STILLWATER — The new Big 12 has arrived, and the old guard has departed.

In building his program from conference also-ran to a consistent contender for league titles, Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy overcame nearly every obstacle his Cowboys confronted.

Rung by rung, they climbed the ladder. 

In 2021, they made their first appearance in the Big 12 Championship Game. Last year, they returned again. The Cowboys beat Texas nine times in the last 14 meetings after downing the Longhorns just twice in the previous 24.

On the Cowboys’ climb toward conference supremacy, one major goal remained irritatingly unattainable. Though the balance of power in the Bedlam rivalry had been leaning OSU’s way with two wins in the last three years, OU’s overall dominance dulled the recent orange tint of the series.  

But the tectonic plates of college football have shifted. OU is off to the Southeastern Conference, and the Cowboys are in position to emerge from the Sooners’ long shadow in a new Big 12 that lacks blueblood power at the top. 

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When the 18th-ranked Cowboys open the season against South Dakota State at 1 p.m. on Aug. 31 at Boone Pickens Stadium, they embark on a season that will not include Bedlam.

The haunting feeling of a potential loss to OU ruining an otherwise great season no longer sits in the pit of OSU fans’ stomachs.

Bedlam is a tale of bygone days, and the sun shines a little brighter at Boone Pickens Stadium. 

“If you look at what this program has done under Coach Gundy’s leadership, certainly going back to 2010, we’re winning like a blueblood,” OSU athletic director Chad Weiberg said. “We’re top 10 in the number of wins, and if you look at the list of who the other nine are, it’s everybody you would think. 

“Then there we are. So our goal is to keep winning at that level.”

The Big 12 looks like a league built for wide-ranging competitiveness thanks to an evenly balanced collection of programs. Yet the Cowboys have shown a consistency over the past 14 years that few teams can match.

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“I think that we’ve got a number of teams in this league that have an opportunity to make a move national,” Gundy said at Big 12 Media Days last month. “Whether anybody can take over and dominate for an extended period of time would be hard to tell at this point.”

Perhaps new rivals await OSU in the latest version of the Big 12, like newcomers Utah or Arizona. Maybe familiar faces like Kansas State or Texas Tech. 

Or could this simply be the time for OSU to forget about rivalries and focus on trophies?

OSU has just one Big 12 title in the league’s 28-year history, but the landscape feels ripe for a program to establish itself as a standard-bearer of the conference. And OSU’s recent trend is heading in the right direction.

“Our goal is being in the championship game every single year,” Weiberg said. “We came out of the previous version of the Big 12 Conference, as we knew it then, by reaching that game two of the last three years. So we want to continue that kind of success. 

“We want to carry the momentum we have coming out of that version of the Big 12 into the new version of the Big 12 and keep rolling with that kind of success.”

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2024 OSU football schedule

• Week 1: OSU vs. South Dakota State, 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 31 (ESPN+)
• Week 2: OSU vs. Arkansas, 11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 7 (ABC)
• Week 3: OSU at Tulsa, 11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 14 (ESPN2)
• Week 4: OSU vs. Utah, TBA Saturday, Sept. 21
• Week 5: OSU at Kansas State, TBA Saturday, Sept. 28
• Week 6: OSU vs. West Virginia, TBA Saturday, Oct. 5
• Week 7: Bye week
• Week 8: OSU at BYU, 9:15 p.m. Friday, Oct. 18 (ESPN)
• Week 9: OSU at Baylor, TBA Saturday, Oct. 26
• Week 10: OSU vs. Arizona State, TBA Saturday, Nov. 2
• Week 11: OSU at TCU, TBA Saturday, Nov. 9
• Week 12: Bye week
• Week 13: OSU vs. Texas Tech, TBA Saturday, Nov. 23
• Week 14: OSU at Colorado, 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 29 (ABC)