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BIG 12 CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYSJuly 17, 2018Mike GundyFrisco, Texas THE MODERATOR: We're now joined at the podium by Coach Mike Gundy from Oklahoma State University. Coach, your thoughts about the upcoming season? MIKE GUNDY: As always, we're excited about the season. We've had a good off season. We've got some quality young men in our culture at Oklahoma State. Couldn't be any more proud of them as I do this and have been fortunate enough to do this be for a long time. I was driving the other day and thinking about the accomplishments that we have in our culture and having a thousand on the APR is awesome, while winning games. Led the league with 20 Academic All-Conference Players, including Justice Hill while winning games is awesome, academic All-Americans, and just the way our guys handle themselves. Really excited about our coaching staff. I think we've got a terrific group and looking forward to Coach Knowles on defense and the system that he is bringing and watching our players compete, six weeks or however long that is. Looking forward to the season and got ten or twelve days here before we get started. Get out there and get after it and get some guys that haven't been on the field a lot. It's interesting for us this year, we've got several positions where we have a lot of experience and then a couple positions where we don't have any at all. So that will make it fun. Q. We've heard that you have termed Taylor "the guy". Does that mean he's your starter at quarterback? And with this new redshirt rule could that play into how you use what looks like at least three guys that could play quarterback for you this year? MIKE GUNDY: When we came out of spring we felt very comfortable with Taylor, so certainly going into August he's our guy. He's been with us a number of years. He understands our offense. We're confident in his abilities. We don't have a clue what we're going to do with the new redshirt rule. We will have to get together in August and see how it plays out. Q. Coach, I wanted to get your reaction to Mike Holder's comments this summer and see whether you agreed or disagreed with what he said about recruiting? MIKE GUNDY: I would much rather talk about football. I would hate to waste today talking about something off the subject. Q. What should we expect to see from your defense this season under Coach Jim Knowles compared to previous seasons? MIKE GUNDY: Glenn was great for us for a number of years. We needed a change. I think Coach Knowles approach and how he's handled our defense will be different. The 4-2-5 is considerably different than what we've done over the last few years. I'm really as interested and as excited as you are to see what happens. I like watching him coach. Very intriguing person. I think he's a great teacher. His mannerisms and the way he goes about getting information across to our young men. I would say more of an aggressive approach, but I will be learning just as much as you do as the season progresses. Q. Obviously, Oklahoma is a big favorite in the preseason poll but with all the losses they had and throughout the league does the league look as wide open for a lot of teams to come in there as you've seen in a while? MIKE GUNDY: I think there is a number of players in this league that make it interesting. A little bit of a rebuilding year from what's been fantastic quarterback play over the last few years for most of the schools, us included. Some of them have returning guys. I think the quarterback play is so important in this league and for that matter maybe everywhere in the country. But teams change. As we've talked about, earlier with Coach Knowles and our defense, how well we can play early in the year will be interesting. I know there is enough talent on teams in this league to play very well each Saturday. I would go back to the round Robin format of the Big 12. I think that's why it makes it very interesting. You really don't have a chance for a let-down any of the Saturdays in the fall. Q. James Washington and Marcell Ateman are gone, 130 catches, 21 touchdowns in the last season. Who are some of the guys that are going to have to step up, with Mason gone as well? MIKE GUNDY: Well, Taylor, we talked about him at the quarterback spot. But James and Ateman and Chris Lacy have been great for us, not only great football players, but humble young men that love being on our team. Jalen McCleskey, Tyron who transferred over, Dillon Stoner. We've got some guys that have made a number of plays for us that will have to play a bigger role this fall. I think the interesting part of that question is how well our quarterbacks can play early in the year, compared to the immaturity we have at the wide receiver spot, in comparison to Washington and Ateman and Lacy, and then while hanging our hat on our running game with Justice and the young backs we have that we think are going to be good college football players. Q. Bill Snyder question, you know he's 79, came off of cancer last year. Were you surprised that he came back this year? You're also the only remaining Big 12 head coach that was here during his first tenure at K State. What have you seen change with him through the years? MIKE GUNDY: Honestly, not a lot. Am I surprised he's coaching? No, I'm not. I will be surprised when he's not coaching, in my opinion, but I haven't seen much difference in his approach and obviously when I was an assistant I didn't have the relationship that I have with him now when I'm at functions like this and meetings and such to be able to spend time with him. Certainly not surprised he's coaching. The every day operation or game day approach with his team is very similar to when it was when I competed against him as a player in 1989. Q. What area of the team or program do you feel like you're better at this year than maybe this time last year? MIKE GUNDY: Well, I would think that we have improved at the corner position. We played two young corners last year, and there were times those guys got beat up on a little bit just with youth. While doing that, though, they were gaining valuable experience and I thought both of them played considerably better the last four games of the year. So I would hope that we will be better just from an experience standpoint at the corner position. Q. You said during the spring that you would be shocked if your offensive line wasn't better than it was last year. I know you brought in a graduate transfer, Cochran, kind of curious what he looks like, can't miss him. I would think with the competition going on at the quarterback position it could be countered if that offensive line is better than it was a year ago. MIKE GUNDY: I think that our offensive line will be better than last year. We've got four young men that will get quality time that if played a lot of reps against quality opponents. I know that our overall size and strength combination will be better. We will have one position that we won't have any experience at, but we've been down this road before. I've always felt like you needed seven offensive linemen to stay fairly healthy and be competitive in order to have a good offense, meaning you need two centers and a role guard and a role tackle. I think we will have that this year. I'm excited about those guys. We do have a couple young players that, if they pick it up quick and adjust well to Saturdays, they could make us