How Oklahoma State football declined, what's next ahead of battle with Arizona

There’s a reason Arizona is favored to beat Oklahoma State by three touchdowns on Saturday.

After a 25-point loss to 14th-ranked Iowa State in Ames last week, the Wildcats are 20.5-point favorites to beat the Cowboys.

It’s the largest spread for Arizona to beat a Power 4 opponent since it was favored by three touchdowns against Oregon State in 2017.

Oklahoma State is riding a 12-game losing streak to FBS opponents. The Cowboys’ last Big 12 win was against BYU in November 2023.

Between last season and this season, the Cowboys are 4-12 — two of those wins were against FCS opponents. Following Oklahoma State’s 1-2 start this season, OSU parted ways with head coach Mike Gundy after 20-plus seasons. Gundy ended his Oklahoma State tenure with a 170-90 record and posted five Top 15 finishes since he was hired in 2005.

Before Oklahoma State’s descension, the Cowboys were ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 for 17 straight seasons from 2008-24. Oklahoma State qualified for the postseason 18 consecutive years from 2006-23, winning 12 of them, including the 2010 Alamo Bowl against Arizona.

A week after Oklahoma State fired Gundy, who was replaced by offensive coordinator and interim head coach Doug Meacham, the Cowboys fired defensive coordinator Todd Grantham after OSU surrendered 612 yards of total offense and 45 points to Baylor on Saturday.

Oklahoma State is last in the Big 12 in scoring offense, averaging 17.3 points per game, and scoring defense, allowing 35 points per game. Oklahoma State has the second-worst offense in the Big 12 and the worst defense, allowing 473 yards per game. The Cowboys are last in the conference in rushing defense and passing defense — and they have the worst third- and fourth-down defense in the league. Saturday’s contest being a get-right game for Arizona is an understatement.

To weigh in on the current state of Oklahoma State football ahead of Saturday’s matchup in Tucson, ESPN Tucson’s “Spears & Ali” talked to OSU beat writer Scott Wright from The Oklahoman. Here’s part of that interview:

How would you summarize the chaos inside the OSU football program in the last two weeks?

A: “Chaos is the right word. When you look at what has happened with this program over the last calendar year, it was right around this time last year that things started going south, and then they ended up losing the nine games of the Big 12 season. That was the first sign that maybe Gundy’s tenure was coming to an end.

“He renegotiated his contract in December to stick around, and fires the entire offensive and defensive staff and reboots there. They got a ton of players out of the portal. They come into the year and it doesn’t click. They looked mediocre against an FCS opponent in the first game. Everyone saw the Oregon blowout, 69-3. Then they lost to Tulsa, which was the first time they lost to Tulsa at home since 1951.

“That was the breaking point for Mike Gundy’s tenure at Oklahoma State. It’s sad, but in this current college football climate, it’s much more like the NFL and midseason firings are going to be more and more common in our game. Doug Meacham, the interim head coach, is doing his best to bring some calmness to the waters around Oklahoma State.

“I don’t think he was given full rein to fire his defensive coordinator (on Sunday), but I do think he had some input. Defense has been miserable. ... Something certainly needed to change on that side of the ball. We’ll see if they can figure some things out on that side of the ball.”

How did Gundy go from a successful coach and wildly popular figure to getting fired in less than two years?

A: “It all comes back to him being slow to adapt to the existence of NIL. He thought it was something that wasn’t going to really last, which was his biggest failure, honestly. He was slow to adapt. If you looked at how they were able to succeed over the years, they didn’t have Top 10 recruiting classes and those sorts of things, they were a coaching staff that found the diamonds in the rough, the low three-star and two-star guys and brought them to Stillwater and made them stars.

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“In the NIL era, you couldn’t do that anymore. It wasn’t necessarily that he wasn’t paying players right away, but he wasn’t valuing the guys that he had in the program. The diamond in the rough that you found two years ago suddenly goes to another school for their third year and becomes a big-time player rather than sticking around for you.

“When he was slow to adapt, the core of his program was leaving. He was trying to replace them, but he was replacing them with guys that needed two or three years to develop. You can’t operate that way in this game. He learned that, but he learned too late and couldn’t reestablish the program in time to get it back on its feet.”

Who is Meacham?

A: “The fun part about this is that he’s a former player and an alum. He played offensive line at Oklahoma State with Gundy back in the (mid-1980s), blocking for Thurman Thomas and Barry Sanders back then. He knew he wanted to be an offensive coordinator, so he coached other positions. He didn’t really coach the O-Line during his career, which is unique.

“He knew he needed to be involved in other positions, so he coached inside receivers and tight ends at the beginning of Gundy’s tenure. ... He’s loved by the fans because of his Oklahoma State past, and he’s a real loose guy.

“If you made a movie about this Oklahoma State football team, you gotta get Matthew McConaughey to play his character because that’s just the goofy, loose guy that he is. He’s a great personality to be leading this team in this situation because he’s not a guy that’s overly serious; he keeps it light and fun.

“When you’re going through coach firings and players in the portal midseason, you need a guy that’s not going to make it feel like the sky is falling on you.”

Could Meacham take over as the full-time head coach?

A: “I’m not going to count it out, but I’m not going to say he’s not a candidate. I would say it’s a long shot at this point. ... Maybe Meacham is a part of that in some form, but I feel like the chances of him being the head coach going forward will be a long shot.”

Wildcats to debut new alternate uniforms

Arizona will debut new alternate uniforms on Saturday against Oklahoma State, the Wildcats announced on Wednesday.

The Wildcats are wearing new off-white uniforms that are inspired by the Los Angeles Rams’ bone-colored alternates.

Arizona’s “sandstorm” uniforms will have red numbers instead of navy blue numbers, and Arizona will don red helmets with “cactus-sunset” decals. The Wildcats wore the decals on their white helmets last season.

It’s the second game Arizona is wearing red helmets. The Wildcats wore red helmets last week in their 39-14 loss to No. 14 Iowa State. Arizona is 18-20 when wearing red helmets since 2013.

Arizona is wearing white uniforms at home for the second straight season. The Wildcats wore their traditional white uniforms against New Mexico last year.