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Mike Gundy wonders if Oklahoma State played on 'level playing field' against Ole Miss in Sugar Bowl

With Ole Miss in the news for NCAA violations, Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy is looking back at OSU’s Sugar Bowl loss to the Rebels. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
With Ole Miss in the news for NCAA violations, Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy is looking back at OSU’s Sugar Bowl loss to the Rebels. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Mike Gundy has some thoughts.

Whether he is offering hot takes about Big 12 expansion, millennials, or lamenting his team’s controversial “loss” to Central Michigan, the Oklahoma State head coach is never afraid to speak his mind.

So when asked by Tulsa World columnist Bill Haisten about the NCAA issues at Ole Miss — the football program is facing 21 violations and has self-imposed a one-year bowl ban — Gundy looked back to the Cowboys’ 2016 Sugar Bowl loss to the Rebels and wondered if his team competed on a “level playing field.”

Ole Miss has been accused of committing acts of academic fraud, arranging for cash payments to be made to a recruit, lying to the NCAA and a lack of institutional control. Gundy has been among the consumers of ominous updates emanating from Oxford, Mississippi.

“The first thing I thought about was (OSU’s recent experience with the NCAA),” Gundy said, “and the second thing was the Sugar Bowl and my players and what they went through.”

“We’ll never know what we could have done in the Sugar Bowl if it was a level playing field,” Gundy said. “That is the truth. I’m not sure we would have won the Sugar Bowl, but we’ll never know.”

Apparently, Gundy added, “we didn’t all play by the same rules. If everybody is playing by the rules and you get your butt kicked, that’s OK. I can live with that. But when it’s an uneven playing field, that’s not fair.”

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As he alluded to, Gundy has been through the NCAA ringer before. Sports Illustrated published a five-part series detailing alleged misdeeds throughout Gundy’s program. The NCAA investigated but didn’t find much and a large percentage of SI’s reporting was found to be unsubstantiated. So Gundy knows what that scrutiny is like, but he apparently doesn’t have too much empathy for Hugh Freeze and the Rebels.

It certainly can’t feel good to lose a big game to a team that has been accused of cheating, but Gundy’s team wasn’t even close in that one. Ole Miss completely dominated the Cowboys and took a 34-6 lead into halftime before eventually prevailing 48-20. Only one player from that Ole Miss team, offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil, has caught the attention of NCAA investigators (that we know of), so it’d be a pretty big leap to say that the outcome really could have been much different.

For more Oklahoma State news, visit OStateIllustrated.com.

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Sam Cooper is a writer for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!