Mike Gundy Gets the Double Snub from The Athletic and It's Ridiculous

STILLWATER – Let’s start with the fact that I love The Athletic and I’m a subscriber. In this day of shrinking newspapers and sports pages across the country and including Oklahoma, I love that I can get so much coverage across the board online in The Athletic. Now, this may surprise a few of you, but I’m not always in agreement with the writers and their opinions. It seems I got in trouble for that with our websites former partner in Sports Illustrated as I called out some of their national writers and some from other traditional bastions of sports journalism. Hey, we can all have our opinions and that’s what makes this country (and it’s journalism) great. You know free speech, also known as the first amendment. I’m glad to be away from Sports Illustrated, where some of their editors and former editors didn’t believe in free speech unless they found it acceptable.

I’m guessing Bruce Feldman (also a FOX television sideline reporter) and Stewart Mandel won’t mind my disagreement since they get my money each month. Subscribers especially should have a right to disagree, free loaders, now that’s debatable.

Here’s the way Feldman and Mandel ranked their top 25 college football head coaches.

Both Feldman and Mandel had Gundy in their list of coaches that just missed out, but this has to be questioned at a severe level. I understand that Gundy doesn’t bend over for the national media and always make himself available. In fact, just the opposite as Gundy doesn’t cater at all to the media, unless it is someone that he appreciates. He has favorites at both the national and the local level. I know, I’m included in that group which makes my writing this appear biased. However, there are facts that back it up.

Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

A very successful Fitzgerald was once a grad assistant for Mike Gundy at Maryland.

On the surface, several of the coaches in here Gundy had a major influence in their career. He was a fellow assistant coach at Maryland under Ron Vanderlineden with current Penn State head coach James Franklin. Franklin picked up some knowledge from Gundy and vice versa. How about Franklin’s offensive coordinator hire this off season as he hired Mike Yurich, the very coach Gundy hired out of  Division II Shippensburg State to be offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State. On that same Maryland staff was young Pat Fitzgerald and the former Northwestern linebacker cut his teeth learning to coach offense as Gundy’s graduate assistant.

Understanding that Gundy took a PR hit during the pandemic with some of his views on bringing athletes back to campus and working toward a season. Those views were opposed in his own state and conference by Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley, yet Gundy with his more aggressive approach in getting his athletes back to campus avoided any COVID shutdown and his team had minimal loss of players during the season as opposed to other schools in the Big 12 and across the country including Oklahoma and Riley, which took a more relaxed approach.

There was also the t-shirt Gundy wore fishing from an ultra-conservative news outlet that running back Chuba Hubbard found offensive and called him out. Gundy took on the problem head on and accepted a pay cut in a renegotiated contract that was for as much as anything the pandemic financial shortfall. Gundy did what he needed to better his relationship with the players. In the end, he has strengthened the program.

Then despite being picked as a team that could win the Big 12, the Cowboys had quarterback Spencer Sanders go down in the first series of the first game, running back Chuba Hubbard was never healthy, and All-American wide receiver Tylan Wallace missed some action. The worse aspect was the massive injuries and musical chairs on the offensive line starting back in the summer. Still Oklahoma State finished 8-3 and beat Miami (Fla.) in the bowl game.

Gundy has never had a major NCAA violation and survived the Sports Illustrated smear attack story entitled “The Dirty Game.” The most scrutinized investigation with those words being those of the NCAA followed and they found no violations by Oklahoma State under Gundy. They found a few that were minor under his predecessor Les Miles. Yet, both Feldman and Mandel have Hugh Freeze on their list and Freeze was guilty of all kinds of major violations not to mention personal issues at Ole Miss.

Pat Kinnison - Chief Photographer

Gundy and Matt Campbell shake hands after the one game out of five meetings that Campbell and Iowa State won over Gundy and OSU.

Gundy has a record of 137-67 in 16-years as a college head coach. Having been around 16-years at a school like Oklahoma State that has never had the kind of sustained success prior to Gundy’s tenure is a detriment to all-time winning percentage, especially if you are thrown in with coaches with less time on the job. Still, Gundy has a better win percentage (67 percent) than the following coaches that made one or both lists: Tom Allen, Indiana; Matt Campbell, Iowa State; Paul Chryst, Wisconsin; Bill Clark, UAB; Mario Cristobal, Oregon; Kirk Ferentz, Iowa; Luke Fickell, Cincinnati;  Pat Fitzgerald, Northwestern;  P.J. Fleck, Minnesota; James Franklin, Penn State; Jim Harbaugh, Michigan; Lane Kiffin, Mississippi;  Mike Leach, Mississippi State; Jeff Monken, Army; Dan Mullen, Florida; Ed Orgeron, LSU, and Kyle Whittingham, Utah.

Pat Kinnison - Chief Photographer

Gundy is 5-4 all-time vs. Gary Patterson.

If you are taking last season alone, then checking the final College Football Playoff Rankings and the final polls from both the Associated Press and the USA Today Coaches then Gundy his Oklahoma State team finished ahead of these teams that we list separated by those that were ranked and received votes and those that weren’t even ranked: Buffalo (Leipold), Oregon (Cristobal), Utah (Whittingham), Army (Monken), Wisconsin (Chryst), TCU (Patterson), LSU (Orgeron), Mississippi (Kiffin), Mississippi State (Leach), UAB (Clark), and Minnesota (Fleck).

Finally, Gundy has a head to head record of 14-14 with the coaches on The Athletic lists.

I just really can’t justify the opinions of either Bruce Feldman or Stewart Mandel of leaving Mike Gundy off their list, except that it is their list and they have the same first amendment rights that all of us do. 

Oklahoma State spring football will continue on Tuesday, March 30 this week with the spring game for the Cowboys on Saturday, April 24, 2021 at noon.