The Oklahoma State stars navigated a year of great change with a simple philosophy: ‘Keep that same hunger’

(Want Sellout Crowd content sent directly to your inbox? Subscribe to our newsletters here.)

STILLWATER — The day Oklahoma State opened spring football, some of the most sought-after, high-profile Cowboys were available to reporters for interviews.

Of course, Ollie Gordon and Nick Martin were in that group.

Their inclusion was a no-brainer — they are the faces of the franchise.

But rewind a year, and they were just faces in the crowd. 

Oh, there was buzz last spring about Gordon, who’d finished strong the previous season and ranked third on the team in rushing yards as a true freshman. And Martin was being mentioned as a linebacker to watch.

“Honestly, you look at a year ago,” Gordon said, “a lot has changed.”

No doubt.

As OSU hits the back half of spring practice, how Gordon and Martin handled that change should be a comfort to Cowboys inside and outside the program.Though their personalities are vastly different — Gordon the life of the party, Martin the silent assassi — their cores are much the same.

OSU needs a new softball stadium, but if you gave Kenny Gajewski $20 million, he might not spend it on a stadium. That's the new reality of NCAA sports. https://t.co/OuoERlbmgU

— Berry Tramel (@BerryTramel) April 12, 2024

They are rugged. They play smash mouth. They go hard every single snap.

As their stars rose last season, that did not change.

“Approaching it the same as you were before you were the guy,” Martin said. “Never get too high on the highs, never get too low on the lows. You continue to keep that same hunger, the same mentality that you had before.

“I think that’s the only way to handle this.”

The way Martin and Gordon play indicates they’ve both done that.

Martin, who was expected to back up starters Collin Oliver, Xavier Benson and Justin Wright, got his chance to start after Wright was injured during preseason camp. He began slow, recording three tackles in the opener, but soon enough, he was notching eight or 10 tackles in games.

With OSU coming off back-to-back losses to South Alabama and Iowa State, OSU assistant Tim Duffie called Martin into his office. Duffie liked what he’d seen out of Martin on the field, but the coach wanted more.

He had a directive.

“I want you to be more vocal,” Duffie told Martin. “Challenge players.”

Martin responded.

“At that point, I was starting to make plays, and he was asking me … ,” Martin stopped himself. “Well, he was telling me to be vocal, to speak up.

“That was one of the weeks where you find your identity.”

Martin and the Cowboys did just that. They beat Kansas to start a five-game winning streak. They’d finish winning seven wins in their last eight games and making the Big 12 Championship Game.

As for Martin, he had an eye-popping 17 tackles against K-State, the most in a game by an OSU player since 2016. 

He finished the season with 140 tackles, the most by an OSU player in 40 years. He was a first-team All-Big 12 honoree and an All-American.

Gordon had a similar rocketship-to-the-stars trajectory. 

His slow start was coach-inflicted. It’s never been entirely clear what coach was to blame — Mike Gundy? Kasey Dunn? John Wozniak? We may never know since someone would have to throw someone else under the bus — but He Who Shall Not Be Named only gave Gordon 19 carries in the first three games.

His total touches: 25.

His average pick-up when he touched the ball: 6.2 yards.

Finally, He Who Shall Not Be Named realized Gordon might be a weapon that could and should be used more than six or eight times a game, and a season was changed and a star was born.

Gundy talked regularly last season about how Gordon needed to stay humble, level headed. The Cowboy head coach reiterated that message this spring.

“We’re in a challenging time now,” Gundy said of the current state of college football. “You take Ollie, who is 20 years old, and guys that make a lot of money (with name/image/likeness) and you tell them to stay level-headed, not the easiest thing to do with a 20-year-old. He has to understand that the teams we play this season don’t care what he accomplished last year, so he has to continue to raise the bar.

“He’s not a secret anymore, so he has to continue to raise the bar.”

Um, he wasn’t a secret after the mid-way point of last season, and you know what he did the last six games of the regular season? Put up bigger numbers. 

He went from 136 yards against K-State and 168 yards against Kansas to 282 yards at West Virginia and 271 yards against Cincinnati.

Gordon finished the season rushing for 1,732 yards and 21 touchdowns. He was the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year, an All-American and the Doak Walker Award winner.

And when he decided to return to OSU for his junior season instead of entering the transfer portal and setting off what was sure to be an NIL bidding war, Gordon announced with a video that featured him palling around with Pistol Pete and OSU president Kayse Shrum.

Gordon has become Mr. OSU.

He admits this spring has been a bit crazy, not being able to go many places without being recognized or photographed or mentioned on social media.

“But when you expect that to happen,” he said of becoming one of the best, “it can’t really be too shocking to you.

“You just live every day one day at a time.”

Gordon says having a good support system helps, too. He knows his mom and his aunt, who helped raise him, are only a phone call away while his roommates and teammates are always available.

Though he admits, nothing has been crazy enough to need backup.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “It hasn’t gotten to that point yet.”

Both Gordon and Martin seem to have handled all that’s happened during this past year in stride. Even though they have vastly different personalities — Martin characterized it as “He’s more or less an extrovert; I like to be ducked off in the shadows” — they have a similar outlook. 

“We both understand that in the grand scheme of things, we haven’t really done nothing,” Martin said. “The main goal is to get to the league. … We haven’t done that. We’re on track, (but) just got to keep that steady head and stay on the path.”

Neither knows what this next year will bring. By next spring, both will be draft-eligible with a year of college eligibility remaining. They could go. They could stay. 

But Ollie Gordon and Nick Martin know better than most that trying to predict the future is impossible.

After all, who saw all of this coming for either of them this time last spring?

Martin blew a raspberry when asked to consider all that’s changed, then summed it up beautifully.

“A blessing.”