Oklahoma State Players Get a Few Days Off, Report Tuesday, Practice Wednesday

STILLWATER – The summer conditioning program finished up on Thursday and now the Oklahoma State football players have this weekend and Monday to get ready and report back to the West End Zone on Tuesday, Aug. 1. The equipment room opens for check in at 1 p.m. with a team meeting set for 5 p.m., dinner at 6:15 p.m., and then team meeting session two at 7:15 p.m. Wednesday is pushed around to an afternoon practice because of summer school. The players will lift early and practice begins at 2:30 with a run thru and stretch is at 2:58 p.m. There are three days of afternoon practices. The first two in helmets, jerseys, and shorts. Friday will be in helmets and shoulder pads. Starting on Monday, Aug. 7 practices move to the morning primarily starting at 9:08 a.m.

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The team worked hard throughout the summer conditioning including late afternoon metabolics. 

“This group had a good work ethic. For the most part I’m pleased with what they accomplished and how they did it,” assistant athletic director for athletic performance Rob Glass told me a week ago. “These guys work hard, but that is just part of it. We’ll need them to stay healthy and keep pushing all season.”

You can look at the players and see improvement physically, just with laying eyes on them. They’ll be pushed with all of their days being full. Fall camp is no longer as physically challenging, but it stays mentally challenging with it being football and football associated activites each day from 6:30 a.m. with breakfast all the way until 9:30 p.m. with lights out after returning from the last position meeting of the day. 

The roster starts in fall camp with the 110 roster. Before the start of school the staff has to limit the roster to 110 players, any injured players can stay and get treatments and rehab, but can’t do football activities including meetings. 

There will be a few players that are on the roster that will have to be held off until the start of fall classes on Monday, Aug. 21, but they won’t be any that are close to the three-deep. 

The current roster shows: 

Offensive Line - 23

Wide Receivers - 16

Quarterbacks - 5

Running Backs - 5

Tight Ends - 5

Fullbacks - 3

Defensive Line - 20

Linebackers - 16

Safeties - 15

Cornerbacks - 11

Specialists (Kickers, Punters, Snappers) - 9

That is a total of 128 players, Oklahoma State starts the season full with 85 scholarship players.

As usual, head coach Mike Gundy is not saying much about the quarterback position. We debuted this week an NIL Journal with transfer quarterback and expected starter Alan Bowman. Gundy wants to keep the quarterback rotating with the top three offenses to start camp.

"They've worked hard. They're out there. We're rotating guys with ones, twos, threes,” Gundy said of the quarterbacks this summer. I’ve been at workouts and the quarterbacks have rotated in the player led metabolic practices. “They're getting a lot of work. We'll run this thing through half of fall camp, somewhere in that area, and if we feel like we know what direction we want to go, I'm going to be for making that decision at that time. If we don't feel like we know, then we won't make that decision.

“I can't really tell you right now, and nothing has really changed over the summer because they're essentially training on their own,” Gundy finished at Big 12 Media Days.

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Garret Rangel eyeballs a receiver this summer.

Quarterbacks coach Tim Rattay can’t wait. He’s seen the quarterbacks in meetings, but he badly wants to see how they have improved physically. 

“That is what I like the most about the start of fall camp,” Rattay said. “Coach Glass and his staff have had them and now we get to work with them again, and I get to see how they have improved. Bigger, stronger, faster and that can equate to them being better at what we ask them to do. The first few practices I’ll be looking to see how they have improved physically.”

The first opportunity again is Tuesday afternoon at the Sherman Smith Training Center.