security in numbers’

that the latest round of conference shuffling would conclude anywhere in the next week to a month.

It might still not be over, but the Big 12 seemingly wrapped up its shopping Friday night when it approved the memberships of Arizona State and Utah after the admittance of Arizona on Thursday night.

Texas to the SEC, and OSU was scrambling to find security, whether that be in a revamped Big 12 or in another conference.

Just two years later, the Big 12 is in a favorable spot. In the grand scheme of things, two years is a short amount of time to go from a destitute conference to a league in a position for longevity.

In the past year, Mike Gundy predicted that the Big 12 would “rise up and be just fine” during conference realignment and that OSU would be in good shape because of it. He also said conference realignment wasn’t finished. Check.

“I’m almost like Nostradamus,” Gundy joked on Wednesday before practice.

The Big 12 landed on its feet with the additions of four new teams and a renegotiated TV contract last year, then stole back its Big 8 bride in Colorado last week. Gundy made a new prediction Wednesday, saying

At OSU’s Football Media Day on Saturday afternoon, Gundy and athletic director Chad Weiberg weighed in on the realignment. “I think it’s all good. There’s security in numbers… numbers is strength,” Gundy said. “How they’re gonna break it up, who is gonna play who, I think that’s a challenge – but it’s a good challenge to have when you look back from where we were a year and a half ago.”

That situation in 2021 was a rough one, and Weiberg likened the times to “dog days” full of uncomfortableness. The Big 12 had just lost OU and

How did it happen so quickly?

“Leadership,” said Weiberg, who was AD for two weeks before OU and Texas made their move. “I think these things happen not by accident, right? I mean, you have to give a lot of people – again, commissioners, our presidents and chancellors, our athletic directors – you have to give them credit for stacking a series of good decisions on top of each other to get to where we are to survive and grow and position ourselves in the place that we’re in now.”

Mike Gundy talks conference scheduling, OSU’s historic season tickets sales

games.

Ashton Slaughter Assistant Sports Editor

Notebook

A clean-shaven, freshoff-watching-film Mike Gundy met with reporters on Saturday for OSU’s Football Media Day to discuss conference realignment and updates on fall practices.

Amid his humor toward a reporter about the comedy TV series “Ted Lasso” and the 55-year-old Gundy showing his age when it comes to Wi-Fi problems at his house, some interesting tidbits came from his time at the podium.

Gundy’s thoughts on scheduling moving forward

Gundy doesn’t get called upon to make any decisions; no coach does.

Heck, even if he did get the call, maybe he wouldn’t want to be the end-all, be-all voice.

Despite the NCAA taking little to no coaches’ thoughts into consideration about on the field and off the field questions, comments, or concerns, Gundy still has his beliefs about what may be the best way to schedule college football games moving forward in the era of realignment.

Excluding the Pac-12, which is being held together at its seems by four not-soattractive schools, Gundy believes the other four perennial conferences should come to an agreement to play the same number of conference

“If you could get a bipartisan agreement amongst the conferences (Big 12, Big 10, ACC, SEC) that said, ‘We’re gonna play 10 conference games, we all are,’ it would benefit everybody,”

Gundy said.

His reasoning is rather simple, too. Say Oklahoma State played eight conference games in 2025, but Oregon played 10. If OSU went 8-0 in Big 12-play and Oregon went 9-1 against the Big Ten, how should those resumes stack up? Like all other college football resume dialogue, it gets really murky, as it always does some College Football Playoff selection time.

So, to help eliminate some of this confusion and murkiness, just have every “Power Four” conference play the same amount of conference games.

This will also put more fans in seats, because who doesn’t love conference matchups? And it will make more TV money for the same reason.

“That’s something we should do... it would create some parity and it would help at the end of the season, in my opinion,” Gundy said.

Physicality ramping up in practice

Now, yes, maybe the five NFL scouts had something to do with it. Maybe even the rare Oklahoma early-August breeze helped.

Either way, the Cowboys had a physical, smashmouth practice Saturday.

“Today we had a very good practice,” Gundy said. “Very physical.”

OSU’s offense is going to run a lot more concepts with the quarterback (who’s yet to be determined) under center this season, meaning the rushing attack will be pivotal for the Cowboys’ success in this new-look offense.

