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Mike Gundy believes Oklahoma State would have beaten LSU in 2011 if given opportunity
By Andrew Olson
Published:
The 2011 college football season famously gave us an all-SEC national championship game, the rematch between LSU and Alabama. The team “left out” of the national championship game was Oklahoma State. In a recent feature by ESPN college football writer Chris Low, Gundy reflected on OSU being left out. He believes his Cowboys would have topped Les Miles’ Tigers head-to-head on a neutral field.
“We would have played LSU and won,” Gundy told Low. “They were an overload-the-box, man-to-man team on defense, and you could not play our team in man that year. We were too good. That still bothers me, that we didn’t get a shot. And if the system was set up like it is now, we would have been in the playoff. I guess those things don’t drive me as much. I love for our kids to have success, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t dwell on it like I used to.”
Gundy’s team was ranked No. 2 with a 10-0 record heading into a Nov. 18 game at Iowa State. The Cowboys fell 37-31 in double overtime. In the BCS system, the loss to an unranked team led to OSU falling below Alabama. Gundy’s Cowboys finished the 2011 season 12-1, ranked No. 3. The Alabama-LSU rematch is widely cited as being the game that broke the BCS and led to the creation of the College Football Playoff.
The Big 12 did not have a conference championship game in the 2011 season (stopped after 2010, resumed in 2017). The post-conference championship weekend BCS standings from 2011 had LSU No. 1 (13-0), Alabama No. 2 (11-1), Oklahoma State No. 3 (11-1) and Stanford No. 4 (11-1). OSU beat Stanford 41-38 in overtime in the Fiesta Bowl.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
