Inside Oregon’s High-Stakes Spending: Coach Lanning’s Bold Message After Gundy’s Challenge
Mike Gundy isn’t one to shy away from stirring the pot, and this time he’s zeroed in on the financial firepower behind college football’s NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) deals. The Oklahoma State head coach threw down some hefty figures on his radio show Monday, claiming that while Oregon shelled out a staggering $40 million to their players last season, the Cowboys have only matched $7 million over the last three years. Gundy’s comments took a sharp turn when he suggested there’s chatter among coaches about only scheduling games against programs with comparable budgets—just as OSU prepares to face off against the Ducks in Week 2. That notion, naturally, ruffled feathers, especially with Oregon’s Dan Lanning, who defended his program’s investment with a whole lot of pride and a savvy rebuttal. As the conversation heats up, it’s clear this debate is about much more than just dollars—it’s about fairness, competition, and the future scheduling landscape in college football.LEARN MORE
Mike Gundy wants to make it known that Oklahoma State isn’t spending as much NIL money on players as Oregon is.
The longtime Cowboys coach speculated Monday on his radio show that Oregon spent $40 million on players for its roster a season ago while saying the Cowboys had only spent $7 million in NIL money over the past three seasons. Gundy then went on to posit that “there’s coaches” saying that teams with lots of resources should only play similarly-resourced opponents ahead of his team’s trip to Oregon in Week 2.
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“Oregon is paying a lot, a lot of money for their team,” Gundy said. “From a nonconference standpoint, there’s coaches saying they should [play teams with similar budgets].”
As you can imagine, the comments didn’t go over well with Oregon coach Dan Lanning, who was asked about what Gundy said at his news conference later in the day.
“Like I said, I’ve got a ton of respect for Coach Gundy,” Lanning said. “Ultimately, how blessed are we being at a place that’s invested in winning? If you want to be a top-10 team in college football, you better be invested in winning and we spend to win. Some people save to have an excuse for why they don’t. And ultimately, he’s a great coach that’s done an unbelievable job, but I want to be a team that’s competing at the highest level and we’re really fortunate to be in that situation. So I can’t speak on their situation, I have no idea what they got in their pockets over there. I’m sure UT Martin maybe didn’t have as much as them last week and they played, so we’ll let it play out.”
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It’s hard to dispute the points that Lanning made in his response. The Cowboys had their worst season of the Gundy era in 2024 as they went 3-9 and 0-9 in the Big 12. Oklahoma State allowed nearly 36 points per game a season ago; just eight teams gave up more points per game.
Oregon, meanwhile, went undefeated in the regular season and won the Big Ten title before losing to Ohio State in the College Football Playoff.
The Cowboys also clearly didn’t have a problem playing a Tennessee-Martin team at the FCS level with far fewer NIL resources in Week 1 either, so the idea of NIL fairness must not go both ways. Both Oregon and Oklahoma State opened their seasons against teams in the second division of college football.
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The two teams scheduled their home-and-home series with each other in 2018 before NIL payments became legal in college sports and Oregon will visit Oklahoma State next year.
Oklahoma State also has Arkansas and Alabama on its future schedules over the following three seasons, so if Gundy is one of those coaches who thinks rich athletic departments should only play each other, he may want to move to cancel that Alabama series or boost his team’s own funding as soon as possible.
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