Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy has had enough of the distractions that go along with this new era of college football.
There’s so much to navigate now with the transfer portal and name, image and likeness deals, and Gundy has drawn the line, turning the Cowboys’ focus to their Aug. 31 opener at home against South Dakota State.
“The good news is, the next five months we can just play football,” Gundy said last week. “There’s no negotiating now. The portal’s over. All the negotiation’s history. Now we’re playing football.
The business side of what we do now — we have to have those conversations with [the players]. Tell your agent to quit calling us and asking for more money. It’s non-negotiable now. It’ll start again in December. So now we’re able to direct ourselves just in football, and that part is fun.”
Gundy should be excited about football. Led by running back Ollie Gordon II, the Cowboys enter the season ranked No. 17 in the AP Top 25.
But in recent months, Gundy and other high-profile coaches also have been keeping tabs on the ever-changing landscape of college sports.
The NCAA, Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference agreed in May to pay billions in damages to former and current college athletes who were denied the ability to earn money from their NIL, dating to 2016. A preliminary approval hearing in front of U.S. Judge Claudia Wilken in the Northern District of California has been scheduled for Sept. 5.
“As we progress here toward the NFL and players will have employment contracts, there’s a whole line of things that are going to fall into place here in the next four to six, 12 months, probably 18 months,” Gundy said, according to the Oklahoman. “If [Wilken] signs off on this settlement, and it stays close to what it’s supposed to be and then they weed through Title IX, then they’re going to weed through roster numbers and different things, then there will be some guidelines. Everything is new, and it’s kind of fascinating to me now.”
If Wilken approves the settlement, it would allow schools to directly pay players for the first time in the 100-plus-year history of college sports.
“It’s going to change again,” Gundy said, according to the Oklahoman. “Over the next 5 ½ months, we can just play football. That is what I’ve asked the staff to do and the players to do, is get out of the realm of all this stuff that’s gone on and just play football through January. After that, we can get back into it.”
Oklahoma State should be a contender for the Big 12 title and a spot in the College Football Playoff while Gordon, who won the Doak Walker Award last season as the nation’s best running back, is the Big 12’s preseason offensive player of the year.
Gordon could have left Oklahoma State for the NFL, but he chose to stick around and play for a team with a significant amount of returning talent.
“You can tell the team is really hungry,” Gordon said on media day. “We have a lot of returners back and we can’t be complacent. I feel like we haven’t shown any part of being complacent. We’ve all been practicing like we haven’t been here before and it’s been a really great thing.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
