Interview excerpts with Mike Gundy

Below are some highlights of Bill Connelly’s conversation with Oklahoma State head football coach Mike Gundy. To read the profile of Gundy, you can do so here.

On taking over when Texas was at its peak.

Bill Connelly: You took over in 2005, when Texas was at its absolute peak under Mack Brown and OU had just been to a couple of title games. How have your expectations for OSU changed from then to now?

Mike Gundy: When I took this thing over, I said my goal is, one, to erase a lifetime losing winning percentage here — meaning that, up until a couple of years ago, Oklahoma State has always had a less than 50 percent winning percentage [all-time]. Just two years ago, we finally got over 50 percent. We finally have more wins than losses.

Then, the second thing is, in my opinion part of being the CEO or head coach is to say, okay, we need to develop and build some realistic expectations so we can reach those goals. Lofty goals that are not attainable, in my opinion, are not very profitable because you never get to ‘em. We can start out every year and say, “Guys, if we don’t end up winning the national championship, it’s a shitty year.” Well, it’d be hard. There’s only one team that does that every year.

I said, okay, what’s realistic for Oklahoma State? If we could become a legitimate top-25 team a majority of the time, and we were talented enough personnel-wise, coaching the guys the right way, that when we play on Saturdays, the fans that come to the game know that if we play well, we can win, then we’ve gotten to the point where we’re successful here at Oklahoma State.

Now, when you have three or four NFL guys, you have a first-round pick at quarterback, then you run your double-digit seasons. Which we’ve done here.

The people in the program, who are coaching young men, have to understand who we are and where we’re at. If I have unrealistic expectations, it’s just going to cause dissension.

Two things that cause problems in coaching and parenting: anger and jealousy. If you’re angry, you’re a shitty parent and a shitty coach. If you’re jealous, you’re a shitty parent and a shitty coach. Period. So we’ve eliminated that in this organization.

BC: From personal experience, I can say it’s pretty easy to get mad at a 6-year old, though.

MG: You can get get as mad as you want! But you have to look in the mirror. Are you doing it the right way as a parent or a coach? Well, you’re seeing the results.

BC: She learned it from somewhere.

MG: That’s right.

On the pressures that come with the job.

MG: People say all the time, “How do you keep doing this? There’s so much pressure to win,” it’s really not. The pressure I have is because I want to make everybody happy. I have a 15-year old and a 13-year old, they live and die with our games. I want to be like, “Oh, that’s awesome, we’re ranked sixth in the country.” When we don’t win, I feel sorry for them. I don’t really care about myself because I know the real world, and I live in the world I live in.

I want the fans to be happy, but the pressure we get is trying to make everybody happy, not necessarily the pressure to win. If you rely on just that, this business will run you into the grave.

BC: When you talk about schools that might have more talent than others — it seems like most of the five-stars, high-four-stars, all that, they’re going to go to the same 12 schools they’ve always gone to...

MG: That’s right.

BC: ...but then half of those 12 are going to be facing pressure to play all the blue-chip freshmen early, and they end up—

MG: Ask Mack Brown.

Mack Brown could tell you that the management of what you deal with at Texas, even though they’ve got all the best players, they have their issues too, and it’s not always easy compared to what you have at other places.

If we get better during the year, and we’re a positive influence on our guys, they’re productive in society, and we’re winning some games, we’re being good influences on people from different races and backgrounds and so on, then I get a lot out of that now, more so than I did as a young coach because I didn’t know that was important [until later].

On innovation in football.

BC: We’ll start with [Midwest City High coach] Dick Evans. I grew up knowing how good his teams were, and when he retired, I remember there were stories about him as a “great innovator.” What does “innovation” mean in regard to high school football in the 1980s?

MG: After being in coaching for a long time now — and not being able to appreciate it when I was 18 — being in coaching, I realize that coach Evans and his staff took the players they had and molded a team based on a style of play.

Forever, we were veer option, I ran veer option, my brother ran veer option. But we started throwing the ball more; I could throw, so we were throwin’. Cale threw more than me. And they were smart enough to say, okay, this is who we are, and we’re not changing our core values, but we’re gonna adapt a little bit to our quarterback. Defense always stayed the same.

I found myself doing that here. We maneuver, but we never change our core values.

BC: I remember even a decade later, when I was in high school, my school was averaging like 160 passing yards per game, and that was big.

MG: Oh yeah.

BC: So you were pretty well-recruited.

MG: Yeah.

BC: I remember OU and OSU — beyond them, who else was in on Mike Gundy?

MG: A&M, Arizona State, and the academies. I wasn’t real big, I was 5’11 1/2, 163 pounds. So when people saw me, I’m sure they would look at the old 16mm film and think “Hey, he’s a pretty good player,” and then they saw me and went, “Ehhhhh.”

I would have been what today would have been a three-star.

BC: One of the stories I found in the Daily Oklahoman’s archive was about your first game in Norman. Brian Bosworth put your name on his shoes and spent a lot of time trying to intimidate you.

MG: Boz was trying to do the intimidation deal. I wasn’t smart enough to be scared of him, I was just playing.

I thought it was kinda funny — it was kinda neat because he was a folk hero. Everybody loved him. He was essentially ‘roided out of his head, but he was a folk hero.

BC: So you learned from Pat Jones, and — you were talking about taking the talent around you and sculpting a system. His system was always “Establish the run, and then build off of that.” It’s the same thing now, I guess?

MG: When I look back and evaluate myself and the team and the culture, just like I do every game, the one thing I’ve done that is smart in my opinion is, I delegate, and I adapt to the times.

We’ve been on the cutting edge on no-huddle, on hurry-up offense, on nutrition, on hydration, on sleep, on cutting back on physicality in practice. We’re not scared to take chances. And we do all that here, but then in the end, I still want to run the ball. I still want to be be a tough football team, based on what was instilled in me as a player through Pat Jones.

On his relationship with T. Boone Pickens

MG: Oklahoma State football is at a level that nobody ever thought it would be, even me, honestly. I never thought we could be at this point. When they put out things I have to read before we send ‘em to recruits, I read them and think, are you shitting me? I’m honestly like, damn, holy cow.

[Boone Pickens agreeing to 2005 mega donation] came at a point where it allowed us to recruit to an architectural drawing of, this is what’s going to be here. It was a rust bucket. This place was ...

BC: Not good.

MG: It was just terrible. You couldn’t have pride in it. It’s like when you buy your first house as a young couple — it’s a small house, but you can still keep it manicured and clean and mowed. Well, we didn’t even have that here. This place wasn’t taken care of.

We built enough, we started winning, and then it got to a point ... I don’t think it could have ever got to this point without one of the three. I just don’t think it could have. Maybe, I don’t know. There’s no way we could have gotten here without Boone, and there’s no way we could have gotten here without Holder because Holder negotiated with him.

I didn’t have that relationship with him. I work every day of my life, so I was just trying to keep up with my job and my kids and be a good dad. I didn’t have time to socialize with people, and that’s not my strong point. I’m not a bullshit guy, I don’t like to go out and drink beers with people. I like to coach, and I like to be a dad. That’s just what I do.

That’s actually probably a weak point for me because I’m not good at that. And there’s a lot of business that’s done in the world that’s on a golf course drinking beer. That ain’t me.

Holder was able to initiate all that, Boone was willing to say okay, I’ll do it. And I took it from there. And that’s what’s gotten this place to where it is today.