Originally published at: https://pistolsfiringblog.com/four-points-on-recruiting-and-how-osu-can-win-another-conference-crown/
It just won’t win very many.
I would love to read your 10,000 words on what makes Gundy excellent.
Do you mean excellent in relationship to oSu or as a coach anywhere?
How do you think Gundy would have done record wise had he took the Tennessee or Arkansas jobs? Do you think he would thrive in those environments or other environments outside Stillwater?
I have always thought he was a perfect fit at the perfect time for oSu. My challenge is when I take off my orange colored glasses I don’t see excellence. I don’t see the drop off in special teams play or recruiting occurring with excellent plans in place. I don’t see recent hiring practices reflective of a coach wanting to win it all.
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That is a really good article because it is providing statistics to confirm the common sense conclusion that only really good teams win championships at any level. And to be a good team you need really good players, and to have really good players you have to sign an abundance of 4-5 star recruits.
I think it would be more fruitful to write articles about why 4-5 star recruits do not want to end up in Stillwater. Common sense says that winners want to hang out with other winners. But how do you become one of the winners if you do not have enough stars on your team to have a chance to become a winner? That suggests that no coach at OSU can ever become a winner unless his own personal record is such that 4-5 star guys would go almost anywhere just for the opportunity to play for him. Unfortunately, the best thing that Gundy is known for nationwide is his mullet.
Sigh. OSU will never “win it all”. I know I sound like an old man (which I suppose I’m creeping up on), but OSU football is prospering like it never has in history. We’ve never had such a run of positive success, winning records, bowl games, etc. in all of its football history. Gundy by far makes the most of what he can recruit to what will never be an “elite” football program. It’s extraordinarily difficult to move from a very good program to an elite level and we’ll never be able to lure that many 4 and 5 star athletes rural Northeastern Oklahoma. I’m very grateful for that success and I’m dreading what will happen when he retires. I really don’t want to go back to how it was before.
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Before Gundy 9 conference titles
With Gundy 1 conference title
Before Gundy winning percentage against OU 0.20
With Gundy winning percentage against OU 0.16
Is it possible that we win more games because we play against less talented teams? The big 8 had OU, NU and CU. Now we have OU.
If Gundy can have historical success with recruiting classes outside the top 25 what makes you think another coach can’t have success at oSu. The revenue oSu now earns is IMO what will keep oSu relevant.
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The last conference title before Gundy was 1976 as co-champs of the Big 8. Lots of losing seasons between then and Gundy. No, he hasn’t beaten OU significantly more than historical coaches. 0.04% is not particularly significant historically. But his winning percentage is significantly better than all his predecessors.
Gundy 129-64 .668
Miles 24-14 .632
Simmons 30-38 .441
Jones 62-60 .508
Johnson 29-25-3 .509
Stanley 35-31-2 .515, last conference title, 1976
Etc…
To get to the next coach with a winning record you have to go back to Lookabaugh, 1939-1949 Not exactly a modern comp.
Would I love to see us beat OU half the time, yes. But nobody in the nation beats OU half the time. Not Nebraska, not Colorado, not Texas. OSU would beat all three of those schools more than half the time now. To my great delight we’ve owned Texas the last 10 years.
This is the greatest era of Cowboy football in history and I’m glad to see it.
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The 1980 US Hockey team proves your “never w/o blue bloods” wrong
I agree, excellent is pretty strong. Good yes great idk. Does OSU do good at evaluating talent ang getting the most out of 2 and 3 stars, but Gundy coaches scared a lot, lost His team 2 years ago and and hardly wins big games.
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Texas leads the series 62-48-5 and to Baylor’s great delight they’ve owned Gundy the last ten years. While we are supposed to be good I would have loved to play Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri or Arkansas but we chose power houses like Southeastern Louisiana, South Alabama and McNeese State.
He’s not excellent. I hate the chicken little mind set some fellow fans here have when it comes to OSU.
@tomg Recruiting is crazy important and things are starting to get more national which is great for us but we still aren’t a blue blood so it’s hard to draw beyond our region, 4-8 hour drive. However, recruiting wise, I highly suggest reading this article https://oklahoman.com/article/5599801/does-osu-football-recruiting-need-to-improve note, Barry Tramel’s name is attached to it and most OSU people don’t like him, but the real meat of the article is done by Barry Walker.
I totally get what you are saying in bringing up the past. I lived that part of oSu football as I arrived in 1992 the year after 0-10-1. However, times change and this oSu program isn’t your Dad’s oSu program. Gundy has received 100% of the benefit of that change and now heads an oSu program that dwarfs the oSu programs you mentioned. Lets not pretend that Gundy was crushing it upon arrival. Lets not deny the reality that the decision to hire Holgy, which Gundy fought, has made him a 5 million a year coach.
Gundy did a really good job of building the program into a consistent winner and peaked during the 2011 season when a walk on QB transformed into a first round NFL draft pick. Yet just this offseason several loyal and true fans were gidding about hiring Monken as an exit plan for Gundy. Numbers aside to me that speaks volumes when you want to replace the greatest coach in program history with a guy that has left the program twice already.
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I think oSu evaluates and develops players. So does every other program in the nation. I think that has been a mantra for Gundy, RA, and message board posts. I do think Rob Glass is special and Gundy deserves a ton of credit for keeping him in Stillwater. Having seen many oSu teams that didn’t benefit from the Glass factory I totally understand how that has contributed to winning so many close games.
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