Where OSU Stands Over The Last 100 Games

Friend of the blog, and my friend in real life, Ryan Frakes sent me an interesting email last week. We have all obviously been talking about this Mike Gundy thing behind the scenes — via email, text, WhatsApp, carrier pigeon etc. He pointed out that Boone Pickens Stadium was fully renovated in 2009. That’s when it was fully formed, and Oklahoma State completed its metamorphosis from lower-tier program into top 25 program. I had previously pointed out that OSU had won more games since Gundy took over in 2005 than Notre Dame, Michigan, Florida and other elite programs. He pointed out that it gets even better than that if you look at the last 100ish games.

Looking at the last 100 games is sort of tricky. We are going to take Alabama — the gold standard — and base everything on that. Since the beginning of the 2009 season, Bama has played 101 games through last week. Other teams have played exactly 100. Some have played slightly less. Alabama is 91-10 since that season which should be a 30 for 30 on its own. Ninety-one and ten. Ninety-one wins. Ten losses. That’s a 90.1 percent winning percentage.

Alabama, my friends, is one of only 10 Power 5 programs with a better winning percentage than OSU since 2009. We have to throw out Boise State (too many patsies) and TCU (not a Power 5 program the entire time) both of which are ahead of Oklahoma State. But here is a look at the top 11 over the last 100ish games.

1. Alabama: 91-10 (90%)
2. Ohio State: 83-14 (86%)
3. Oregon: 81-18 (82%)
4. Stanford: 77-21 (79%)
5. Florida State: 78-22 (78%)
6. Clemson: 77-23 (77%)
7. LSU: 73-23 (76%)
8. Oklahoma: 72-24 (75%)
9. Wisconsin: 74-25 (75%)
10. Michigan State: 73-25 (75%)
11. Oklahoma State: 70-26 (73%)

Oklahoma State has played 96 games and won 70 of them. That’s crazy. What’s even crazier is that if you extend the time period to include the 2008 season, OSU moves into the top 10 ahead of Wisconsin. If you move it to 2007, OSU falls back out of the top 10 behind Georgia.

Here’s the point: Winning 70%+ of your college football games is outrageously difficult. Mike Gundy has done that and more since Pickens’ investment fully vested. His ROI has been through the roof. There would be a SEC investigation (this is not a pun!) if Gundy got this much ROI out of a real life down payment.