Pete Thamel claims Mike Gundy is the next college football coach 'in the crosshairs' for a firing

College football has already seen two coaches be fired just a few weeks into the season with UCLA’s DeShaun Foster and Virginia Tech’s Brent Pry. Now, ESPN’s Pete Thamel has Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy up next on the potential chopping block.

Answering which coach would be next to be fired on the ‘College GameDay Podcast’ on Monday, Gundy was the name for Thamel. That’s with them being in a worse place program-wise in Stillwater, as, on the field, the Cowboys are just 4-10 going back to last season and are set to come out of their bye on Friday after taking a 66-point blowout loss at Oregon, the worst loss of his career and the program’s worst in almost 120 years.

“I think the next person in the crosshairs is Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State,” said Thamel.

“They are not very good, and I think we’ve been pretty blunt about that on this podcast. And, I think it was Stanford Steve and I at one point on College Football Live. We were kind of talking about, like, naming that score. 10 new coaches, whole new roster – it’s just sort of sputtering to an end at Oklahoma State.”

Gundy is the all-time winningest coach for the ‘Pokes with a record of 170-89 (.656) since 2005, including three appearances in the Big 12 Championship, with a win in 2011, and 18-straight bowl appearances (12-6) from 2006 to 2023. The past two years, though, have not gone well whatsoever as Oklahoma State went 3-9 in 2024, going winless in conference play at 0-9, and is 1-1 this season after what happened a week and a half ago up in Eugene.

So, where does that leave the Cowboys? Thamel isn’t yet certain as something to consider is the leadership set at the moment in Stillwater.

“It’s super awkward because there is likely to be an athletic director change, and I say that because the athletic director is basically working on like a month-to-month contract. That’s Chad Weiberg, who’s been there a handful of seasons,” noted Thamel. “He has had some health issues so I don’t want to be too terse about his job status, but he’s basically operating on a month-to-month deal.”

Thamel then just doesn’t think Oklahoma State knows what they are without Gundy, with his tenure lasting two-plus decades now and into a new era in college football. Things aren’t going well, but firing someone of his status to their school isn’t something that’s easy to handle for any program when it comes to an all-timer.

“This is a place that has been so defined by Mike Gundy, so it’s going to be really difficult to insert an entire new identity,” said Thamel. “They were late to NIL. They got behind. Look, they played in the Big 12 title game two seasons ago, so it’s not like – but, from that point, it’s been a spiral and it looks as if it’s irrecoverable at this point.

“These exits are hard…You know, just, these exits are really hard. He has 100 more wins than the next best coach at Oklahoma State. It’s like 110 or something like that. So, it’s just – that’s ten seasons of ten wins more than anybody else ahead of them. So, I mean, he’s a statue guy, stadium name guy. He’s done it all there. The empirical results have just changed drastically, and the evolution to the times? It just hasn’t happened.”

Because of the bye, Oklahoma State is just two games into the season at that record of 1-1. But, unless something changes, with there being no telling really when it comes to this coach, Thamel expects it to be a when he’s fired, not if he’s fired, as far as Mike Gundy.

“So, exiting legends is hard. It’s really hard to do that in September, October. But, they, as in terms of a job that is inevitably to open, Oklahoma State looms here,” stated Thamel.

“I think they would be a little patient. I think there’s trying to be some handholding. But this is Mike Gundy, so anyone who’s going to be predicting how Mike Gundy is going to handle all of this has no idea, right? He is the most relentlessly unpredictable character our sport has seen in the last two decades.”