Mike Gundy, Dana Holgorsen benefited from each other in year together at Oklahoma State

STILLWATER — Dana Holgorsen spent roughly 10 months as Oklahoma State’s offensive coordinator in 2010.

By head coach Mike Gundy’s count, that equals more than 40 cases of Red Bull that were consumed by Holgorsen in Stillwater, before he departed to become the head coach at West Virginia.

“I bet he would go through a case a week pretty easy,” said Gundy, who has since kicked his own Red Bull habit with the help of his director of administration Danielle Clary. “Danielle took all my Red Bulls and said they’re not good for you if you have a high-pressure job.”

Their taste for energy drinks wasn’t the only thing Gundy and Holgorsen, now in his fifth year at Houston, shared in those 10 months more than a decade ago, and both are still influenced by their time together.

Gundy and Holgorsen are set to meet again at 3 p.m. Saturday when 23rd-ranked OSU visits Houston for the first meeting between the teams as Big 12 partners.

“I think when you go back to those 10 months together, I had a lot of freedom to do my job,” Holgorsen said of 2010. “At the same time, what made us so effective was that natural mesh of schemes in Gundy’s principles and mixing those with my system. We had a really good year. There were great people in place and we had some really talented players.”

More: What does Oklahoma State football's offense need? Mike Gundy says 'we need to be balanced'

Gundy had been based in a more traditional offense, particularly in his run game philosophy, but had branched out into spread concepts. Then he brought in Holgorsen, who was straight out of the Air Raid family, content to throw the ball as often as possible.

“We brought Dana in, because we thought he was a smart offensive coach, which he is, and he had experience calling plays,” Gundy said. “We knew we had a lot of firepower throwing passes.

“He came in and put terminology in and used the talent we had. He said, ‘I just need to get it rolling and let these guys play.’”

Holgorsen had never used tight ends or fullbacks in his concepts, but those had been strong points of the OSU run game under Gundy.

“He put all his stuff in, then he saw we had good running backs and fullbacks,” Gundy said. “We integrated it together and it was good for us.”

That set the stage for what Holgorsen’s successors — first Todd Monken, then Mike Yurcich — did with the Cowboy offense when it was at its peak.

Holgorsen, oddly enough, can’t seem to stay away from the Big 12. He had been coaching quarterbacks and receivers at Division II Wingate University when Mike Leach hired Holgorsen to coach inside receivers at Texas Tech in 2000.

Holgorsen left to be the offensive coordinator at Houston in 2008 before Gundy brought him back to the Big 12 in 2010.

More: Mussatto: Big 12 was right to change tiebreaker, but good luck quieting the conspiracies

Then Holgorsen got the head job at West Virginia in 2011, and a year later, the Mountaineers joined the Big 12.

Holgorsen took the Houston job in 2019, and now, he’s a Big 12 head coach once again.

Gundy has a 5-2 record against his former sidekick, who he first met when both were recruiting the same high school in Holgorsen’s early years at Texas Tech. He was tagging along with Leach at a spring 7-on-7 event.

“He’s a lot like Leach,” Gundy said of Holgorsen. “They have their way they do things, and it might be at 11 a.m., it might be at 6 p.m., it might be at 2 in the morning. But they understand what they’re trying to get accomplished. They just go about it a little bit different way than most conventional coaches do.”

Yet, for as unconventional as Holgorsen might be, he learned some more traditional methods for leading a program in his time with Gundy.

“I took a lot of things from Gundy from a structural and organizational perspective,” Holgorsen said. “Things like the way you run a program and what your day-to-day should look like. The job Mike has done is among the best in the country as it relates to building a program and creating excitement around a program.”

Houston faces an uphill battle in its first year as a Power Five program, but Gundy sees promise for Holgorsen with the Cougars.

“I know they’re in a lucrative area,” Gundy said, referring to the recruiting capabilities in a major metropolitan area of Texas. “I would think within a four-hour drive of that school, they have 200 offers.

“I think they have a lucrative future from a recruiting standpoint, and I think they have NIL advantages.

“Dana’s a smart coach.”

Scott Wright covers Oklahoma State athletics for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Scott? He can be reached at swright@oklahoman.com or on Twitter at @ScottWrightOK. Sign up for the Oklahoma State Cowboys newsletter to access more OSU coverage. Support Scott’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com or by using the link at the top of this page.

More: Oklahoma State football vs. Houston: Our score predictions are in for Cowboys-Cougars

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Mike Gundy, Dana Holgorsen learned from each other in year at OSU