Bill Snyder created the model for teams like OSU, ISU, KSU, TT, BU, TCU, etc. ;
1. Get a great coach.
2. Schedule non-conference patsies, at home, so you have a 3-0 or 4-0 baseline to start the season with.
3. Run a program that teaches and develops talent.
4. Build stability by winning 6-8 games per year, and make a run at a conference championship every few years.
Snyder wasn’t the first guy with the ability to do this. He was the first one after college football media revenue was upended after the ‘80s OU/UGA lawsuit. After that, media was negotiated by conferences, and weaker programs in major conferences could actually afford to play patsies. Before that, teams like OSU and KSU relied on gate for revenue, and had to play good teams. Really, check out old schedules- non-conference used to be real teams, because they needed the gate.
Gundy, like Patterson, Briles, Leach, Mangino, Campbell and Snyder before him, took advantage of this era. Small programs still didn’t have the resources of blue bloods, but if they were in the right conference, they had enough TV revenue to fund closer to the big schools, and were given steady games against their conference’s blue bloods, to stay in the public eye and keep boosters engaged. When they hit on a coaching hire, they made sure they paid well enough to keep him, if he was inclined to consider staying.
That era is over. Disparities in revenue once again mean disparities in competitiveness, and by an even greater amount. In (what I’ll call) the Snyder era, teams knew they needed to pay their star coaches top dollar, to keep them. Now, they ask those same coaches to surrender seven figures of salary to fun NIL.
It will just get worse for B12 schools, because their next media contract will reflect an even greater discrepancy. It’s a new era, and what worked in the last era for OSU doesn’t necessarily work in the new one.