damn this article was spitting that heat about Mike Gundy
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/mike-gundy-oklahoma-state-football/
1. That period as Miles’s offensive coordinator. Gundy was given this role after Miles beat him out for the head-coaching job; it’s not clear that Miles wanted him or that Gundy actually exercised much influence over the offense. Which strengthens the theory that:
2. He was named head coach after Miles left because Pickens liked him, not because he was the most qualified or experienced candidate. In other words, he was a concession to the need for fund-raising, like an NPR tote bag with a headset, not someone who was expected to do the major work of building a winning team. Which is to some extent supported by the fact that:
3. He’s had a string of excellent assistants, including current UNC head coach Larry Fedora and current West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen as offensive coordinators. But while his assistants have placed their own strong stamps on the program, it also seems to be the case that:
4. None of them learned much from Gundy, and none of them was formed by his leadership in any particular way. There’s no Coach K–ish cult of junior Gundyites at work in the world, which is vaguely astonishing considering that no fewer than four of his ex-assistants are now head coaches in their own right. Gundy’s coaching tree is more like a coaching throughway, which is more telling when you consider that:
5. Gundy stopped calling plays for the Cowboys when he hired Holgorsen in 2010; he
portrayed this stepping back as part of his maturation as a coach, but the rumor has always been that it was mandated by OSU athletic director Mike Holder, and that Gundy bitterly resented it. Which in turn backs up the rumor that:
6. Gundy spent years chafing against the control of the athletic department,
4 finally demanding a bigger contract (after Holder signed Travis Ford to a long-term contract to coach the basketball team) and progressively more power to run the program without input from Holder and Pickens. However:
7. Since Gundy achieved the autonomy he wanted, the program has been marked by some, uh, unconventional hiring decisions — offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich was previously employed by Division II Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
5 and offensive line coach Bob Connelly was a high school coach in Arizona when OSU came calling. It’s also been marked by:
8. Internal strife, such as the
lawsuit-crazed departure of former offensive line coach Joe “Wick” Wickline for Texas in 2013. As well as:
9. The sort of talent evaluation that has somehow produced this year’s overmatched team, with its anemic offensive line, which has given up 12 sacks in the last two games, and deteriorating quarterback play from junior quarterback Daxx Garman, whose completion percentage ranks last in the Big 12. In fairness, the Cowboys have the youngest team of any school in a Power 5 conference, and they have been hit hard by injuries, including a season-ending broken foot for original starting quarterback J.W. Walsh.
6 However:
10. They seem to be getting worse from week to week, not better, to the point that fans are openly debating whether the team has quit on the coaches (never a great sign). It’s gotten so bad that:
11. Pickens essentially
called Gundy out in public last week, answering a question about whether he supported Gundy by saying, “I’m always going to be for OSU. I don’t care who coaches ’em.” Gundy responded by affecting
a sublime indifference to Pickens and his thoughts, thus torching the original rationale for hiring him in the first place — his close relationship to the school’s biggest donor — and violating the first rule of football coaching: Never escalate a feud with a billionaire.
12. You know what this list is full of? Rampant speculation, message-board gossip, and a grotesque anti-Gundy bias.
7 But it’s what people are muttering, and the through line is at least sorta persuasive, isn’t it? Like a great political insult, it lands because it seems to suit something people instinctively sense about its target — in this case, that Gundy is in a little past his depth, that he’s a little clued-out, and that he’s just vain enough not to realize it.
