Oklahoma State fired veteran coach Mike Gundy earlier this week amid a tailspin of futility at the program dating back to last season. Gundy addressed his job security and the restraints facing his program throughout the offseason and into September. And some of those issues are partly why he got the hook, according to Nick Saban.
“Some people have a tougher time embracing the whole idea of paying players, especially some of us old timers,” Saban said Saturday on “College GameDay.” “It’s a little more difficult. Mike Gundy has been a great coach for a long time. Coaching is teaching, and teaching is the ability to inspire learning. For those of us who kind of get that and that’s been our self-gratification for so many years, embracing paying the players has been a little bit harder, and I think that ultimately is what got them at Oklahoma State.”
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Ahead of a 66-point loss at Oregon earlier this month, Gundy pointed to the Ducks’ “$40 million roster” and mentioned how his own two-deep was a shell of that total.
“We spent around $7 million over the last three years, and I think Oregon spent close to $40 (million) last year alone,” Gundy said Sept. 1. “That was just one year. Now, I might be off a few million. What I’m saying is they’re spending a lot of money. There’s some schools that are doing that.”
Gundy came around on NIL ahead of the 2025 season and tried to adapt to college football’s rapidly evolving environment, but it was too late. Oklahoma State went 3-9 overall and winless in Big 12 play last season. And following a disastrous start to the current campaign that included a home loss to Tulsa, the Cowboys pulled the plug on his tenure three games into his 21st season.
Saban, who retired in January 2024, previously denied that NIL and paying players was the primary reason for his retirement at Alabama, but former Crimson Tide standout Kool-Aid McKinstry said the idea never sat well with Saban.
“I was the last class that really, he didn’t have to worry about asking for money and stuff like that coming out of high school. People worry about the wrong thing,” McKinstry said last year on Robert Griffin III’s podcast. “They worry about money like he always looked at it like, you’re going to get money when you get to the league. I’m just here to help you be a better man, help you be a better player, help you make all the money that you want to make in the league.”
Saban said shortly after he retired that several players approached him after the College Football Playoff asking how much they would receive in NIL for the next season. Saban’s long been an advocate for revenue sharing, but never wanted “players to be employees” and balked at loosely-regulated NIL collectives.
Saban got out before the revenue sharing era began. Gundy was pushed out.
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