It is what it is in today’s Wild West world of college football. Last night I wrote Gundy’s obit at O State on my blog.. Then — I read it this morning and decided to trash it. Literally. It was too judgemental on Gundy’s overall tenure at O State.
MJ may be some things, but one thing he’s not is a judgemental phony teasipper.
I mean, at the end of the day…I’m the guy who wrote Mullet King: The Boone Pickens-Mike Gundy College Football Saga. Who in the hell am I to judge Mike Gundy or anyone else?
So I’m doing this over today because it’s not like Mike Gundy did anything really wrong except losing Boone Pickens as his mega donor Sugar Daddy.
In 2025—if you don’t have at least one or two mega sugar daddies you have a zero chance of surviving and in my view what happened at O State these past two years is they got way too far behind the NIL-transfer portal curve and probably made some poor decisions in revamping their overall coaching staff this past off-season.
Do I think I would have fired Mike Gundy if I were a regent?
Yeah, probably. Not because I think Mike Gundy became football stupid overnight. But more to the point… he lost his Sugar Daddy and he lost someone like Mike Holder who ran interference for Gundy during the first five years of being head coach in Stillwater. Plus, 21 years at one place gets stale after awhile.
So…Mike Gundy—-listen up, dude, “You’re fired. But don’t take that in the wrong way. You were going absolutely nowhere with this new group in Stillwater. The whole body of governance at O State is currently a shit show clusterf–k. No university president. A weak AD. And no real Sugar Daddy with the hubris or cash of Boone.”
So my advice from a John Marshall Bear to a Midwest City Bomber is this…take the $15 million and run. Sleep in and eat a good breakfast every morning. Do some yoga. Start a blog. Enjoy the fact you won’t have to talk to Robert Allen any longer. That in itself should have a monetary value of at least another $5 million.
Go do the Game Picker gig on College Gameday when they call you. Take the color analyst job they offer you and laugh and have fun and quit thinking anyone is going to win big at O State with what they have in place currently because it wasn’t going to be you either.
As far as coaching again…this would be my take. The perfect place for you would be Texas Tech. They have those two sugar daddies who sold Double Eagle for $4 billion dollars and have a lot of cash to burn. You’re perfect for Lubbock. No slight to Toby McGuire, but God made you to coach at Texas Tech.
Pistols firing, buddy.
MJ