Gundy and Holgorsen Reunion in the Desert at Big 12 Spring Meetings
STILLWATER – The reports from the Big 12 Spring Meeting for athletic directors and coaches in football and basketball, both men’s and women's have concluded. Some coaches like Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy are back home. Others will be on the way early on Thursday. The meetings had plenty of discussion on topics like NIL, NCAA Transfer Portal, tampering, and the future of the NCAA and Power Five college sports in general.
On a lighter note with the Big 12’s future schools involved in BYU, already committed to joining in 2023-24, and the American Athletic Conference trio of Cincinnati, Central Florida, and Houston feeling really close to committing to the same timetable there was at least one reunion in the coach’s meetings. It was like old times with the Cowboys Dean of Big 12 football head coaches Mike Gundy sitting next to his former offensive coordinator and former West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen.
Holgorsen said little has changed since he left WVU to become the head coach at Houston. The Big 12 is still stacked with good schools and with Oklahoma and Texas looking like they will hang around until 2025 that the league will really be stacked. Holgorsen lamented that his facilities at Houston might be the worst in the league. Having seen them up close including the air-conditioned indoor practice facility, I can confirm that will not be the case.
Gundy and Holgorsen both told Chuck Carlton of The Dallas Morning News that the new schools will help soften the blow of when Oklahoma and Texas eventually depart. Gundy has been steadfast in his support of the four new schools and steadfast in his suspicion that the college football and college sports could end up in a new and different organization that would eliminate the damage of the two bluebloods leaving the Big 12.
”The long and short of it in my opinion is there’s power in numbers when you structure a conference,” Gundy told the DMN. “We’d already been concerned about having just 10 schools. Now you get numbers and you get television viewers and recent success on the field.”
“Texas and Oklahoma are storied programs. I won’t take that away from then,” the long-time veteran of the Big 12 Holgorsen told Carlton. “It doesn’t hurt a conference to add these four schools based on recent success.”
Gundy knows the conference has television and multi-media rights negotiations coming up in 2024 or before and he isn’t worried.
“So, in my option we could be looking at this three-years from now and from a financial view, we could be stronger.”
The news with BYU head football coach Kalani Sitake is coming to the Big 12 has spiked his staff. Just before going to Arizona, Sitake had eight new staff members approved. The Cougars now have a five-man strength and conditioning staff and more football and recruiting support staffers.
“We’re [still] looking to add more obviously,” Sitake said. “But this is a great foundation for us to build [upon], specifically in the supporting staff area. I’m not really patient, and that’s OK. I’ll keep asking [athletic director Tom Holmoe for more people]. And in the meantime, we’ll keep working toward getting this team ready to play and that’s this season.”
In the meantime we will keep our eyes on the college football and sports developments to see just exactly what the future will look like in structure and in almost every other facet except the X’s and O’s, which we think will stay more the same than everything else.