Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy has had enough of the distractions that come 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 and turned the Cowboys’ focus to their Aug. 31 home opener against South Dakota State.
“The good news is, for the next five months, we can just play football,” Gundy said last week. “There is no negotiation now. The portal is over. The whole story of the negotiation. Now we play football.
“The business side of what we’re doing now – we have to have those conversations with [the players]. ‘Tell your agent to stop calling us asking for more money. It is not up for negotiation now. It starts again in December. So now we are able to lead ourselves 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 have also been keeping up with 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 opportunity to cash in on their NIL, dated to 2016. A preliminary approval hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Claudia Wilken of the Northern District of California is scheduled for September 5.
“As we move forward here toward the NFL and the players will have contracts, there’s a whole series of things that will 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 have to weed through shift 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 more than 100-year history of college sports.
“It’s going to change again,” Gundy said, according to the Oklahoman. “Over the next 5½ months we can just play football. That’s what I’ve asked the staff to do and the players to do is get out of the realm of all this that’s been going on and just play football through January. Then 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 top 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 stay and play for a team with a significant amount of returning talent.
“You can tell the team is really hungry,” Gordon said at media day. “We have a lot of returners back and we can’t be complacent. I feel like we haven’t shown any complacency. We’ve all been practicing like we’ve never been here before and it’s been a really good thing.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report