GUNDY MILESTONES

Cowboys get their first true road win under Gundy by rallying from a 17-0 halftime deficit to defeat Kansas, 42-32, just one week after a heartbreaking road loss at Kansas State lost (running back) Kendall Hunter. We lost (receiver) Dez Bryant. We had a lot of issues. But I thought, or hope, I never let anyone think in terms of anything other than success. I wasn’t smart enough to grasp that we weren’t very good. I just kept pushing forward and to use a cliché, I just never took my eye o the ball. That might be the upside of being a young coach. Now that I know a lot more about the job and am more mature and am a little smarter about the situation, I might not be as good at looking at the big picture. Even when I was a young coach I knew it was going to be a long process. We had to condition our players. We had to get more talent at some key positions. And then once we started doing pretty well, we started losing coaches. In years three and four, we began losing assistants who were becoming head coaches, and that can be a di cult obstacle to overcome. But to answer your question, if I had known early in my career what I know now, I’m not sure I could have withstood the pressure knowing we had such a long road ahead of us.

Oklahoma State knocks o Nebraska, 41-29, giving OSU two-straight home

PM: At what point did you start thinking success was attainable?

MG: The year that we went to the Insight Bowl (2007). I think we played the second-most di cult schedule in the country in someone’s opinion (the NCAA ranked the Cowboys’ schedule as toughest in the country based on the cumulative record of OSU’s opponents). And we ended up going to a bowl game. On the field for that season, just o ensively speaking, we had Dez Bryant, Zac Robinson, Russell Okung, Dantrell Savage, Kendall Hunter and Brandon Pettigrew. So we played on o ense that year with six or seven NFL guys. And I guess I realized at that point that we were good — in fact pretty good. The next year I think we played in the Holiday Bowl against Oregon, which would be playing in the national championship game in a year or two. We were ahead of them at halftime. But late in that 2007 season was when I started realizing that we were pretty good and could be a good program.

PM: Was there a key player or recruit that changed the perception of Oklahoma State.

MG: Dez Bryant. Dez was very highly recruited, but he got his grades late in the year so there was some concern about that with some schools. But everyone still wanted him. When we got him and he showed up as a freshman, it kind of brought back memories of when I was in school and first saw Hart Lee Dykes. Dez was just a different player on the field. Those guys can change a game for you. At Oklahoma State and maybe other schools across the country, if you have a certain number of guys that understand your situation and system and play hard, and then you sprinkle in a few NFL players, you are good enough to win football games and a championship, like we did with (Brandon) Weeden and (Justin) Blackmon and those guys.

I think Dez was the player that really changed us from a recruiting standpoint and what he brought to the field instantly. In the first game of his sophomore year we played at Washington State, and we just kept throwing balls up to him and he just kept making plays.

Oklahoma State picks up a landmark victory with its 28-23 win at No. 3 Missouri

Following the win in Columbia, the Cowboys crack the Associated Press top 10 for the first time since 1988, checking in at No. 8

OSU’s 34-6 win over Baylor was rather routine, but the victory improved OSU to 7-0 for just the second time in school history

PM: Was there a specific game that you rank as a game changer?

MG: Things really started to change the year that we opened by losing at Georgia (2007). We also lost at Troy. But in the middle of the season we beat Texas Tech and later we played better and finished up strong but lost to some really good teams before winning our bowl game. That was the start. Then I think it was the next year we won at Missouri when it was second or third in the country (actually both, depending on the poll). That was really a big hurdle for us. We were waiting to win that one big game. It was on national TV in prime time, and they were a really good team. In fact, I don’t think they had had a three-and-out all year with their first-team o ense on the field. We showed up on defense and made some plays on o ense. They were probably a better team than we were, I felt like, but we were able to go out and play well and win on the road, and I think maybe that was the biggest hurdle for this program. It was in Columbia when our players started to believe that they were as good as anyone and could compete with some of the top teams in the country.

PM: What do consider your recruiting philosophy? What is your compass when recruiting?

MG: I think the most important thing we have done at Oklahoma State is that we understand our geography. We understand that there are better players than what people think in Oklahoma and so we want to be very thorough in this area and the same with Kansas. And then we want to be very strong in Texas just based on sheer numbers. You have so many more people living there and so many more people playing ball. So the geographical concept has been very important to our success.

