After blowout loss to Oregon, Mike Gundy's time at Oklahoma State may be running out

How does Mike Gundy get things turned around at Oklahoma State?

The Cowboys’ 3-9 record in 2024 was the worst season of Gundy’s two decades in charge. And the program hit a new low Saturday in a 69-3 loss to No. 6 Oregon.

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The defeat was the biggest blowout in school history, surpassing the previous school record of 62 points. And it came just two games after Oklahoma State closed the 2024 season in what was then the worst result of the Gundy era in a 52-0 loss to Colorado.

OSU wasn’t expected to win against Oregon. Or even be competitive. The Cowboys closed as 28.5-point underdogs as QB Zane Flores made the first start of his career following Hauss Hejny’s injury in Week 1. But the Ducks’ blowout win was about far more than a young quarterback playing in a tough environment. And it said a lot about where Oklahoma State currently sits in the college football landscape.

Oregon led by 38 points at halftime and had 473 yards of offense on just 36 plays. That’s over 13 yards per play.

The Ducks gashed Oklahoma State equally on the ground and through the air too. Both Noah Whittington and Jayden Limar had runs of over 50 yards while Dakorien Moore had a 25-yard TD run to go along with a 65-yard TD catch.

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Somehow, Oklahoma State’s defense looked worse than it did a season ago.

The Cowboys gave up nearly 36 points per game in 2024 and allowed 6.8 yards per play. Just eight schools gave up more points per game and only five gave up more yards each snap.

The offense stunk too, so Gundy made wholesale changes at the coordinator spots. And he opted for two longtime assistants in Doug Meacham and Todd Grantham. Meacham was on Gundy’s first OSU staff in 2005 and Grantham has coordinated defenses at four different power conference schools.

But neither coordinator had called plays since 2021 when Grantham was Dan Mullen’s defensive coordinator at Florida before Mullen’s firing and Meacham was TCU’s coordinator in Gary Patterson’s final season.

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Instead of taking a chance on younger assistants ready for a step up, Gundy went with familiar faces who are no strangers to pivotal seasons and job changes. In short, Meacham and Grantham were two clear “win now” hires after Gundy’s contract got restructured.

Thanks to eight 10-win seasons and his status as a former player, Gundy had a rolling contract at Oklahoma State that was revised in the offseason. Gundy’s contract — which now goes through 2028 — has a current buyout of $15 million instead of one that was previously north of $20 million.

That renegotiated contract came just weeks after Gundy went on a bizarre rant in November about criticism his struggling team was facing. Gundy apologized a day after he said on a media call that, among other things, “in most cases, the people who are negative and voicing their opinion are the same ones that can’t pay their own bills.”

As you can imagine, Gundy’s remarks didn’t go over well with an Oklahoma State fan base accustomed to the winning his teams used to do. And even before the Oregon game, Gundy lowered the expectations for his team by claiming his team’s roster was at a significant financial disadvantage to Oregon’s and that “there’s coaches saying” that Oregon should only be playing teams with similar resources.

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One way to get more donations is to win. Another is to fundraise more often; something that Gundy is now required to be more involved in as part of that new contract.

With 10 games to go, there's still plenty of season remaining for Oklahoma State. But the upcoming schedule is no cakewalk. After hosting Tulsa in Week 3, OSU opens Big 12 play against a Baylor team that took down No. 17 SMU on Saturday and travels to Arizona.

A lot of outcomes are still in play for the Cowboys. And one of them could end up being something that would have seemed unfathomable less than two years ago.

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