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With a roster that looks a lot different than the one he had for a midseason victory over Texas, Mike Gundy coaches the OSU Cowboys against Wisconsin in Tuesday’s Guaranteed Rate Bowl.
Mike Gundy has done hundreds of media Q&A sessions during his 18-season run as the Oklahoma State head football coach. From all of that talking, there were two unforgettable quotes.
Sept. 22, 2007: “I’m a man! I’m 40!”
It became a national catchphrase and was used as Justin Bieber’s ringtone.
Jan. 1, 2022: “We’ve got a logo, too.”
It was Gundy’s now-famous statement after the Cowboys rallied from a 28-7 deficit to defeat Notre Dame 37-35 in the Fiesta Bowl, and it was not an overstatement. That game was a high-stakes, nationally consumed classic that added an extremely positive layer to the definition to the OSU program.
On Tuesday, as the five-loss Cowboys are matched with Wisconsin in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl at Chase Field in Phoenix, Oklahoma State makes a 17th consecutive bowl appearance.
That in itself has value. Only six major-college programs currently have as many as 17 consecutive bowl games: Georgia with 26, OU with 24, Wisconsin with 21, Alabama with 19, Clemson with 18 and Oklahoma State with 17.
Before Gundy became the head coach, OSU never had more than three consecutive bowl appearances.
Regardless of the Guaranteed Rate Bowl outcome, Gundy’s 7-5 Cowboys are assured of closing with their program’s 17th consecutive winning season. The next-longest such streak in program history: OSU had six consecutive winning seasons in 1983-88.
Bowl streaks, big wins, beating Texas on a consistent basis and sustained overall success are among the components of a respected college football logo.
The Guaranteed Rate Bowl, however, is not a logo-enhancing opportunity for the Cowboy program.
Instead, it’s 3½ hours of unpredictability in a big-league baseball facility — Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Because of so much roster upheaval on both sides, and as each team lost its veteran quarterback to the NCAA Transfer Portal, the Guaranteed Rate Bowl could be very poorly played or wildly entertaining (or a combination of both).
There can’t be much in the way of takeaways — of applying what you see on Tuesday night to what you might see during the Cowboys’ 2023 season — because roster composition feels so temporary in the OSU program and college football as a whole.
With all due respect to OSU’s victory at Baylor on Oct. 1, the Cowboys’ most impressive win of the 2022 season was the 41-34 homecoming triumph over Texas on Oct. 22 (one week after the Cowboys had their hearts broken in a 43-40, double-overtime setback at TCU).
After trailing by two touchdowns, the Cowboys defeated Texas for the ninth time in 13 seasons. For OSU in that game, Sanders passed for 391 yards and two touchdowns, while from defensive end Tyler Lacy, linebacker Mason Cobb and defensive back Jabbar Muhammad there was a total of 15 tackles.
After having been OSU’s starting quarterback for most of four seasons (and after having been fantastic against Notre Dame), Sanders is in the portal. Reportedly, Auburn is a possible destination.
Instead of playing in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, Lacy is preparing himself for the NFL draft. Muhammad has transferred to Washington. Cobb next season will be on Lincoln Riley’s Southern Cal roster.
OSU also lost a pair of former Bixby stars — sixth-year senior defensive tackle Brendon Evers along with first-year freshman and two-time Tulsa World state high school Player of the Year Braylin Presley.
Two days before the Texas game, Evers retired from college football to give his body some healing time before the 2023 NFL draft. Following the 2021 season, he endured two reconstructive shoulder surgeries.
At OSU, Presley expected to be used as a hybrid — as a running back and slot receiver. After one season in Stillwater, he was convinced that he would never get a shot to flourish in the Cowboy backfield, so he also used the portal as a path to his new home — the University of Tulsa.
Dominic Richardson opened the season as Oklahoma State’s No. 1 running back. Now, he’s a Baylor Bear.
Richardson, Cobb, Evers, Lacy, Sanders and Muhammad were the veterans of a combined total of 145 starts for Oklahoma State.
Now, the Cowboys collide with a 6-6 Wisconsin team and do it with a patched-together lineup quarterbacked by a first-year freshman (Garret Rangel) and a redshirt freshman (Gunnar Gundy).
After the 12-win, “we’ve got a logo, too” season of 2021, the five-loss 2022 season was a step back for the OSU program.
There was a 48-0 loss at Kansas State and a butt-kicking at Kansas. There was a dismal performance against a vulnerable OU team. There was a home loss to the 5-7 West Virginia Mountaineers.
All of this is so reminiscent of the 2011-2012 period in OSU football history. The 2011 Cowboys were phenomenally talented and fell short of a perfect season by one inch at Iowa State. Alabama secured a BCS Championship game spot instead of Oklahoma State.
Seven days after OSU conquered a tremendous Stanford squad 41-38 in the Fiesta Bowl, Alabama beat Les Miles-coached LSU 21-0 in a boring championship mismatch.
In 2015, Gundy reflected on the 2011 season and was asked, “What would have happened if there had been an Oklahoma State-LSU title game?”
From Gundy, another memorable quote: “I don’t think there’s any question that we would have won by three touchdowns.”
From the glory of a 12-win 2011 season, the 2012 Cowboys were offensively potent but had five losses. You might win a bar bet with this: “The 2012 OSU Cowboys — in what bowl did they play and what was the score?”
The answer: In the Cotton Bowl stadium, the 2012 Cowboys smashed Purdue 58-14 in the Heart of Dallas Bowl.
In and of itself, that game didn’t add much luster to the Oklahoma State football logo — and neither does Tuesday’s Guaranteed Rate Bowl. It just happens to be the best television option of the evening.
After OSU brings an 8-5 or 7-6 final record back to Stillwater, Gundy begins work on his attempt to have the 2023 season look a lot more like the 2021 season than what we saw in 2022.
New OSU beat writer Dean Ruhl discusses where the Cowboys are in the transfer portal at this point, and what fans can expect with the 2023 recruiting class so far.
bill.haisten@tulsaworld.com
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Sports Columnist
I joined the Tulsa World in 1990. Prior to becoming a sports columnist in 2016, I was the only sports writer in Tulsa World history to have covered OU, OSU, the University of Tulsa and Oral Roberts sports on an everyday basis. Phone: 918-581-8397
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With a roster that looks a lot different than the one he had for a midseason victory over Texas, Mike Gundy coaches the OSU Cowboys against Wisconsin in Tuesday’s Guaranteed Rate Bowl.
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