Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy always seems to cut to the chase in interviews.

Gundy told the media at last week’s Big 12 Media Days that the league will flourish even without Oklahoma and Texas, who are bolting for the SEC by 2025.

”I don’t think there’s any question as this moves forward that the Big 12 Conference is in tremendous position,” Gundy said. “I said this after we acquired the four teams (Houston, Cincinnati, BYU and Central Florida) that came in. I don’t need to go through the detail of each one of them, but if you look at the geographical television opportunities that they bring to the table, the number of viewers based on their location, the success they’ve had in football, they give us different time zones. They give us success and viewership, and ultimately that’s what it comes down to.

“This is a power struggle for long-term television money. The Big 12 is better off today than it was at this time last year. As I said earlier, I think that we have fantastic leadership. We’ve got the right people in place. I’m convinced that they’ll come up with a plan, and the Big 12 will be here to stay for a long time.”

Part of the change could be the disappearance of the annual Bedlam game with cross-state rival Oklahoma.

“Well, the future in Bedlam is a year or two left,” said Gundy, who’s brother Cale is an assistant at OU.”That’s the future of Bedlam, based on somebody else’s decision…

“Recruiting for us hasn’t really changed a lot. It’s interesting with young people now, I’m not sure – you might be able to take a poll of the top 250, 300 recruits in the country and ask them if they know – for example, you could throw out what conference is Purdue in or what conference is Wake Forest in, and I would say there’s about a 50 percent chance they might not know what the conference is.

“Young people live in certain worlds today, and essentially they want to know what you as a university and athletic department, as a football team and a coach can do for them. That’s what they’re interested in.”

OSU is picked to come in third in the Big 12. What will it take to go one more step than last season, when the Cowboys were inches away from a Big 12 title?

“One, you stay healthy,” Gundy said. “As always, we have to get good quarterback play. Good quarterback play is we need to give him some protection and we need to rush the ball successfully.

“Obviously we had a fantastic year on defense last year. The majority of that was we were able to put pressure on quarterbacks. We got a lot of sacks with four-man rush, allowed us to play coverage, allowed us to play a little man in the back end.

“We lost two fantastic college football linebackers last year. We’ve got guys that have to replace them. We like where they’re at. They just haven’t played in big games. We don’t know much about them.

“We have the same situation at corner. They’ve played some but haven’t been out there in big games.

“Special teams-wise, we’ve got everybody back. We should be better than last year. We were good last year. We should be better than last year. We have everybody back.”

OSU quarterback Spencer Sanders has been picked as preseason first-team quarterback in the Big 12.

“Spencer has been fantastic for us,” Gundy said. “He has now become a magician in our offense. He knows it. He can run it fast. He understands. The middle toward the end of last year he started to make really quality decisions in a short amount of time, which is very important in quarterback play in our opinion.

“He’s tough. He’s humble. He doesn’t worry about something that he might not have. There’s times that we put him on the field and we were beat up in the offensive line. Never said a word about it. There’s times we put him out there and he was playing with true freshmen at wide receivers. Never said a word about it.

“His competitive nature, his toughness allows him to be a really good player, and we want him to relax and enjoy the season, have fun and go out and play good football.”

Former OSU defensive coordinator Jim Knowles was hired by Ohio State and replaced by Derek Mason. Gundy feels good about Mason’s abilities.

“Derek has been fantastic,” Gundy said. “It’s been a smooth transition. He’s a first-class person. He understands loyalty and hard work. He has a great relationship with the players.

“I became interested in him when I found out – well, obviously I knew about his history in being a head coach, being a coordinator, being in successful programs, and so the players have rallied around him, and the transition has been very smooth.”

Under Gundy, OSU has had 16 straight winning seasons and is 11-5 in bowl games. Losing the Big 12 title game last season was hard to swallow.

“But our team is resilient, as you can see,” Gundy said. “They went in and beat a very good Notre Dame football team on the big stage, did it without our defensive coordinator. Our defensive coaches rallied together, put the pieces together at halftime and played very well in the second half, and then obviously offensively we churned out a bunch of points. We made plays at the end of the game.

“Our team is in great shape now. They’re excited about the start, as I said earlier. We’ve got seniors – we have mature players that understand the commitment and what it takes to be successful, and they’re instilling those values in our younger players.”

It helps to have loyal fans. OSU is 11-1 in their last 12 home games and 7-0 in Stillwater last season.

“We have a fantastic fan base,” Gundy said. “We have our Paddle People, and I’ve said this before, we have a football stadium that gives you the basketball, college basketball arena feel. The fans are right down on the field.

“We’re currently in a $40 million renovation on our stadium and field turf and such.

“I wouldn’t change where we’re at for anything. There’s just something special about playing on that field and in that stadium, and our players embrace it. Our fans embrace it. It continues to get better each year.

“The fans, the people that show up Friday mornings, Friday nights, Saturday mornings before the game. We have around 35,000 tailgaters now in Stillwater. We have a walk that our players walk through the tailgaters, and then of course on game day and the field.

“It’s a special place. It’s a perfect size and a perfect setting for college football.”