New Bedlam: A Retrospective on Mike Gundy's Career Against Oklahoma

There’s not a person on the planet who’s more intimate with Bedlam football than Mike Gundy.

Gundy, 58, has been a central figure in the annual battles between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State since he was a high school recruit. He played a major role as OSU’s quarterback from 1986-89, was a Cowboys assistant from 1990-95 and 2001-04, and since 2005 has revitalized the O-State program as head coach.

On Tuesday, after a loss to Tulsa last Friday and an 0-9 record in Big 12 Conference play last season, Gundy was fired.

Mike Gundy has been relieved of his coaching duties per source. #OKState
— Dylan Buckingham (@DylanBuckingham) September 23, 2025

Down through history, nobody short of Boone Pickens and his army of Ben Franklins did more for OSU football than Gundy, who held multiple Big Eight offensive records for more than 20 years as the Cowboy QB.

Likewise, nobody did more to breathe life into the Bedlam rivalry than Gundy did — first in his three seasons as Les Miles’ often brash offensive coordinator and assistant head coach, then as the man in charge. Gundy compiled a win-loss record of 170-90, won 12 bowl games and landed OSU’s only Big 12 title.

Even though his 7-26 head-to-head record against OU was on par with every other OSU coach not named Miles — Gundy was 4-15 against the Sooners as a head coach from 2005 to 2023 — he and his teams ensured that Bedlam was never boring.

Here’s a look back at Gundy’s best and worst moments in his long history with OU in the Bedlam series:

As a Recruit

Coming out of Midwest City, Gundy was the Oklahoma High School Player of the Year in 1986.

Of course, Barry Switzer couldn’t let the best player in the state go somewhere else.

Gundy even told Switzer a week before National Signing Day that he wanted to be a Sooner.

Switzer had landed Henryetta, OK, stud Troy Aikman two years prior and had already shifted the offense to suit Aikman’s prodigious arm talents, and in Aikman's second year in the Crimson and Cream, the Sooners were rolling in 1985.

But Aikman suffered a broken leg against Miami, Switzer handed the offense over to freshman Jamelle Holieway, returned to the wishbone and won the national championship.

Gundy recognized immediately that he wouldn’t be running the wishbone for Switzer, but he still longed to join OU's rich heritage. Eventually, he made a business decision and essentially flipped and signed with OSU.

Sooner Nation has always speculated about how good the program could have been if Aikman hadn’t been injured. But if Aikman had stayed healthy and finished his career with the Sooners instead of transferring to UCLA — would Gundy have followed him to Norman and been Switzer’s next great quarterback? And if so, what would the two programs look like today? And would little brother Cale Gundy have gone to Oklahoma State, or stayed with OU?

As a Player

Yes, it’s true. Brian Bosworth once spit in Mike Gundy’s face.

The Boz was a two-time OU All-American and the first (and second) Butkus Award winner. In their 1986 game, Bosworth dragged Gundy to the ground, then got up and spit in his face.

Gundy spit back, and the rivalry was on.

“It was a rivalry then,” Gundy said in 2023, before the final game of their series (OU left for the SEC in 2024). “Bosworth spit in my face. I spit in his face.”

Gundy went 0-4 against the Sooners, of course, losing 19-0, 29-10, 31-28 and 37-15.

The 1988 game — featuring Barry Sanders in full Heisman mode and first-round wideout Hart Lee Dykes catching everything in sight — was painfully close for the Cowboys in Stillwater.

After Gundy’s fourth-down bullet into the end zone glanced off Brent Parker’s hands in the final seconds, OU settled for a 31-28 victory — Switzer’s last Bedlam game.

As an Assistant

Gundy’s career as a coach launched in Stillwater in 1990, where Pat Jones hired him immediately as the wide receivers coach. He took over QBs in 1991 and was elevated to offensive coordinator in 1994 before Jones was fired at the end of the year.

Gundy was 0-4-1 against the Sooners in his first run as an OSU assistant coach, with a 15-15 tie in 1992 on Scott Blanton's walk-off field goal to tie it.

Bob Simmons retained Gundy as QB coach in 1995, and he enjoyed his first-ever Bedlam victory: a 12-0 triumph in Norman over the Howard Schnellenberger-coached Sooners.

The following season, Gundy left the nest for the first time, spreading his wings for one year at Baylor and four at Maryland while Simmons racked up two more wins against John Blake's OU squads.

But the Cowboys had posted a winning record just one time in their last 12 seasons when Simmons was fired and replaced by Miles.

It was Miles who shifted the trajectory of the OSU program when he came from the Dallas Cowboys in 2001 — and changed the flavor of Bedlam football.

One of Miles’ first hires was Gundy as his OC, and after a close call the year before nearly ruined Bob Stoops’ 2000 national championship run, Miles, Gundy, Josh Fields, Rashaun Woods and the Cowboys shocked the Sooners with a 16-13 stunner in Norman.

The next year in Stillwater, OU couldn’t defend Woods as OSU rolled to a 28-6 halftime lead on their way to a 38-28 victory.

Gundy as Head Coach

Working four years under Miles and seeing that OSU could have a successful program and even beat OU at the same time fueled Gundy to greatness as a head coach.

Gundy lost his first six head-to-head matchups with Stoops, although the series had become ultra competitive at times. Scores like 27-21, 61-41 and 47-41 — all at Boone Pickens Stadium — were pure college football entertainment and set a new tone for the series.

In 2011, Gundy finally broke through. He ran the best team in OSU history — one that fell short of the BCS Championship Game by an official’s interpretation of whether a field goal went inside or outside the uprights (it went directly over and was called no good in a Friday night double-overtime loss at Iowa State).

Meanwhile, the Sooners started out the 2011 season as unanimous preseason No. 1, but blew a 31-7 lead at home to Texas Tech, then dropped a 45-38 heartbreaker to Robert Griffin III at Baylor and, without their best player (record-setting wideout Ryan Broyles) quickly crumbled in a 44-10 loss to the Cowboys in Stillwater.

Gundy never recaptured that level of gridiron glory again, but he did enjoy 18 consecutive winning seasons, and he beat Stoops again in 2014 (38-35, on Tyreek Hill’s second-chance punt return), then handed Lincoln Riley an L in 2021 (Riley’s last game in Norman before scurrying off to USC), and finished the all-time Bedlam series with a Cowboy victory over Brent Venables (the no-call on Dillon Gabriel's end zone throw to Drake Stoops, and the 3-yard pass to Stoops on fourth-and-5).

Oklahoma Sooners Brent Venables Oklahoma State Cowboys Mike Gundy — Oklahoma coach Brent Venables, left, and Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy. | BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK

Gundy brought energy and resilience and even defiance to a “rivalry” that was anything but. Whether Sooner Nation reveled in beating "Spike Gundy" in the early days or "The Mullet" later on, he was always good copy, always good sound.

Before high school Gundy flipped from OU to OSU, the Cowboys had beaten the Sooners just nine times in all of recorded history.

OU still leads the all-time series 89-21-7, but Gundy — as a head coach and as an assistant — has seven of those wins, one-third of his school’s entire Bedlam success, in his pocket.

Make no mistake, Gundy’s final numbers against the Sooners aren’t good — 7-26 in 33 meetings as a player, assistant and head coach. And they shouldn’t be. Oklahoma is a generational giant.

But they’re far better than his predecessors, and more than that, Gundy injected the in-state showdown with an element of fun and competitiveness that it hadn’t had since the 1940s.