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Eli Lederman, ESPN Staff WriterOct 4, 2024, 07:45 AM ET
- Eli Lederman covers college football and recruiting for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2024 after covering the University of Oklahoma for Sellout Crowd and the Tulsa World.
STILLWATER, Okla. — In the 60 years since Lou Watkins graduated from Oklahoma State, she has held various roles around the university, seen nearly all 250 games Mike Gundy has coached and, at one time or another, held the fate of his professional future in her hands.
Only recently, however, has Watkins been able to ask Gundy what was really on her mind:
“What was he thinking benching the quarterback on Saturday?”
The 82-year old Watkins, a resident of Legacy Village of Stillwater, was in the stands to see Cowboys quarterback Alan Bowman throw two interceptions and complete just 48.1% of his passes in Oklahoma State’s 22-19 loss to Utah on Sept. 21. Two days later, it was all everyone was talking about inside the halls of Legacy Village, the swanky senior living community located 4 miles from Boone Pickens Stadium.
That’s because Gundy’s weekly visit was approaching.
“I’ve seen him on television. I’ve been to all the games,” said Sharon Brown, an 84-year-old resident who earned her degree from Oklahoma State in 1962 and has concerns about the Cowboys’ dormant running game. “But for him to come to our house? It’s surreal.”
Sparked by a one-off holiday radio special in December, Legacy Village is the new home of Gundy’s coach’s show this fall, drawing nearly 100 residents to the facility’s fourth-floor ballroom every Monday, each one hanging on every word from the coach. In the community of retirees — some with connections to Oklahoma State dating back 70 years — they feel as close as ever to their school.
“It’s one of the best things we’ve ever done,” Gundy told ESPN.
THE HOTTEST COMMODITY on fall Monday nights at Legacy Village is a seat with a good view of the ballroom stage. This week, Joyce Wuetig, 86, is the first resident in the room just after 5 p.m., nearly a full hour before the broadcast begins. By 5:30, the room is brimming.
“I’m hard of hearing so I always try to sit up close,” says Wuetig, who invites her son-in-law to attend the radio show each week. “I like to hear Coach Gundy speak — I like his voice.”
Legacy Village sits on 55 acres of land with a view of a golf course and offers independent living, assisted living and memory care services. The community opened in March 2020. Gary and Nancy Franklin, a pair of retired accountants from Stillwater, moved in that month, three days after their 50th wedding anniversary.
“There’s always been an OSU spirit here,” says Nancy. “But the show being here has upped it a few notches.”
Gundy arrives at 6 p.m. on the dot, 90 minutes after the community’s dinner buffet. The residents cheer and pump black and orange pom-poms into the air as he walks in. About 50 showed up for the first live broadcast in Week 1; another 70 or so came in Week 2, prompting the Legacy Village staff to change the ballroom layout and begin limiting attendees from the outside public solely to guests with invites from residents.
On this Monday, about 100 chairs face the stage and few are empty. Each of Gundy’s first four visits to Legacy Village came after an Oklahoma State win. But now, on the heels of the Cowboys’ first loss of 2024, the 57-year-old coach prepares to get grilled as a producer passes around a microphone for residents to ask questions during the first commercial break.
“Surely after that game you’ve got some thoughts,” Gundy says. “Y’all can’t be that nice now.”
The questions are pointed but friendly. The residents here spend their Saturdays watching the Cowboys in the theater room. It’s a plugged-in crowd. During the week, they keep up through the pages of the Stillwater News Press and other local newspapers.
Minutes in, one man gets up to ask a question on many residents’ minds.
“What’s up with this situation where Ollie Gordon can’t get out of the pocket and run?” he asks.
“Well, it’s going to be tough on him,” Gundy replies before repeating an unsatisfying answer about defenses loading the box against the Cowboys. “It’s very disappointing that there’s really not a lot we can do about it.”
