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ACADEMY TEXAS BOWL: OKLAHOMA STATE VS TEXAS A&M

December 8, 2019

Mike Gundy

Houston, Texas

Q. If you could talk on your thoughts on going to Houston and a lot of guys going home and playing in the Texas Bowl?
MIKE GUNDY: Well, we're really excited to participate in the Texas Bowl. We've got a number of players on our team, I think it's close to 65 right now that are from the State of Texas. Obviously all the way down to Houston area. We've got over 25,000 active alumni south of Stillwater, Oklahoma City, all the way through Texas, central Texas, east Texas, all the way down to Houston.

It's a great location for us, and as always, we're very, very excited to be in a Bowl game. We enjoy our Bowl games, we take them serious and gives us a chance as a staff and a team to spend three more weeks together.

So we're excited about preparation. We're excited about being in the City of Houston for a week, and looking forward to preparation.

Q. What do you think about playing Texas A&M?
MIKE GUNDY: I think they are the best 7-5 team in the history of the NCAA in my opinion. They have lost to No. 1; they have lost to No. 1; they have lost to No. 1; they lost to No. 4; and they lost to No. 12. That's their five losses. They are definitely a top 20 team.

I haven't started watching tape on them. I watched them on TV a couple times. I know that they are very athletic. I know that their quarterback, he's a third-rated quarterback in the SEC, only behind the Heisman trophy winner and behind Tua.

So it will be a great challenge for us. We'll have to get to work as soon as possible. We'll have to have great preparation and we'll have to play a very good game against a very, very good team.

Q. Is there a chance that Spencer Sanders could play in this game?
MIKE GUNDY: Yes.

Q. I mean, is it a realistic possibility, or do you want to keep that close to the vest?
MIKE GUNDY: Well, it's not close to the vest. I mean, there's nothing to hide. I mean, everybody knows that he's coming off of an injury; that he'll be released in I guess about ten days. I don't know what day it is -- what is today, the 8th? 7th? 9th? Something like that.

He's released, and what would be -- his follow-up is either on the 16th or 17th. So he would miss half of our Bowl prep, but there's a chance that we would release him 100 percent, sometime around the 16th or 17th. We're not for sure.

Q. You got back to practice on Thursday. What have you been doing the last several days?
MIKE GUNDY: We're working all the young guys. The veteran guys are getting individual work. The young guys are getting a lot of team work. Players that were redshirting and didn't get on the game field as much got a lot of quality work the last three days.

Obviously we didn't have any Bowl prep because we didn't know who we were playing. Had a pretty good idea we were going to go to the Texas Bowl and play A&M but you never know for sure.

So they have finals week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then we'll go back to work Friday night and start getting ready for A&M.

Q. You talked about kind of the general area down there. What has the Houston area in particular meant to your program over the years, whether it's fans and alumni or going there to recruit? I know you don't have quite as many as you used to from that area, but still, some important guys from there.
MIKE GUNDY: Well, we've had a great tradition down there. We don't have as many as we used to based on A&M's departure to the SEC. That changed recruiting down there a little bit. That drew more SEC teams into that part of Texas.

We don't go down there as much, but we still get really quality players from there and when we get to a level of interest from a young man, we jump all over it.

But we have a lot of Oklahoma State people in that area due to the oil and gas production. So we've been very fortunate to have a lot of success and Houston's a great city, and we're looking forward to being there for a week.

Q. I know Chuba hasn't made any public declarations about his future. Do you expect him to play in this game?
MIKE GUNDY: Yes. I mean, I haven't talked to him about it, but I would expect him to play in this game.

Q. Just an interesting dichotomy with this in a guy --
MIKE GUNDY: Be playing next year, too. How's that?

Go ahead, Robert.

Q. Interesting dichotomy here. Do you feel like Jimbo Fisher ought to send you a GA or something to fill you in about the Aggies, because Josh Henson, fresh off being off your staff, missed this season obviously, but he knows Oklahoma State pretty good.
MIKE GUNDY: Well, yeah, he knows all of our players. He can give a pretty detailed description of everybody on the field.

So I don't think that's going to change any at all. As I said, we're going to work hard in Bowl prep and then we're going to get lots of reps for young guys and try to continue to develop this organization for next year and then we'll go down there and have fun playing in the game.

Q. Are there any guys in particular that are right there, maybe the twos, or could be in the twos; that these 15 practices are particularly important for?
MIKE GUNDY: Not for the Bowl game. This is just the young players overall in just the development. For us once we get to this point, we cut back considerably with the veteran players, just based on the amount of wear and tear on their bodies up to this point in the year.

So when there's not really anybody that would make strides or do anything that would show up in the Bowl game, it's just the overall development of our organization.

Q. Darrell Dickey is the offensive coordinator, his dad at K-State for years as a coach and even an assistant, both as Oklahoma State and Oklahoma, did you cross paths with Darrell or Jim over the years? I know that Jim preceded your time at OSU, but do you have any crossover with either of those guys?
MIKE GUNDY: Not really. Not anything other than maybe bumping into them at a coaches' clinic. I don't see those guys -- you know, recruiting has changed so much because head coaches are not out in the spring and everything is so individualized in the fall because signing day is in December.

We don't see other coaches on the road like we used to, so I don't cross paths with those guys at all.

Q. I know it's obviously fresh and you probably haven't seen any film of them, but have you had any sense of offensively what they are going to throw at you guys with Coach Dickey at the helm?
MIKE GUNDY: Well, they are doing the same thing that Jimbo has always done. He's been multiple. He'll be under the center some. He'll use tight ends and fullbacks and then he'll get into the spread. This quarterback, I've watched him on TV some and I know he's active and I know he can run. A lot of play-action pass. They do a lot of playaction stuff. They will run some empty.

His system has been the same as it's been even his years at Florida State, just an outsider looking in. I haven't watched any tape, but that's what I saw on TV.

Q. Real quick what do you miss about having A&M in the Big 12?
MIKE GUNDY: What do I miss? Well, when they jumped ship and Missouri left, you know, I thought that -- I thought they were great fit in this league and I thought Missouri was a great fit, like Nebraska.

I'm very tradition, traditional. I liked the old Big 8, but the original Big 12 I thought was pretty cool.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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