Oklahoma State Fans Are Turning on Mike Gundy

Every time Oklahoma State football takes the field, it feels like Boone Pickens Stadium is stuck in some awkward middle ground. The marching band still sounds fine, the tailgating still smells like heaven, but once the game kicks off, you can’t help but notice the product on the field looks like it belongs to a program that fell behind the times.

And in many ways, it has.

Why OSU’s NIL Program Fell Behind

The culprit, at least according to fans, media, and more than a few frustrated donors, is the same one you hear blamed everywhere else in college football these days: NIL.

While other schools jumped headfirst into the new world of “pay-for-play, but legally this time,” Oklahoma State hesitated. They didn’t reject it outright, but they certainly weren’t rushing to fill the war chest either. The end result is that OSU is fielding a 2025 $7 million team this year.

It's. Seven. Million. Dollars.

The fallout is predictable. If the going theory is that money buys talent, Oklahoma State is proving that theory wrong. The Cowboys have looked short-handed, short-staffed, and short on answers.

Before you hop into the "I'm a man, I'm forty" speech, when college athletes get paid, they become professional athletes, and calling out a pathetic performance is kosher.

Here’s where the story gets messier than your average walk of shame back to the locker room... While NIL money is technically outside the athletic department’s control - handled by collectives and donors - head coach Mike Gundy has become the lightning rod.

It’s not hard to see why. He never hid his distaste for NIL when it first arrived. He admitted recently that he thought it was a passing fad, something that would get reeled back in by the NCAA eventually. By the time he realized it wasn’t going away, OSU had already missed out on a couple of recruiting cycles and portal hauls.

In college football years, that’s the equivalent of falling asleep during the first quarter and waking up halfway through the fourth, wondering how you’re down three touchdowns.

Now, every loss, every misstep, every empty seat in the stadium gets traced back to that slow start.

And let’s be fair, Gundy hasn’t exactly been swimming in sympathy. After last year’s historically bad season, the university very publicly reworked his contract. He took a million-dollar pay cut, and the school knocked his buyout down to a flat $15 million through 2027. They even slipped in a “succession clause,” basically requiring him to help groom whoever takes his place someday.

When a school writes “here’s how you’ll help us replace you” into your contract, that’s not exactly a glowing vote of confidence.

Fans have picked up on it too. At Friday's Tulsa game, the chants of “Fire Gundy” weren’t just a couple of rowdy students... they were loud enough to make the TV broadcast.

That's an OU tradition Stillwater is now adopting.

Fans even started a GoFundMe to buy out his contract, which earned $350-ish before being taken down. The fact that fans tried crowdfunding $15 million tells you how desperate they feel.

Meanwhile, word is a few big, rich donors are holding back their OSU donation funds, not because they’re out of money, but because they want change.

That’s unconfirmed, but it wouldn’t be shocking. College football boosters don’t exactly do “subtle.”

And so here we are: the Cowboys are underperforming, the fanbase is restless, the donors may or may not be dangling their wallets as leverage, and Mike Gundy is in the middle of it all.

It’s a strange spot for him. Gundy’s been the face of OSU football for two decades. He delivered the program’s first Big 12 title, kept them consistently relevant in a sport that chews through coaches like sunflower seeds, and cultivated the mullet into a regional treasure.

For a while, that was enough. Now, in the NIL era, it isn’t.

The buyout complicates things. Firing him “without cause” would cost the school $15 million right now, which makes even rich boosters think twice. The question has become does OSU cut and run or let this season play out? Do they stick with Gundy through these hard times?

In a weird way, the NIL was supposed to "bring some accountability" (see make pay-for-play legal since governing bodies couldn't enforce the rules). For decades, college football fans complained about athletes getting paid under the table. Now, with NIL money flowing openly, the players are technically professionals. They’re cashing checks to wear the orange and black, which means the old “they’re just kids” defense doesn’t apply.

If you’re pulling down five figures to play wide receiver, booing feels justified when you drop a pass. Fair or not, that’s what college football elected to become.

If Money Equals Talent, Can OSU Catch Up?

This is the new arms race. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to play it. Oklahoma State seems to be trying, but the late start makes catching up seemingly impossible. Especially when rivals are spending millions more.

• Texas - $22 million
• Ohio State & LSU - $20 million
• Georgia - $18 million
• OU and Alabama - $15 million

It appears $7 million isn't enough to buy D1 talent. All the same, Clemson is spending $15 million too, and their season isn't working out either.

The big question is what happens next. If this season goes as badly as it looks like it might, does the university stomach another year? Do donors pony up the $15 million to show Gundy the door? Or does everyone grit their teeth, hope the NIL coffers grow, and let him ride out the storm?

It’s hard to picture a graceful ending here. Either Gundy steadies the ship and proves he can adapt to the new era, which, given his coaching career has been adaptation to greatness, it could happen... or does this all end with OSU's greatest coach being remembered for how badly the Cowboys entered the NIL era?

To be fair, Gundy did pick this fight with fans a few years ago. This is just the culmination of his seemingly rebellious nature and apparent need to always have an enemy... The administration, OU/Iowa State, the media, and now the fans.

What It Means for the Future of OSU Football

For now, the Cowboys are stuck. Behind in recruiting, behind in talent, behind in NIL, and behind on the scoreboard. Boone Pickens Stadium deserves better than watching its program trail the pack, but until things catch up. Like my season-ticket-holding sister says, "In for a penny, in for a pound."

For the record, the NIL era is worse than the BCS era. When you have kids jumping ship every year because they received a better offer from another team, who could build a team around that? Most schools end up with a new team every year.

Fans are loudly talking about one particularly needed change to the NIL protocol. They'd like to limit transfers to a one-and-done. They'd get one transfer during your four years of eligibility. You have to admit, that's not the worst idea. There is a smaller conversation about NIL money caps too, which sounds good enough on the outside, but then college football would just be back to paying under the table again...

This whole NIL ordeal is coming to a head, and it sucks OSU is at the middle of it as the poster child, but that's where modern college football is. You can either pay to keep up or fall behind, and Oklahoma State seems to be the cautionary tale.

Go pokes!