Mike Gundy Gets Real About College Football, NIL
Anybody who follows college football understands how whonky the sport is becoming. For a casual viewer, it's becoming much, much more difficult to follow. The player movement with the transfer portal combined with demand for money wtih the arrival of NIL -- rather than picking a program based on the fit, future and education -- has changed the sport drastically.
For Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, the changes can be explained quite easily. The Cowboys head coach laid out how player retention works with the arrival of NIL and being able to pay players for their services.
“Player retention is based on money,” Gundy explained. “I’ll give you an example. If you’re playing on our team and we go 3-9 and right now you’re making $12,000 and we say, ‘Hey, if you come back we’ll pay you $250,000.’ What are you gonna do? Player retention is probably 90 percent built on money now. Not other things. It’s changed.”
Plenty of players who emerge as stars and then enter the portal end up with seven-figure paydays. Miami quarterback Cam Ward is a prime example of someone who thrived at smaller schools and worked his way into being a prominent player at a large program, earning a payday and a chance at even more exposure. The same goes for current Florida State quarterback DJ Uiagalelei. He earned a bigger payday leaving Oregon State and finding a new program to represent.
If any head coach can explain player retention, it'd be Mike Gundy. The Cowboys were able to retain the majority of their squad from the 2023 season, including Ollie Gordon, after they went 10-4 and appeared in the Big 12 title game.
It hasn't quite paid off for Oklahoma State, who is currently 3-4 and has lost four straight conference games. However, Gundy understands the new system and has been more prone to accepting it in recent seasons.
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Kade has been covering a wide variety of teams ranging from the NFL to the NBA and college athletics since joining Sports Illustrated's On SI in 2022