Ohio State has won 10 of the last 11 against Wisconsin. What strategy should Wisconsin take to remedy this specific issue?
Ohio State has won 13 of the last 16 against Michigan State. If you were MSU’s coach, and you decided your ONLY GOAL was to beat Ohio State, what would you do differently than if your only goal was to win as many games as possible?
Alabama won 8 straight against LSU prior to this year. LSU won this year, though. Is that because they specifically figured out how to deal with Alabama? Or is it because LSU is just better this year?
My point: I believe that the goal “beat OU more” is the same goal as the goal “be as good a team as you can possibly be.” I get that Gundy’s record against OU is bad. No one disputes that. What I’m disputing is the notion that there is something Gundy (or anyone) can do to make it more likely to beat OU specifically, other than making your team more likely to beat all the teams.
That’s why I think hypotheticals like “what if OSU wins nine games every year, but never beats OU” don’t make a lot of sense to me. If OSU wins nine games every year, and OU wins X games every year, then OSU will probably beat OU just about as often as any 9-win team beats any X-win team, give or take the odd bounce of the oblong spheroid. I get that it hasn’t worked out that way in the past, but like I said up-thread, I don’t think Gundy is fundamentally bad at beating OU any more than I think he’s fundamentally good at beating Texas.
Define “fine.” You should care about it sure. You should also have a sense of proportion. The record vs one team, no matter how enjoyable it is to beat them, isn’t worth firing a coach over. It is especially not worth it when doing so will severely restrict who you can hire and who they can hire to fill out the staff.
Building toward being a program on par with OU isn’t a project accomplished in the time we’ve put toward it.
As far as Alabama and LSU the reason LSU won is they got tired of losing and fired Miles, and got a new coach. Thank you for making my point.
Why do you think Texas hired Tom Herman? Maybe because he beat OU that year while at Houston? Tom’s already got as many wins as Gundy, do you think Texas will let him lose the next ten?
By the way building a program usually isn’t done by losing.
Surely you understand the additional hurdle that must be overcome to actually be better than OU.
As I’ve mentioned several times… OSU gets about an eighth of the coverage that OU does in the state… how is OSU supposed to become a goal for recruits in state with that kind of competition?
I mean… the David Boren stuff is a perfect example. Has the DOK put out anything about Boren being accused of sexually assaulting male students? Or putting the university millions of dollars in debt? Or falsifying data to send to ranking agencies? Because I can guarantee you that if Burns had done the same thing at OSU, it would be front page news every day until Burns was fired, OSU lost accreditation, and all state funding for the school was pulled.
How little is expected from Gundy or what I (realistically) want are different.
How little is expected? I want to go to a bowl game. That is the bare minimum. To me, you don’t fire Gundy until we don’t make a bowl three years in a five year period.
What I want? I am honestly fine with being competitive with ou in the Bedlam games, not being conservative in the Bedlam games (which I think Gundy has done in the last 2 seasons), winning Bedlam 3/10 times, and a 10 win season including the bowl win.
If I remember correctly Gundy is 1-4 against OU as a favorite. Can you say any of those programs have been favored against Ohio State 5 times in the past 15 years? It is the number of times oSu has had a chance to win the game and didnt’ get it done that makes the overall record look bad IMO. His record as a favorite and the number of times oSu was in a close game in the fourth quarter is the issue. I think fans would be content if Gundy had Snyder’s winning percentage. That would be close to 2X > the the historical average. In addition, some years a victory against OU would have also included winning the Big 12. Winning below the historical average is very difficult to defend IMO but this thread is full of it.
You don’t get credit for almost beating Oklahoma or almost winning the Big 12. You don’t get praise for ‘nearly doing it’. You either win or you don’t. At the end of the day, that’s what you’re judged on. I’ve made my stance on ‘meaningful wins’ a few times now, but it’s still accurate. Regardless of OU’s dominance, 2 wins in nearly a decade and a half tenure is not acceptable, especially when at least four or five of those losses were ‘should have won’ games.
Mack has basically admitted he was heartbroken over losing the NC the year before to Alabama. Which they win if Colt doesn’t get hurt. He just wasn’t up for motivating…plus Gilbert wasn’t very good.
See DougD’s excellent response regarding the ridiculously narrow hypothetical of 15 years averaging 9 wins and 0 Bedlam or Big12 wins. If you want to rephrase it in the form of a wager, however. I would wager large sums of potato chips that if OSU averaged 9 wins for the next 15 years they will win at least 1 Bedlam and 1 Big12 title. And yes, if Gundy’s the guy steering the boat for those 9 win seasons, keep the auto raise rolling!
How relevant do you think T Boone’s money is today? I’m glad he gave it, and it definitely helped the football program, but a one time donation a decade ago isn’t all that relevant.
Since then, Baylor has a new stadium, and everyone else has done fairly major renovations. OU’s yearly revenue is nearly double ours. Invoking that donation as hugely relevant today is misguided.