Mike Gundy sat in front of the cameras and did something most college football coaches avoid: he admitted he was wrong. The Oklahoma State head coach revealed that his program spent years watching from the sidelines while Big 12 rivals aggressively pursued transfer portal talent with NIL deals.
That miscalculation left the Cowboys scrambling to catch up in a recruiting landscape that had changed entirely around them.
How Costly Was Oklahoma State HC Mike Gundy’s ‘Wait-and-See’ Approach to NIL?
In an exclusive On3 interview, Oklahoma State HC Mike Gundy opened up about his initial skepticism toward NIL deals and how that attitude cost his program dearly. The coach thought NIL would be a temporary phenomenon, so he took a wait-and-see approach that ultimately damaged Oklahoma State’s competitiveness.
“I almost was just, I thought this would go away. Surely this can’t last. And then it just kept building momentum,” Gundy explained in the interview. “And then after a point about 18 months ago, I said, this is not going away. We’re gonna have to make some real adjustments here.”
“This portal class from January is the first class that we ever bought.”
— Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy admits he thought NIL would “go away,” so the Cowboys weren’t really playing the same game as everyone else until this offseason. pic.twitter.com/IiKi1CpWyy
— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) July 11, 2025
The most striking revelation came when Gundy acknowledged just how late Oklahoma State entered the NIL transfer portal game.
“So the truth be known, this portal class from January is the first class that we ever bought. We had not bought portal kids. Wow, that hurt us. Hurt us the last year or so from a depth standpoint.”
What Was Gundy’s Previous Strategy With NIL Money?
Rather than using NIL funds to recruit new talent, Gundy took a different approach, focused on rewarding current players. He took full responsibility for this strategy, explaining how he distributed available money among existing roster members instead of pursuing transfer portal targets.
“That was really kind of my fault because what I had done was take money that had been raised through donations and spread it amongst the troops somewhat evenly to the current players,” Gundy explained. “We didn’t go out and solicit for players and pay them to come to our team.”
This approach meant Oklahoma State was essentially playing by different rules than its competitors. While other programs aggressively pursued transfer portal talent with lucrative NIL packages, the Cowboys stuck to their traditional recruiting methods and internal player development.
The coach’s honest confession highlights the dramatic shift in college football recruiting, where programs must now use financial incentives to remain competitive.
Oklahoma State’s delayed adaptation left them scrambling to catch up with competitors who embraced the NIL era from its beginning, forcing the program to completely overhaul its recruiting strategy moving forward.
