bit closer.

You have to see that he was one of the first to experiment with short practices and no tackling and contorting an offense to fit his personnel instead of the other way around. His hairstyle belies the fact that he is lowkey impressive when it comes to innovation.

And when it comes to the culture, he knows what he’s built doesn’t happen everywhere. It’s why OSU has won the 10th-most games in the last eight years with the 35th best recruiting classes.

“We’re thrilled with it,” Gundy said of the culture this week. “I think the one thing that I’m most happy with is the culture that we’ve created here has been very positive and successful in a lot of different areas. We went through a transition with the APR that we’ve made the adjustments and have been very successful in that area.

“We’re graduating players on four-year schedules, and we’re very competitive in a clean fashion and winning at a rate that is fairly impressive for the history at Oklahoma State.”

Not just the history at Oklahoma State. The history of anyone. Here are the records of two Big 12 schools since 2005 when Gundy took over. The year Texas won it all.

“All while doing that, our players and coaches like being here, and there’s an environment that has been created where we can have some sort of a life,” added Gundy.

“I enjoy that part of it, but years ago I said that the one thing that would make me happy is to have a team that when we go out on Saturdays, we know if we take care of the ball and minimize big plays we have a chance to compete with or beat anybody we play.”

OSU is 65-17 (79 percent) under Gundy when committing 0 or 1 turnovers in a single game.

“That’s really all we can ask for,” said Gundy. “If we don’t play well or turn the ball over then we’re not going to win, but for the fans, I want them to be able to come to the games and say, ‘If we play well today, we can win.’ For a long time, it wasn’t that way. They would come to the stadium and there was that faithful 32,000 who would come to the stadium knowing there was probably a chance we’d get our butt kicked. That was encouraging and fulfilling for me personally.”