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Week zero of the 2024 college football season is now just seven days away, and Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy is locked in.
Gundy, who is never one to hold back when it comes to speaking his mind, also had a message for his players with the season just days away.
The time for NIL talk is over, now it’s time to go out on the field and make plays.
Mike, how close is the season opener? “Tell your agent to quit calling us & asking for more money. It's non-negotiable now. It’ll start again in December”pic.twitter.com/5r8tWtIB4T
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) August 17, 2024
“There’s no negotiating now. The portal’s over,” Gundy told members of the media earlier this week. “All the negotiation’s history. Now we’re playing football. Just coaching and playing football.
“And, you know, the business side of what we do now is we have to have those conversations with them. ‘Tell your agent to quit calling us and asking for more money. It’s non-negotiable now. It’ll start again in December.'”
Gundy says that it’s been hard to focus on football with everything else that goes on in the offseason.
Interestingly though, he didn’t reference superstar running back Ollie Gordon’s arrest for driving under the influence when discussing offseason distractions.
Gundy drew the ire of fans across the country when he seemingly dismissed the severity of Gordon’s arrest at Big 12 media day.
“I started thinking about being a parent: I have a 28, 23, and 19 [year old kids]. And first… I looked it up on my phone: What would be the legal limit in Oklahoma? And it was .08, and Ollie was .10, so I looked it up, and it was based on body weight — not to get into the legal side of it — but I thought, two or three beers, or four…” Gundy said of Gordon’s arrest. “I’m not justifying what Ollie did, I’m telling you what decision I made. I thought, ‘I’ve probably done that a thousand times in my life.’”
But hey, at least he’s not an agent. Because then it would be a real distraction, right coach?