Mike Gundy's First Years Show Why Cowboys Can't Rush Eric Morris
In this story:
Oklahoma State is ready for Eric Morris to build a contender, but it should take a lesson from its former coach’s tenure.
After another rough season, OSU hired Morris this offseason to take over as the program’s new leader. Following arguably the worst season in program history, the Cowboys will be hoping for a quick and significant bounce back.
While Morris will come into the 2026 season with expectations to build a winner in Stillwater, it simply shouldn’t be a problem if OSU isn’t winning right away. With the era of the transfer portal and NIL coming with drastic transformations across the country in a short period of time, it would be understandable for OSU to want some sort of instant success, but that simply isn’t realistic for a program of OSU’s caliber.
After losing their past 19 Big 12 contests, the Cowboys have plenty of work to do in the offseason to even get a .500 team on the field when next season comes around. There isn’t any example of why OSU should be patient than what happened when Mike Gundy first took over.
In 2004, Les Miles led OSU to a 7-5 season, marking the third straight year the Pokes finished with a winning record under his watch. Of course, his departure to LSU left the Cowboys with Gundy to take over as the program’s next head coach.
Although it would’ve been easy to criticize Gundy’s 4-7 record in his first season after seeing what Miles had done in the three seasons prior, being patient was certainly worth it for the Cowboys. In 2006, Gundy quickly rebounded from his four-win year to capture a 7-6 record, including a trip to the Independence Bowl, marking the first of 18 straight seasons with a winning record and bowl game.
While college football is clearly much different today than it was when Gundy stepped into his first head coaching role over two decades ago, it still serves as a lesson that the Cowboys can’t force things with Morris. Even with Gundy’s success in the early portion of his career, his first 10-win season didn’t come until his sixth season, when the Cowboys went 11-2 in 2010.
Sure, there are some expectations for Morris to immediately build a winning team and get the Pokes back into Big 12 contention quickly, but as Gundy’s tenure proved, sometimes success takes a little bit of patience.
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.