Quite a bit has changed for the Longhorns since their 41-38 victory over USC in the national championship 15 years ago. 

Since Vince Young capped off one of the best college football games ever with an iconic scramble into the USC end zone, Texas has endured its fair share of turnover. The program has seen eight new quarterbacks start games, along with the hiring of two separate coaching staffs. 

In the midst of all the turnover, one thing has remained the same since 2005: Mike Gundy is still the head coach of the Oklahoma State Cowboys. 

A lot has changed for Gundy and the Cowboys since his infamous “I’m a man! I’m 40!” tirade back in 2007 — perhaps most interestingly Gundy’s haircut — but his credibility as the Oklahoma State head coach has remained largely unquestioned throughout his tenure. 

At least part of Gundy’s growing legend among fans can be attributed to the amount of time he’s spent in Stillwater. The 53-year-old head coach has spent over half of his life as an Oklahoma State Cowboy in some capacity, beginning in 1986 when he took over as the starting quarterback for the team midway through his freshman year. 

Sharing a backfield with two NFL Hall of Fame running backs Thurman Thomas and Barry Sanders, Gundy threw for 7,997 yards and 54 touchdowns throughout his career, leading the Cowboys to two 10-win seasons along with wins in the Holiday Bowl and Sun Bowl.

He joined the Oklahoma State coaching staff immediately following his playing career in 1990 and didn’t waste time ascending the coaching ladder. After only five years on the staff, Gundy became the offensive coordinator in 1994, when he was 27 years old. The coach then moved on to work as the passing game coordinator at Baylor and Maryland for the next few years before rejoining Oklahoma State as offensive coordinator in 2001. 

Oklahoma State quickly named Gundy as head coach after Les Miles’ departure for LSU in 2005, and he has since led the Cowboys to realms of sustained success that had not been seen prior to his arrival. 

Gundy’s accolades as head coach are seemingly endless. Perhaps most impressively, his Oklahoma State Cowboys were one of only 10 teams across college football to post a winning season every year from 2010-2019 — all the more impressive considering Gundy didn’t exactly inherit a perennial winner when he took over in 2005. 

OSU’s current streak of 14 straight bowl games being the best in the program’s history further cements his history of prolonged success and is even more staggering when considering that the Cowboys had only made 16 bowl appearances in their 92-year history prior to Gundy. 

Although he has led Oklahoma State to extreme success on the field as the Cowboys head coach, Gundy has also been involved in a good amount of controversy throughout his tenure.

Whether it’s the “I’m a man! I’m 40!” fiasco mentioned earlier, the extensive Sports Illustrated report that levied several allegations of boosters and coaches paying players under the table, or most recently, when the head coach issued an apology after being seen in a One America News Network T-shirt, Gundy has seemingly grown a knack for attracting negative media attention throughout his time in Stillwater.  

Despite that, Gundy and the Cowboys currently sit second in the Big 12 at 4–0 and will look to remain undefeated when they take on the Longhorns on Saturday.