Mike Gundy Pivots and Announces He Wants To See His Team Play a Spring Game

STILLWATER – Oklahoma State head football coach Mike Gundy hasn’t always been enthused about spring football events for the fans. Schools only get 15 practices in the spring, and you’d like to use all of those for the purposes you believe will help develop the team for the summer and into the upcoming season. Spring games with watered down rosters from splitting the team up and also putting your players on display now for other schools to scout and then tamper into the transfer portal are the evils of spring events. Evils be damned, Gundy wants a game. He’s going to have one Saturday.

Robert Allen - Pokes Report

Gundy tells the media he wants his team to play a spring game.

“I shared with the staff a little this morning, and I’m going to go over it again tomorrow: this team needs to play a game,” Gundy said coming off his previous thought that an open practice would be best. “We’re going to play a game. We’re going to split teams, we’re going to split coaches, and we’re going to play a real game. The team needs to play a game. I need to see them play a game.”

The head coach said he wants to play three 15-minute quarters with no halftime. He made the decision he said on Monday and other than brief discussion in staff meeting on Tuesday morning he has not gone into detail. He waited to share with the media.

“This is the first time I’ve mentioned it,” Gundy said. “We’re going to officiate it, split the staff up, call plays. To me halftime on spring games are a bummer and people leave.”

Gundy and the Cowboys are coming off a meltdown reset season after going 3-9 and 0-9 in the Big 12. Gundy has reloaded his coaching staff. Spring so far has been energetic and better than recent spring practices. 

Bruce Waterfield/OSU Athletics

Howland continued an impressive spring. 

He has 30 new players between transfer portal, junior college recruits, and three new high school recruits that reported early. One of those, receiver Royal Capell, made several big plays in the practice on Tuesday. All of the quarterbacks played well with Zane Flores hitting running back Trent Howland and Capell in big plays. Garret Rangel had a big pass completion to Howland. Hauss Hejny found Capell and Sam Jackson V on notable plays. 

Rodney Fields Jr. had a 20-yard touchdown run. The defense, which dominated on Saturday, was still effective. In the secondary Kenneth Harris and JK Johnson had some impressive passes defended. Cam Smith smothered a deep ball and nearly came up with the interception. One of the big hits of the day was courtesy of freshman safety Landyn Cleveland. 

Jerod Hill/OSU Athletics

Cam Smithin action.

Gundy said he is worried about other schools checking out his players and trying to poach in the portal. He was asked if that bothered him. He was also asked if he had an idea of how to put together his roster with the impending House vs. NCAA settlement and a 105-roster limit.

“That’s another reason I want o have a game,” Gundy said, “They need to play a game. I have a pretty good idea in my mind of what we have here as a team and even some of the new guys. We still have to, if she (Judge Wilken) signs this and doesn’t grandfather players (walk-ons) in and I think that is what she wants to do. You will have to get to a 105 at some point. Us, we have 8-10 guys on the bubble. The more that we can do to help each of those young me to solidify a spot is the right thing to do.” 

The only problem is that now the game is set for 1 p.m. on Saturday as part of the Orange Power Weekend on the OSU campus is now in danger because of weather, possibly severe weather.  Gundy said the forecast he saw is for “25-30 percent chance of rain on Saturday morning,” but in the afternoon it goes up progressively to as high as “84 percent.”

He said his contingency if that forecast holds is to move his spring game up as early as 11 a.m. and if it does lighten up some then stick to the 1 p.m. start which he would prefer. He said he will have kickoffs, kickoff returns, punts, and punt returns. A real spring game in Stillwater.