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A Texas Goodbye to Mike Gundy, the last of the Coach Folk Heroes

by: RT Young10 hours ago
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Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

With Oklahoma State’s firing of Mike Gundy, it seems like an era of college football coaching is coming to a close. The era being that of the “Folk Hero Coach.” Coaches like Gundy, Mike Leach, and Gary Patterson. Folk hero coaches were once the lifeblood of the Big 12 conference, keeping the conference alive through their own cult of personality but displaying brilliance through player development, schematic adjustments, adaptations of offense and innovative staff hires.

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The folk hero coaches like Gundy seemed to spring up out of the dirt from the places in which they coached. They became inextricably linked to the universities where they manned the sidelines. Sixteen years after the fact, Texas Tech and the late Leach are still connected through the Air Raid. Folk hero coaches were also blissfully lacking in self-awareness in ways today’s coaches are all too conscious.

There were mullets, rants about pirates and self-produced country music albums. In the age of unfathomable salaries, NIL and coaches who grew up with social media, that’s not happening. It’s No Country For Old Men in college football coaching. The game will eventually pass even a coach like Gundy by, with changes he can’t adapt to. Ironic for a coach who once declared to everyone he was “a man,” but still the young age of 40. That seems like both yesterday and oh so long ago.

Gundy was 9–10 against Texas in his time at Oklahoma State. There were classic games like in ’07 and ’08, then periods of Cowboy domination. A near fight with Tom Herman in 2018 and a socially distanced Texas upset in Stillwater. But the Longhorns were able to get the last laugh in 2023, as they won the final Big 12 championship (fittingly) over Gundy.

In many ways, I think modern Texas fans were often envious of these straight-shooting types because hiring Longhorn coaches so often represents appointing a politician. There are bbs and boxes to consider in Austin. Places like Stillwater, Lubbock, and Fort Worth didn’t have to consider politics in ways Texas was forced to.

Until they did. Because the successful folk hero coach elevates their school to such a place they end up transforming it. The ways Patterson, Leach and now Gundy all left their respective Big 12 schools is a reminder even the immortal coaches leave in the same way the mediocre ones do.

Today’s top coaches all have their own brands and few of them have to toil in obscurity in ways that yesterday’s coaches did. I think back to stories about Spike Dykes when he got to Lubbock and his wife Sharon had to refurnish all of the furniture in the football facility from her family’s furniture store in Ballinger, Texas. Dykes bought a new printer and paid for new ink himself to send out recruiting letters because the Red Raiders didn’t have it in their budget.

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Dykes came from an era when practically all coaches were folk heroes. It wasn’t a profession for a normal person to pursue. Gundy and others were a continuation of coaches from that mold. We’ll see what comes next, if anything at all.

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