Ohio State football: The hypocrisy of Mike Gundy

It certainly seems as if Oklahoma State Cowboys head coach Mike Gundy is a little salty about the Ohio State football team hiring his defensive coordinator, Jim Knowles. During an interview with Pistols Firing, Gundy sidestepped a question about replacing Knowles and came out with, well, both pistols firing at Ryan Day,

"“Consistency is the most important thing in building a big-time college football program, in my opinion. Now, I’ve never been at some of these schools where as people say you wake up on third base and you think you hit a triple. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know what it’s like to coach at a school like that. Coach Knowles will know.”"

Gundy’s “third base” comment is an obvious reference to those made by Jim Harbaugh about Day taking over a ready-made program in his opinion. Harbaugh’s comment was classless. If you’re not familiar with Gundy, I’ll clue you in on something: he has even less class than Harbaugh. He loves to hear himself talk and in this case, we see the hypocrisy of Mike Gundy.

Gundy is unhappy to lose a defensive coordinator who was a very large part of the success of his team in 2021. He certainly had no problem hiring Knowles away from Duke a few years ago. He even took to Twitter to make the announcement, along with the five other hires.

Gundy never hesitated to take coaches away from other programs, but he certainly doesn’t like having a successful assistant plucked from his staff. That’s hypocrisy. Assistant coaches moving from one program to another happens all the time in college football.

Many assistants spend their careers as gypsies. Knowles took the opportunity to get paid more and coach for a far more prestigious school. Gundy admitted Oklahoma State offered him a significant increase, but could not match the Ohio State football program’s offer. He told his team business is business, but then turned around and took a swipe at Day.

Gundy is acting like he took over a program in shambles in 2005. The Cowboys had gone 8-5. 9-4, and 7-5 over the previous three seasons. The cupboard was hardly empty when he got to Oklahoma State, but Gundy proceeded to lose nineteen games in his first three years after taking over. His comments directed at Day were petty, but this is what we’ve come to expect from Gundy.