Gundy's Wish and Deion's Wish of Spring Scrimmages with Other Teams Not Happening

STILLWATER – Earlier this week as Mike Gundy and Oklahoma State opened spring football, Gundy told the media of his idea to bring Bedlam football back as a spring event. A spring scrimmage, even home and home in the same month, to get the programs on the same field, better each other in football and raise some extra dollars for revenue sharing or NIL. Colorado coach Deion Sanders got a new contract, five-years and $54 million, on Friday, but also received the news that his program will not be permitted to scrimmage several days, a la NFL, against another school, in this case Syracuse.

Sanders and Syrcause head coach Fran Brown filed a waiver request to practice together a week ago after Sanders publicly floated the idea, and Brown responded that his team would like to do it.

According to the NCAA and the Division I FBS oversight committee, the waiver was denied largely due to the late timing of the request. That committee is made up primarily of athletic directors but there is one coach, Illinois head coach Bret Bielema on the panel. The group had a good point in that most FBS schools have already scheduled or even ended spring football, and it would give advantages in preparation and possibly recruiting to Colorado and Syracuse if other schools were not allowed. There were also concerns about the potential academic impacts of players missing class.

Robert Allen - Pokes Report

Mike Gundy

Gundy floated the spring scrimmage Bedlam idea at his spring opening press conference. He used dates for this spring, but in talking to him understood that this is an idea for future years. That’s good because the NCAA and the FBS oversight committee implied it will be considered again before next spring practices begin.

“I would like to see our guys compete against them in the spring to see where we're at and do the best we can to stay off the ground,” Gundy said further of his plan. “We know that's not going to happen 100% of the time. They could use it as a scrimmage. We could use it to scrimmage because by rule, we get it and I would think that they do it in the NFL, right? And they try to stay up, but it's still more entertaining to go watch the Eagles against the Bears than it is just the Eagles against the Eagles. So I think it's a great idea. 

Pat Kinnison - Chief Photographer

Spring Bedlam?

“I made a C in political science, and I certainly don't have a law degree, but you know, I don't know if you can file a waiver or whatever,” Gundy said on March 25 not knowing CU and Syracuse had done just that. “I don't know if Coach Venables would be willing to do it. I haven't talked to him about it, but I just thought about it. I think it'd be a great idea. I don't know what do y'all think? I mean, I bet the fans would like it. Go pay 25 bucks. Go down and watch OU and OSU practice against each other. Go 7-on-7. Go inside, do 35, 40 minutes of a team drill. Do individual against each other, one on ones. It’d be like ‘Stripes.’ Like you said, you got, what, a six-day-a-week program here, you know. So I think it's a good idea.”

Now, we’ll have to wait and see if Oklahoma is interested and if before spring of 2026 if the NCAA and the FBS oversight committee come around to Deion Sanders’ and Mike Gundy’s reimagination of spring games.