OSU football notebook: Launching pad
BY JIMMIE TRAMEL World Sports Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2012
11/29/12 at 2:32 AM
The last two people to hold Todd Monken's job - offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State University - got head coaching opportunities.
Larry Fedora vaulted to Southern Miss and parlayed success there into the North Carolina job. Dana Holgorsen spent only one season at OSU before being hired as head coach at West Virginia.
Monken has head coaching aspirations, too. He said earlier this week that no one has contacted him yet about any of the many vacancies in college football. And that's a good thing. He would rather not deal with the distraction of having to think about another job during the season.
Monken speaks from experience. He said he interviewed for the Tulane job between a loss at Iowa State and a regular-season finale against Oklahoma last season.
He felt badly for doing it and, all the while, he wondered if it caused him to lose focus. He recalled typing in "stuff" in his computer that week. "And an hour later, I didn't remember doing it."
Said Monken, "I owe it to our university and our players to give them my best and you can't (when you are pursuing another job). When you are involved in an interview and you are trying to get another job, you cannot give the best to the place you are at. You can't. There is no way you can. Anybody that says they can, they are liars. Now, when the right job comes open, you have no choice."
What is the right job?
"The right job is the one you can win at," he said. "I don't give a crap what the money is. If you like winning, it's not about the money."
Mike Gundy said he thinks Monken will ultimately be a head coach, but the OSU head coach wants it to be a good situation. And Gundy hinted Monken can afford to be picky.
"He makes over $600,000 a year," Gundy said. "What we have tried to do is put those guys in a position where they won't leave until they think it's a job that really gives them a chance to have success."
Follow the leader: Joseph Randle leads the Big 12 in rushing and has been a pleasant surprise from a leadership standpoint, according to Gundy.
"The last couple of months, his leadership qualities have been really good and kind of set the bar for who we are," the coach said.
"His (Bedlam) postgame conference was something like, 'I don't know what to say. It's killing me that we lost this game.' This week somebody asked him about the next game and the hangover and he said, 'We don't have any choice. This is what we do.' He is starting to develop some of that Kendall Hunter leadership, but Kendall never talked."
Tough stuff: Randle ran 21 times for 113 yards in an overtime loss at OU. Gundy said he hasn't seen Randle run as hard since rushing for 208 yards against Texas.
"He had tough yards," Gundy said, referencing the Bedlam performance. "Joe ran through guys and got some tough yards for us on the goal line and stuff like that."
Randle became the first Cowboy running back to crack the 100-yard barrier against the Sooners in back-to-back years since Tatum Bell in 2002-03.
