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The hot seat is already warming up for a number of college football coaches, and Mike Gundy is dealing with an increasingly toasty posterior at Oklahoma State. He’s currently inked to lead the Cowboys through the 2028 season, but some fans who’ve gotten fed up are hoping to raise money to buy him out with a GoFundMe that outlines a fairly reasonable sales pitch that’s undermined by some questionable math.
Mike Gundy recently kicked off his 21st season as the head coach at Oklahoma State, and the man known for one of the most glorious mullets to ever grace a college football field has posted a 170-89 record in Stillwater since returning to the school where he played quarterback to helm the program in 2005.
The Cowboys went 4-7 during his inagural campaign but had posted a winning record 18 years in a row before the wheels fell off in 2024 during a season where Oklahoma State ended up with a 3-9 record and suffered what was at the time the worst loss of his coaching career with a 52-0 drubbing at the hands of Colorado in a game that brought the season to a merciful end.
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Hopes of a rebound this season were severely diminished after Oregon made that loss to Colorado seem almost palatable with a 69-3 bloodbath in Eugene last weekend, and at this point, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to suggest the school might start thinking about exploring its options on the coaching front in the very near future.
It will have to fork over a sizeable chunk of change if Gundy is let loose before his contract expires, although some fans are trying to do what they can to help out.
A GoFundMe has been started to raise funds for Mike Gundy’s contract buyout
Gundy signed a new contract with Oklahoma State after the 2024 season that included a $1 million pay cut and a reduction to his buyout. The school would have had to fork over more than $25 million if it had fired him last season, but that number now sits at $15 million for the next two campaigns and drops to $10 million in 2027 (the second-to-last year in the deal).
There are probably some Oklahoma State fans in the oil industry who could easily make a generous donation in order to bring the Gundy Era to an end if they so desired. However, some others have opted to go a different route with a GoFundMe that aims to raise $7 million (a seemingly arbitrary sum that would cover less than half of the buyout).
It notes that the goal could be reached if 60,000 people each donated $116.67 (a sum it positions as “less than the price of a typical game ticket). It also asserts that first number is the same as the number of people who attend a typical game at Boone Pickens Stadium, it’s actually around 8,000 less (the average donation would be closer to $134 a pop based on the average attendance in 2024).
It doesn’t appear the sales pitch has resonated, as there have only been three donations totaling $351 as of this writing. However, I guess you have to start somewhere.