Heading into Week 9 of the 2022 NCAA season, few fans were expecting to see a blowout when the Oklahoma State Football Cowboys faced off against the Kansas State Wildcats. Sure, both teams were ranked, with OSU coming in at nine and K-state at 22, but one of the teams was still very much a contender for bigger and better things thanks to their big-time wins over ranked Baylor, Texas, and Kansas City, plus a very close loss to TCU, whereas the other had just one big but impressive win with a surprising victory over Oklahoma when they were ranked sixth overall.

And yet, a blowout is what fans in Manhatten were treated to, only the outcome fell on the opposite side of what many talent evaluators might have expected. Going down 7-0 on the opening drive, Oklahoma State's drives went downs, punt, fumble, punt, interception, punt, end of half, punt, punt, downs, downs, punt, and one more turnover on downs before leaving the field with a second loss on their schedule.

If that opening drive was the lone score of the game, it would have resulted in a boring but still disappointing loss for a team with Big-12 Championship Game aspirations, but alas, that just wasn't how the game shook out. No, the Wildcats scored on that opening drive, and then scored again, and scored some more until they racked up a season-high 48 points, the most OSU has surrendered all season long by a four-point margin.

What went wrong? Needless to say, OSU head coach Mike Gundy had a lot to say on the subject.

Gundy apologizes after one of the uglies Ls in Oklahoma State Football history.

Given his opening comments ahead of his post-game media availability session, Gundy had a lot to say about his team's ugly loss, the times he's had his butt kicked in the past, and the general state of OSU football as a whole.

“Obviously, there’s not a lot I need to say, we got our butts kicked.” Gundy told reporters. “I told the team I’ve had by butt kicked before (and) I didn’t do a good job this week. I was concerned about a variety of different things this week, we didn’t practice like we normally practice, that’s my fault, and that’s what you get. I told them, I apologized to the team, I didn’t handle our team very well this week and I’m not taking anything away from Kansas State, they’re a good team and they played really well. Gosh, I don’t know, you’d have to ask coach but I don’t think they could have played a better game than they played today.”

On paper, it's hard to argue with Gundy's assertion about the Wildcats putting together a near-perfect game; while K-State has scored over 40 points in two other games this season, including a similarly impressive win over the then-sixth-ranked Oklahoma, Chris Klieman's squad hasn't outscored an opposing team by a net 48 point advantage, let alone held a ranked team to zero points in a game this season. Still, putting the ball solely in K-State's court would take the blame off of Gundy and his squad, as they didn't exactly turn in a formidable effort either. Fortunately, when a team loses 48-0 as a top-10-ranked team, a coach like Gundy isn't looking to make excuses as his team heads back to Stillwater.

“We weren’t prepared, we just went,” Gundy confessed. “We weren’t very physical up front, we couldn’t do much to balance ourselves offensively, we just, we weren’t prepared and I’ll take responsibility for that. I learned a good lesson, I tried to do a few things different and obviously I’m not going to do that again. I told the guys, sometimes that’s how life is, it’s not quite a fun as it was last week but as I say every Saturday, you’re gonna play again about this time next week, so the guys need to recover and get home, then come back to work tomorrow and get ready to go, we don’t have any time to waste. We have to identify what happened in certain instances and come up with solutions and plans and put them in place and move forward.”

With four games left to play, including contests against Kansas, Iowa State, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, OSU aren't technically dead in the water just yet, even if things probably aren't feeling too good on the bus ride home.

“I know I’m repeating myself now, but I’ve told the guys I’ve had my butt kicked before, it’s not any fun, but we know how to fight back, and we will if we stick together and come back tomorrow. And we get six days to prepare for the next one,” Gundy said, before accepting questions from the crowd of assembled reporters.