Is 2024 Oklahoma State's Most Disappointing Season Under Mike Gundy?
Oklahoma State could be on its way to the most disappointing season of the past two decades.
Entering this season, OSU was expected to be one of the best teams in the Big 12 and compete for a spot in the College Football Playoff. Only six games into the season, OSU’s hopes of a conference title are already gone.
To begin Big 12 play, OSU lost back-to-back ranked matchups against Utah and Kansas State. While that showed that OSU might not be at the top of the conference, a blowout loss at home to a .500 West Virginia team showed that OSU is closer to the bottom than the top of the Big 12.
This is the same core that turned a 2-2 start into a 10-win season in 2023. Although there is some room for optimism there, this year’s team has not found the same success.
Under Mike Gundy, OSU has begun the season ranked and finished unranked three times, the first instance happening in 2009, when it began at No. 9.
Although OSU finished unranked, it had an identical record to its 2008 campaign and even had a better conference record. An early loss to Houston hurt the Cowboys’ momentum before rebounding to enter Bedlam at 9-2. Blowout losses to Oklahoma and Ole Miss to finish the season pushed OSU out of the top 25 for the first time in the postseason ranking.
In 2012, OSU had many question marks and started the season at No. 19 and spent most of the season outside the top 25. Meanwhile, 2022 was the most recent instance for the Cowboys and is the other competitor for the most disappointing season.
That season, OSU won its first five games and began 6-1 before finishing 7-6. The Cowboys couldn’t live up to their No. 12 preseason ranking, but with a new defensive coordinator and injuries ravaging the roster toward the end of the season, it was an understandable downfall.
In 2024, OSU began at No. 16, returned most of its production from a season ago, brought back both coordinators and has been mostly healthy sans Collin Oliver. OSU’s 3-3 start this season is puzzling, and 2024 is destined to go down as a failure and the most disappointing campaign in Gundy’s 20 years at the helm.
READ MORE: Ollie Gordon's Disappointing Season Highlights Oklahoma State's Struggles
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Ivan is a sports media student at Oklahoma State University. He has covered OSU athletics since 2022 and also covers the OKC Thunder for Inside The Thunder and Thunderous Intentions.