A program direction undeniably trending downward. A bitter, almost non-competitive loss to an in-state rival that Oklahoma State doesn't expect to ever lose a game.
And, per OSU athletics director Chad Weiberg, yes, donor and fan sentiment.
All of those reasons and more contributed to the firing of Mike Gundy, who had entered his 21st season at the helm of his alma mater but had overseen his program lose an unprecedented 11 consecutive games against FBS competition.
“This is about the bigger picture," Weinberg told reporters at a hastily assembled press conference Tuesday afternoon. "Absolutely, our donors and our fans are critically important.
"That’s true all the time, and it’s more important now than it ever has been. But, this is not about one moment.”
Weinberg reiterated it was a collective of moments, most of them recent history, that led Oklahoma State to terminate its longest-tenured coach.
The Cowboys were a meager 3-9 a year ago and, though just one-quarter into this 2025 season, appeared to be unwrapping another losing campaign after beating FCS program UT Martin to open the season and then being blown out at Oregon to precede the home loss to Tulsa.
The Golden Hurricane, under first-year coach Tre Lamb, held a 19-3 lead in that game at Boone Pickens Stadium deep into the fourth quarter before blowing out of Stillwater, Oklahoma, with an 19-12 win.
A former Oklahoma State record-setting quarterback and three-time conference coach of the year, Gundy had amassed 170 wins atop the Pokes program but in four of the previous seven seasons had seen Oklahoma State finish the year unranked. Five times since 2014 the Cowboys lost five or more games in a season; they are 21-22 since the onset of the 2022 season.
“This is not something I thought we would be doing today on this Tuesday. I fully expected to beat the University of Tulsa," Weiberg said. "I expected the results of this season to be different than they’ve been so far.
"Again, that goes back to the expectation level that Coach Gundy has set for this program. We have higher expectations than that, so when it doesn’t appear that that was going to be met, it felt like for the good of the program it was time to make this decision, so that we could start the process of getting the program where we want it to be."
Weiberg said if those was about the totality of the moments, the good under Gundy would outnumber the bad. Instead, it's the current status -- a program virtually on life-support -- that mandated the move.
"I think the first decision is, ‘What is the decision?,’" said Weiberg, who praised Gundy for leading the "best era of sustained success in program history. "And the next decision is, ‘What is the timing?’ And that in a lot of ways can be a harder decision, because I’ve not yet seen when is a good time or perfect time to do something like this. There’s no such thing.
"This is a hard thing to do, and there’s consequences however you do it, but I felt like in this case we needed to do it now so we could position the program to move forward in the future.”
Oklahoma State is making offensive coordinator Doug Meacham its interim head coach for the final nine games of the season. Meacham is one of Gundy's more recent staff hires, coming north the program from Big 12 Conference foe TCU after the 2024 season.
Meacham has not been a head coach previously in his career, but he has more than 30 years' experience in coaching and, like Gundy, is an Oklahoma State alum.
Up next for Meacham's Cowboys is a Saturday game against Baylor, which is coming off an 27-24 loss to Arizona State.