Mike Gundy points to moment when he realized NIL wouldn't 'go away,' forcing Oklahoma State coach to adapt
Mike Gundy is finally coming around on NIL and revenue-sharing after years of hesitation, but the longtime Oklahoma State football coach didn't have much choice. Schools are now forced to adapt to the rapidly evolving college football landscape or risk being left behind. Initially, Gundy, like many of his peers, hoped these changes were temporary -- a passing trend that wouldn't fundamentally alter how college football operates. But the momentum kept building and the landscape kept shifting.
What once seemed like a distant possibility became an urgent necessity: embracing NIL, aggressively managing transfers and investing in new strategies to keep programs competitive. The recent House v. NCAA settlement -- which ushers in an era of direct revenue-sharing with athletes -- only reinforced the reality that college football is now a business, and coaches like Gundy can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines.
"I almost just thought, 'This will go away. Surely this can't last,'" Gundy told On3 this week at Big 12 Media Days. "And then it just kept building momentum. And then after a point, about 18 months ago, I said, 'This is not going away. We're going to have to make some real adjustments here.'"
Oklahoma State welcomed 41 incoming transfers as part of its 2025 class. That tied for the third-largest haul of any Power Four program this cycle. And it's more than the total number of incoming transfers Oklahoma State had across the previous six cycles since the NCAA transfer portal debuted in October 2018.
What finally pushed Gundy to shift his philosophy?
"So, the truth be known, this portal class from January is the first class that we ever bought," Gundy said. "We'd not bought portal kids. That hurt us the last year or so from a depth standpoint."
That hard lesson came during Oklahoma State's disastrous 2024 season, when the Cowboys stumbled to a 3-9 record and missed a bowl game for the first time in nearly two decades. It was an obvious low point for a program known for winning in the Gundy era.
"And that was nobody's fault," Gundy admitted, acknowledging that his refusal to spend on portal players had backfired. "That's not the administration's fault, not the donors'. That was really kind of my fault because what I had done was taken money that had been raised through donations and spread it amongst the troops somewhat evenly to the current players. We didn't go out and solicit players and pay them to come to our team. We did that starting in December, which, I think we all would agree, if you don't do that, you're not going to survive."
Despite the large volume of incoming transfers, Oklahoma State ranks No. 32 nationally in the portal team rankings for the 2025 class and fifth in the Big 12.
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