Later, a resident asks about the thought process when Gundy benched his starting quarterback at halftime against Utah, then threw Bowman back into the game in the fourth quarter. Another wants to know about Gundy screaming at a referee and is curious about what sparked the angry moment.
“I’m usually really good about that,” Gundy replies. “Officials are like teachers and police officers — they’re people you can’t control. So you want to be real nice to them…”
Gundy has joked that Legacy Village is one of the few places he can walk into confidently without any enemies. Facility officials estimate at least 75% of the residents hold some sort of connection to Oklahoma State.
On his first visit, Gundy was stunned by how many faces he recognized.
“I think it’s hard for me to realize it, but I’m kind of at that age where I know so many people that would be here,” he says.
WES AND LOU Watkins moved into Legacy Village the same week the facility opened in March 2020, 64 years after Wes first enrolled at Oklahoma State in 1956.
Wes served as student body president, then launched a lengthy political career that included 20 years in the United States Congress. The Wes Watkins Center for International Trade Development sits directly across from Boone Pickens Stadium, and Wes and Lou still remain heavily involved at the university, regularly attending football games and other events on campus.
“I’ve been in more homecoming parades than anyone else,” Wes, 85, says.
As Gundy speaks about a Cowboys offense that floundered against Utah, Wes is positioned in the front row wearing a visor similar to one Gundy might have worn in his first decade in charge at Oklahoma State. During a commercial break, he grabs the mic and makes a pitch, just in case Gundy is looking to replace his offensive coordinator.
“You see this hat I’ve got on?” he quips. “I’m for hire.”
A few rows behind him is Althea Wright. She arrived in Stillwater in 1953, back when the school was called Oklahoma A&M, and later married a basketball player named Mel Wright, who famously sank a last-second jumper over Wilt Chamberlain to beat Kansas in February 1957.
While Mel played basketball and baseball, Althea was a cheerleader.
“We wore a lot more clothes than [cheerleaders] wear now,” Althea, 89, says. “And we didn’t have to do any of those athletics tricks you see them do now. I can’t even imagine.”
Jack Nasworthy, 84, hangs on every one of Gundy’s words. His father, Elmer, wrestled in Stillwater from 1933 to 1936, and Nasworthy followed the same path as a member of Oklahoma State’s national champion wrestling teams in 1959 and 1961. He tried out for the United States Olympic team ahead of the 1960 Summer Games.
Dave Hunziker, the radio voice of the Cowboys, has in-laws in Legacy Village. Across the ballroom is the mother of Oklahoma State football strength coach Rob Glass and Lou Watkins, who learned how to manage the noise around Gundy in the turbulent moments of his tenure during part of her 23 years on the university’s board of regents.
“We kind of had to figure out what storms to weather [with Gundy],” she says.
Within a community so deeply connected to Oklahoma State, there are a handful of Oklahoma fans. Gradually, they’re starting to surface for Gundy’s weekly visits, too.
“We’re all friends, and a few of them played football for the Sooners,” Lou Watkins says. “When we’re watching Bedlam in the theater, we’re not always as kind as we should be.”
ONE OF COLLEGE football’s most singular and long-held traditions, the coach’s call-in radio show began as a weekly opportunity for a coach to connect directly to his fan base, and often vice versa. But while coaches are more insulated than ever, and programs have a multitude of ways to get their message out to the world, the call-in show has become outdated.
Michigan, for instance, is among the latest programs to move its weekly radio show from a public setting to a studio inside its team facility. And fewer coaches are fielding weekly questions from fans in 2024. This fall, Clemson notably joined the list of schools where the head coach is no longer taking calls from fans during his radio show (see: Tyler from Spartanburg).
Yet in Stillwater, in a room of 70- and 80-year-olds, Gundy’s weekly radio session has never felt more alive.
The idea to bring Gundy’s show to Legacy Village came late last year. Hunziker had always wanted to host an Oklahoma State Christmas special and thought the retirement community could be an ideal place for a festive event, bringing coaches and athletes to Legacy Village to mingle with the residents.