On the other side of the ball, led by newcomer Bryan Nardo, he’s instilled a new 3-3-5 scheme, another thing OSU fans won’t be used to seeing in the Big 12.

Both of these things are beginning to take shape in the early fall after being introduced and tweaked throughout the spring. Now, helmets are cracking in practices, as this new era of Cowboy football will begin in early September.

“(Saturday’s practice was) a lot like what it needs to be in order for us to be a better run football team.”

Fans are buying in (literally) on the Cowboys

Despite the Cowboys’ lackluster follow-up to a Fiesta Bowl Championship, their fans’ commitment isn’t wavering.

OSU season tickets this year have all been swept up; there are none (or little, depending on who you ask) remaining.

“We’re selling out luxury seating, we’re selling out suites, and I think we’re gonna sell out our seats this year, our season tickets,” Gundy said. “We’re going to be close, which is a tribute to our fans.”

An OSU communications representative later informed Gundy that they were sold out, so it sounds like the tickets are gone.

Place this on fans becoming more passionate, growing enrollment enticing students’ parents to purchase tickets, or anything, for that matter. The bottom line is that the Cowboys, coming off a 7-6 season, are set to play in front of a sold-out Boone Pickens Stadium several times this season.

“I think the fans want to help,” Gundy said. “I think they wanted to say, ‘Football’s important; we’re buying our season tickets,’ and this is proof by them getting out and buying their tickets.” sports.ed@ocolly.com

The Big 12’s four new schools offer widespread athletic success

you would really not want to play, because it’s hard enough to play and beat them and you might not get the credibility that you think you’re going to get from the exposure based on history. Utah is one of those teams.”

Arizona: Men’s Basketball

Four schools are joining the ever-changing Big 12 and bringing some firepower to some of the conference’s best sports.

The Big 12 Conference officially added Arizona, Arizona State and Utah from the Pac 12 on Friday to make the conference a 16-team league in 2024. The conference added Colorado in late-July, starting this recent wave of conference realignment.

Football is the most talked about sport in all the realignment, and the Big 12 got a boost there, but what about other sports? Wrestling, basketball, others? The Big 12’s new additions have much to offer.

Utah: Football Utah has had recent success in its women’s basketball team and a historic gymnastics program, but the biggest impact is on the gridiron.

Utah coach Kyle Whittingham took over the job for Urban Meyer in 2005 and has since built the program into a staple in college football.

Utah has seven nine-win seasons in the past 10 years and won the past two Pac-12 Conference championships. Utah is picked to finish third this season behind USC and Oregon – who are headed to the Big Ten next year.

OSU coach Mike Gundy said he believes there are some similarities between Utah and OSU. Whittingham and Gundy were hired within three weeks of each other almost 20 years ago, and Gundy said the Utes are underrated, like the Cowboys.

“Lately they’ve been very successful,” Gundy said. “So, they’re bringing in a really good team and they’re one of those teams that - and I think Oklahoma State is this way - if you polled coaches anonymously across the country teams that

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The Big 12 already had arguably the toughest basketball conference in the country. With the addition of Arizona, it only gets better.

In the last two NCAA Tournaments, the Wildcats have been a 1-seed and a 2-seed with a Sweet 16 appearance. Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd is thought of as one of the best coaches in the conference and is one of the best international recruiters.

The program is a historic one as well. The Wildcats won the NCAA title in 1997 and have appeared in four Final Four’s.

Arizona State: Wrestling

A highly touted wrestling program is being added to one of the best conferences in wrestling.

Arizona State’s wrestling team witnessed an off year in 2023 but has recently, and historically, been successful.

The Sun Devils have won five of the last seven Pac 12 championships and have claimed 21 in total. The Sun Devils also won the 1988 national championship.

Colorado: Cross Country sports.ed@ocolly.com

Coach Prime may be the face of Colorado athletics right now, but Colorado’s cross-country program is the most impactful sport.

The cross-country program dominated the Pac 12 in its short-lived tenure in the conference. Between the men’s and women’s teams, 14 conference championships have been claimed since 2011.

Prior to Colorado’s move from the Big 12 to the Pac 12 in 2010, Colorado had 23 conference championships – which is still more than any school.

In the 2022 NCAA Cross Country Championships (which were held in Stillwater), the men’s team placed eighth while the women’s team finished 11th.