EUGENE, Ore. — A week that began with coaches Mike Gundy and Dan Lanning trading barbs about each program’s budget ended with Oregon handing Oklahoma State a 69-3 loss — the worst of the Gundy era and the worst the program has seen since 1907.
“It never requires extra motivation for an opportunity to go out and kick ass,” Lanning said postgame regarding the message he sent his team. “But it never hurts when somebody pours gasoline on the fire.”
On Monday while speaking on his radio show, Gundy said Oregon is “paying a lot of money for their team,” citing $40 million as the amount he believed the Ducks spent on their roster last year. Gundy made several other comments about Oregon’s resources, saying “it’ll cost a lot of money to keep” quarterback Dante Moore and that he believes Oregon’s budget should determine the programs it schedules outside of the Big Ten.
“If you want to be a top-10 team in college football, you better be invested in winning. We spend to win,” Lanning said Monday in response. “Some people save to have an excuse for why they don’t. … I can’t speak on their situation. I have no idea what they got in their pockets over there.”
After Saturday’s win, Moore said Gundy’s comments hit “close to home” for him and the rest of the team and that the Ducks used them as motivation heading into the matchup.
“For him to attack Phil [Knight], Coach Lanning and our team was personal,” said Moore, who threw for 266 yards and three touchdowns. “We were going to keep the foot on the neck and make sure we score these points and try to break the scoreboard.”
Break the scoreboard, they did. The Ducks had a 59-yard touchdown run on their second offensive play and a 65-yard touchdown pass on their third offensive play. Explosive plays were everywhere at Autzen Stadium as Oklahoma State’s defense provided little to no resistance. Oregon’s offense did not punt until the fourth quarter and totaled 631 yards to Oklahoma State’s 211 yards.
“It was a lot of fire going into this game,” Moore said.
The way Oregon came out of the gates, stepped on the gas pedal and didn’t relent until it was up 48-3 halfway through the third quarter, when it brought in the offensive backups, seemed very purposeful. The two pick-sixes that pushed the Ducks’ score into the 60s added insult to injury.
“It’s still about us,” Lanning said. “Our ability to ignore the noise is the thing that’s going to make us go.”
Lanning, as he did on Monday, said postgame that he has a lot of respect for Gundy and even noted that the result probably had the Oklahoma State coach saying “I told you so” regarding his comments about the disparity in resources between the schools.
“When I made that comment, I was complimenting Oregon for what they had done,” Gundy said. “Second thing, which I said later in the week is, we’ve made commitments also, but we have to be better and fundamentally sound and execute.”
Gundy is now 4-10 over his past 14 games, and two of those losses — Saturday’s at Oregon and last year’s 52-0 loss to Colorado — are the worst of his career.
“Sometimes you’re going to play people that have the ability to run away from you,” Gundy said. “We gotta look at that and see where we’re at. We didn’t play good enough, in the systems that we had, to put ourselves in that position.”
As the heat rises around the coach who has helmed the Oklahoma State program since 2005, Gundy’s son, Gavin, took to X to defend his father.
“Mike Gundy IS Oklahoma State football,” Gavin said as part of a long thread of posts. “Period. As QB, he set records in the Barry Sanders era. As coach, he stacked 160+ wins, 19 straight bowls, a Big 12 title, two Fiesta Bowls, multiple Top-10 finishes, & sent dudes to the NFL year after year. He’s the winningest coach in OSU history & the most important name this program has EVER had. Without him, you’d have nothing to brag about, nothing to watch, nothing to cry about.”
Soon after, Gavin’s thread was deleted from the site.