The holiday show drew rave reviews. The experience left Kristi Lester, Legacy Village’s sales and marketing director, wanting to do it more often.
Lester’s timing turned out to be good. Gundy’s radio show had called several places home in recent years — local Chick-fil-As and Slim Chickens restaurants among them — but most recently a Rib Crib near Boone Pickens Stadium.
The contract with Rib Crib expired at the end of the 2023 season, and Lester and the leadership at Legacy Village was excited about adding Gundy’s show to their resident programming. But they didn’t expect the impact it would make this fall.
“It used to just be game day Saturdays that would get people excited,” Lester says. “But now you see it throughout the week. There’s a true spirit. It’s given them something new and meaningful to look forward to. I’m beginning to wonder if they have anything else to talk about.”
The show is contracted to remain at Legacy Village for the next two seasons beyond 2024. There’s also a new wrinkle in the show. Each week this fall, an Oklahoma State football player joins for the final 20 minutes of the broadcast.
For the residents, the athlete appearances peel back another layer on the team they watch on Saturdays. The post-show photo ops are popular, as well. Althea Wright recently became a great-grandmother, and she scrolls past photos of her newborn great-grandchild in order to find the picture she took with Gordon, the Cowboys’ star running back, a few weeks ago.
For a former athlete such as Nasworthy, the visits are also a window into the next generation of Cowboys, who will represent his university long after he’s gone.
“As you get older you appreciate a lot of that stuff,” Nasworthy says. “Because they’re the people coming up. That’s people that are going to be here another 50 years. That means a lot to us. To see good people, people that want to do good for the university. Loyalty matters.”
STAR OKLAHOMA STATE linebacker Nick Martin was one of the first players to appear for the closing segments of the radio show. When Bowman, Oklahoma State’s 25-year-old, seventh-year quarterback visited, he told the crowd he was glad to finally be in a room where he felt young.
The athletes arrive at Legacy Village directly after the Cowboys’ Monday evening practice and receive name, image and likeness payments for their appearances. After the Utah game, the guest was veteran wide receiver Brennan Presley.
“You see that they’re more than a football player,” says 79-year-old Nancy Franklin. “You see that they have goals and a life. They’re no longer one-dimensional.”
As with Gundy, the residents ask questions during the commercial breaks while Presley’s onstage. They want to know about his string of athletic siblings who all went through local high school power Bixby. They ask about the crunching shot he took to his ribs in the loss to Utah.
Later, Presley got a question about his dating life and a past relationship with the daughter of offensive coordinator Kasey Dunn.
“What’s your relationship like with the offensive coordinator?” the resident wonders. “How about his daughter?”
“We’re off-air, right?” Presley replies, a nervous smile spreading across his face.
“Today’s program is brought to you by Frigidaire,” Hunziker cuts in.
The crowd laughs and Presley’s first visit to Legacy Village continues smoothly. Afterward, he takes pictures with every resident who wants one — and there are many.
“Sometimes you can undervalue what it means to other people,” he says. “I know what it felt like when I was a kid seeing my favorite college football player in person. It was really cool to get out here. I got to meet people that I would have never otherwise met.”
As Presley leaves Legacy Village, another coach’s show is in the books. It’s a vibrant community of retirees, and the community’s programming includes yoga, bingo and movie nights, but Gundy’s visits have been something more.
“This is by far the best setting we’ve done this from,” Gundy says. “I love it.”
For one hour each Monday, the OSU world comes to Legacy Village. And after the radio show wraps and Gundy departs, the energy inside the community remains, permeating the rest of the week, fueling the residents’ game-day “table-gates” and lingering all the way through to the next Monday evening, when Gundy returns and the fourth-floor ballroom is packed again.
“When Mike Gundy is here, we feel like we’re part of the conversation,” Brown says. “We just want to be close with the things we love the most. For many of us, that’s Oklahoma State.”
