Oklahoma State’s Recent History Points to Bounce Back in 2025

Oklahoma State is coming off a disastrous year, and there is a wide range of outcomes for 2025.

OSU has been one of the top teams in the Big 12 throughout Mike Gundy’s two decades as head coach. Although last season didn’t go well, the Cowboys have still had a track record of consistent success in recent history.

While the Cowboys have had their best run in school history under Gundy, there have been a wide array of outcomes even within the successful period. It’d be easy to simply point to a 4-7 campaign in 2005 and last year’s 3-9 season as examples of the Cowboys’ sometimes drastic results.

Even when taking those two years out of the equation, the levels of success have varied greatly from year to year for the Cowboys. During their 18-year streak of bowl games and winning seasons, there were multiple seasons where OSU needed to win its bowl game to secure a winning record.

Meanwhile, there have been various times where OSU’s path to winning a conference championship ended up being as simple as winning its final game. Of course, Gundy’s Cowboys have only managed to secure one Big 12 title, giving at least some indication that there is generally a limit to OSU’s success even in its best years.

In short, all of that history points to the Cowboys bouncing back and having a relatively successful season in 2025. While the levels of success haven’t always been consistent, avoiding consecutive bad seasons has been a staple of the Gundy era.

Following years like 2024 where OSU is unable to meet expectations, it typically responds in a big way. It doesn’t take much digging to find examples of that, with 2023’s 10-win season coming after a 7-6 campaign where the Cowboys were once ranked in the top 10.

Sure, not everything will go as planned for OSU, and the bounce back from 3-9 would surely look different than a bounce back from 7-6. In any case, Gundy is still leading the program, and he has shown time and time again that his teams are more than capable of responding to season-to-season adversity.