PM: You also seem to do your own thing.

MG: There is a growing interest in recruiting services, and they are all online now with instant updates and evaluations and it really gets the fans involved. One of our keys is not to be influenced by outside sources. You have to go in and establish right o the bat if the young man really likes to play football. If he doesn’t, it doesn’t matter how talented he is because he’s not likely to make it because of the commitment. And then we just have to evaluate. For instance, Russell Okung was 245 pounds and you could tell he would be 290 someday. If he had been 280 pounds in high school he would have probably been committed to a tradition-rich program. And so we have to project players in certain areas. Sometimes we take running backs that aren’t as tall and so on. But our focus has been ‘Does he really like football? Will he compete? Is it important to him?’ And for the most part that’s helped us have success.

PM: Does being here 10 years have any sort of significance to you?

MG: I think so. You know we broke the all-time wins record and have had so much success and broken just about every coaching record and a ton of team and individual records, and none of that mattered much to me. But I think the longevity of coaching at this level at a school where it takes a lot of work is pretty special to me. It takes a lot of work at every school, but it takes a lot of time and e ort and thinking outside the box to win at Oklahoma State. I was asked the other day by sports writers about longevity. It’s funny how you go from five years ago with all of those questions about whether you could make it as a coach and then at 10 years the questions focus on how long will you stay here. You become a kind of a staple, and for me I would like to coach here 20 years. Ten years has been really special, but I would really like to do it another 10.

PM: You have had the same athletic director for 10 years. That’s somewhat rare.

MG: There has been a lot of talk about Coach Holder and I, but we really work pretty well together. We have had our issues on scheduling over the last two or three years and everyone knows that, but we have worked really well together on a lot of issues. As long as he is around here, it makes my job fairly easy because of our relationship. He understands winning and football, and he understands Oklahoma State.

PM: Talk about your philosophy when it comes to hiring coaches and how that process can re-invent a program.

MG: My philosophy has changed since year three or four. I have learned if you hire a smart coach who is loyal, likes coaching the kids and is willing to work hard, we can teach them and train them in our system. We have had to replace so many coordinators on both sides of the ball over the last four or five years. That has been my most di cult task as a head coach — replacing quality coaches when quality coaches leave. I think the impact that a coordinator, an assistant coach too, but more importantly a coordinator, has on a program is immense. I don’t think most people realize the impact a coordinator has on a program. Just like in the car business where you have someone in charge of sales and someone overseeing maintenance.

Oklahoma

The coordinators have their areas and they oversee all of it. I’ve changed my philosophy in that sense. I used to be involved with the o ense some when I started, but now I’m not going in there all the time and calling the plays. I establish our philosophies and my feelings on where we are regarding personnel and then let them coach. A smart guy who is willing to buy into our system and work hard is really the direction I’ve gone in hiring coaches.

PM: Like all successful coaches, you have been approached by other potential employees over the years …

MG: I think that like most people, not just coaches, when you’re wanted or in demand that it makes all of us feel better. I went through a time when jobs were intriguing just because the prevailing thought in our profession is that if you are at a school like Oklahoma State and you win and win big, people think you are really a quality coach. And if you go and do that at another school you are a Hall of Famer. So those things have crossed my mind before. But then I think about the hard work we have put into this program and into Oklahoma State, and the things that I have here … it’s usually not greener on the other side of the fence. And this has become a top 25 job in my opinion. We can debate that, but the goals and patterns and trajectory have been established that shows if it’s not a top 25 job, it certainly can be.

PM: Which leads to more job speculation?

MG: When we have had success here, there are a lot of calls that come in on jobs. I don’t really have any interest in other jobs that might have intrigued me three or four years ago. I’m comfortable now in being fully committed in finishing here and coaching here another 10 years.

PM: The professional leagues always seem to be intriguing to football and basketball coaches. As a basketball coach once explained about the appeal of professional leagues, it is basketball all the time. No recruiting, no fundraising, no red tape.

MG: I had multiple interviews with two di erent NFL organizations … extensive and in depth. There was some interest because I really didn’t know anything about the way an NFL franchise operates. The NFL is completely di erent, which I learned. They were great learning experiences for me, and I kind of backed out because with those guys when you get to a certain level of interviews it becomes really serious and that wasn’t something I felt like I wanted to do. It changes really fast with the NFL.