Todd Monken – Revised

I thought it might be a good idea to get away from basketball for a day or two and a new Todd Monken post seemed appropriate.

This is the revision of (or maybe the addendum to) my earlier take on the Todd Monken hire.

Gundy talked the other day about how he came to the decision of hiring Monken (you know other than the fact that they go to Vegas together every Summer), saying “We needed a smart football coach that had some experience at coaching the quarterback position at some point in their career. That was important. We needed a guy that was willing to come in and run our offensive plays and our system of Oklahoma State football, and not necessarily run the system from the outside.”

Here’s Monken solidifying that notion when asked what kind of offense he’d be running next year, “that is an interesting question because I really don’t know. It is unique, it’s like playing Madden. Pick out some plays and just start dialing it up. I’m being silly, but it is.”

Doesn’t exactly evoke visions of Knute Rockne leading the troops out of the West endzone, does it?

Here’s why it works though. And Jenni Carlson nailed this last week. It works because now Gundy has a system that’s bigger than any of his coaches. Or rather, he has two players who run a system that’s bigger than any of his coaches.

See, if Gundy would have gone sexy with the hire, he probably would have had to deal with some hardheaded hotshot bringing in a new playbook and the entire Spring would have been a disaster. Had he hired from within, he would have had to deal with any number of coaches enamored with Holgorsen’s circus act that abused the rest of the conference last year. Instead with Monken though, he’s getting someone who describes himself as somebody who only cares about two things:

1. Scoring points
2. Winning games

He’s getting somebody who’s going to let his personnel dictate what kind of offense he runs. I said it on the podcast the other day but this is really something that has defined Gundy’s tenure — he does a fantastic job of adapting his style to whoever’s on the team at the time rather than trying to recruit to a specific system. Again, this is Oklahoma State, we pile up as many 3-stars and 4-stars as we can possibly get and figure out what we’re going to do with all of them later on. Maybe Rich Rodriguez should take note.

So color me excited about the hire. That’s my final verdict.

…until we beat UL-LA 17-16 on a last second field goal in September.