considerably better in the latter part of the season. Q. To follow up about Taylor, you talked about how good he was in the spring, but I'm curious about his evolution over the summer. This is obviously the first summer he's been around without Mason around. I assume his role may have changed, but how has he approached the summer and what have you seen out of him in that regard? MIKE GUNDY: It's interesting. I have not seen him since April, the end of April, early May. I know that he's there and training and in school. They only give me information in the summer if there is a problem. So I prefer to go for six weeks and not hear from anybody at all. The demand for them in the strength conditioning with Rob Glass is a big part of what we do. Once we get back into the office in about ten or twelve days we will get a report on the leadership that was provided by our veteran players and sometimes our incoming freshmen. I haven't heard anything about it which means that it's going very smooth. Everything is as planned. Taylor is a very intelligent young man. He's very humble. He understands hard work. He's put his time and effort in. I would expect him to have had a really good summer and have done everything that Coach Yurcich has asked him to do in bringing our team along in our summer workouts. Q. Mike, Justice Hill has had a couple of great years. What are your expectations for him this year? How much better can he get? MIKE GUNDY: Well, he will continue to improve. He's young. He's just going into his third year. I think -- well, when he showed up as a freshman he vertical jumped 40 inches. So his leg strength, his power, his experience playing in games, his understanding of our offense, his pass protection, all of that got considerably better over the year. Your first year you're finding your way. Your second year you start to learn how to play the game at this level, and in your third year it's really a year if you're as talented as he is and you can relax and play. I would expect to see that from him. He's done fantastic in school. He will be graduated this year in three years, so he's been a great leader for us. We've been very lucky at Oklahoma State that we have had really, really good players who are great people. They are humble and they take care of their business every day and he certainly falls into that category. Q. You guys are sort of on the forefront of the uniform trend with all kinds of different combinations and new looks. Why do you think that's become so important? Why are uniforms in general so important whether you change or whether you don't? MIKE GUNDY: We live in a world with young people, the Generation Z, the kids that we coach nowadays and it's all about bling and social media and can I get my story out there and what do I have on and what do you have on and that's the trend right now. Those are the young men we're recruiting. So we cater to where our sales could be, the sales that can help the company roll and this is the company and the business we're in is recruiting 17, 18 year old young men. They're fascinated by colors and bright lights and things that move fast. We've been fortunate that our administration understood that years ago. We were probably a little bit ahead of the times. I think now most everybody is for the most part catching up, but that's the world we live in now. So we're just trying to keep up with the Joneses as we move forward. Q. Just kind of expanding further on what you were just saying, seems like there has been other conversation about facility up grades and things like that, but creative recruiting events going on at different schools around the country. What are the things that you have done in the recruiting process that you feel are unique, outside of uniforms and all that? MIKE GUNDY: With the recruiting rules this spring I think most of us were somewhat in the dark on exactly how it would all play out. It didn't play as much as of a role as what we thought in our opinion. Right or wrong. It changed some, for example, official visits and how you're going to handle them and big promotions on those days whether it's your spring game and such. There were changes, but in the end I thought it played pretty close to the way it has in years past. We haven't changed a lot. We're pretty consistent in the way we operate at Oklahoma State, in our culture. We're proud of the success that we've had in the classroom, on the field and out there in society. So we don't budget a lot. We always look. We always listen. We're willing to try new things if we think it could actually and or directly affect us. If not, we stay pretty close to the vest. I think you're going to see more changes, based on the people that are willing to do it, but at Oklahoma State we don't change a lot. Q. You've used the word "culture" several times today. We hear it a lot throughout the season. Can you define what that means to you? MIKE GUNDY: Well, our culture is something that was created over a period of years. It's not something we put down on paper and for lack of a better term for a goal sheet, a goal board. As I watched, I saw young men that could grow and develop, young men that became problem solvers and not problem creators, young men that could identify what their future was going to, how to graduate from Oklahoma State University, be productive on the field, be productive in the society, give back to the community and give back to the rest of the people that see them as a role model, and respect, character and integrity is a big part of what we do. We want to win a lot of football games. We want to be competitive. We want to win a Big 12 Championship, but we also want to be able to put a young man in a position that when he finishes in four years that he can go out there in the real world and get a job, take care of himself and take care of his family and take care of his kids. That's really the culture we have created. I'm most proud of that, more so than anything we've accomplished at this time as I sit back and watch it, in having three sons of my own. Ultimately knowing that Little League baseball, summer baseball, seven-on-seven, football, whatever it may be at some point that's all going to come to an end and what kind of a product did we put out there? That's really what we're responsible for. Don't take away or don't think I'm trying to say that winning and losing is not important because that's not it. Competing is very important, but our culture is also very important. Q. What are your thoughts on the new transfer rule? What direction would you like to see that change or continue to go from where it's at now? MIKE GUNDY: As I follow it right now, it's not affecting Oklahoma State at all. We haven't put a restriction on a young man transferring in three or four years. Years ago we used to say you couldn't transfer to a school that we were going to compete against and or in league, but I can't remember, it's been three or four years where we said if a guy wants to go, he can go wherever he wants. I think that's fairly consistent with the direction they're going. Whether or not they decide to penalize a young man a year or not, I haven't paid much attention to it. But as it is now, it's fairly consistent with the way we have operated at Oklahoma State. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. Have a great season. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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