Max OlsonMay 13, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseCovers the Big 12Joined ESPN in 2012Graduate of the University of NebraskaFollow on XMultiple Authors
Roddy Jones: Oklahoma State is going to be dangerous offensively (0:47)Roddy Jones breaks down how Drew Mestemaker can make a positive impact for Oklahoma State this season. (0:47)
STILLWATER, Okla. — Drew Mestemaker insists he hadn’t made up his mind yet. The prized quarterback had just been on a call with Oregon and felt it went well. He phoned his head coach, Eric Morris, to check in.
They’d agreed from the start that Mestemaker would be a fool not to consider his options with millions of dollars on the line as one of the top QBs in the portal. While most expected him to follow Morris from North Texas to Oklahoma State, Mestemaker confessed he was still trying to work through his decision.
He reminded his star pupil what they’d just accomplished together. In Mestemaker’s first season as a college starter, he led the nation in passing yards, operated the No. 1 scoring offense in FBS and achieved a 12-2 record, the best in school history.
Oklahoma State’s newly hired coach needed a yes from his record-setting quarterback as he attempted to totally rebuild a roster in just 10 weeks, aiming to flip the worst team in the Big 12 into an instant contender.
The Cowboys enjoyed a remarkable run of sustained success under Mike Gundy with 18 consecutive winning seasons. Gundy secured his eighth 10-win season in 2023. Then the program totally fell off the cliff with a 4-20 record and zero conference wins over the last two years. The winningest coach in school history was fired three games into a hopeless 1-11 season last fall.
The school brought in the 40-year-old Morris and trusted him to execute a complete shake-up this offseason. He’s practically leading an expansion team in 2026. Oklahoma State’s 105-man roster this year will feature 85 new players, including 60 acquired in the transfer portal. Even for these endlessly transactional times for college football, this is one of the most dramatic roster flips ever attempted.
The to-do list as soon as Morris accepted the job on Nov. 25: Convince Mestemaker to follow his coaches up to Stillwater. Get a dozen more North Texas starters committed to joining him. Restock every position group with the right mix of transfers and high school signees over a marathon month of nonstop recruiting, nearly 90 official visits and daily chaos. And, well, try your best to stay under budget.
He had highly productive offenses in each of his three years as North Texas’ head coach. He just didn’t have the resources to retain top talent. Each offseason brought major turnover.
Morris sat down with players and tried to explain why the grass isn’t always greener elsewhere. But the Power 4 money was often too good to turn down, and the financial gap kept growing. Year after year, he’d lose valuable starters. But North Texas kept finding new playmakers and kept scoring.
The Mean Green were one win away from reaching the College Football Playoff last season with a roster that cost just under $1 million.
As he interviewed with Oklahoma State, Arkansas, Auburn and UCLA last November and weighed his own move up, Morris knew each opportunity required different roster build-outs. There were a lot of reasons why Oklahoma State made the most sense for Morris, a Texas Tech grad who played for Mike Leach, coached under Kliff Kingsbury and knew the Big 12 well.
A smaller community to raise his two growing sons. An easier 200-mile move up I-35 for his coaches and their families. A power program that needed a shot of energy and excitement after a brisk, brutal decline. Best of all: Oklahoma State was going to totally let him do it his way with his people.
At Oklahoma State, he started with a fully funded revenue-sharing budget for football of around $15 million with support to fundraise that total up to $20 million or more. Now that Morris had the funds, could he pay for his North Texas stars — especially Mestemaker — to stick with him?
Schools began lining up for Mestemaker as soon as he started thriving last season. The former walk-on was a revelation and put up an FBS-best 4,379 passing yards — including a school-record 608 against Charlotte — in his first full season as a starter since ninth grade.
After a 59-10 win over Washington State last September, Morris went to general manager Raj Murti and said, “We gotta pay Drew.”
The first-year GM feared it was a waste of their limited money, knowing how quickly the redshirt freshman was moving up Power 4 teams’ recruiting boards, but agreed he deserved it. Mestemaker sat down with Murti and senior associate AD Steve Keasler and they bumped him up to $65,000.
“They were just saying, ‘We’re not dumb enough to think nobody else is going to be calling you,'” Mestemaker said. “‘We know other schools are going to be calling you. We just want you to let us know what you’re thinking.'”
Murti and Keasler got to work on fundraising for what they hoped would be a competitive number to keep Mestemaker at North Texas in 2026, but they knew it would be tough if the price tag exceeded $2 million, given the market rate for top-end starters.
Mestemaker wasn’t interested in going on a tour of visits or embracing a bidding war. He wouldn’t do that to Morris.
“They took a chance on me,” Mestemaker said. “I’m not going to make them keep matching these other schools’ offers. I feel like that’s just out of bad faith.”
Oklahoma State named Morris as its new head coach in late November, but Mestemaker waited until after North Texas’ New Mexico Bowl victory to announce he was transferring. The initial offer from Oklahoma State required a bit more negotiating. It was eye-opening to Mestemaker to learn his reps could ask for a new truck, accommodations for his mom to travel to games and other perks.
Mestemaker officially announced his pledge to the Pokes on Jan. 3. He inked the richest deal in program history, a two-year agreement that sources told ESPN will pay around $7 million. As he drove around in his 2026 Ford F-150 Lariat with his girlfriend this spring, he couldn’t help but appreciate how much his life has changed in just 15 college starts.
“If you would’ve told me in three years I would’ve been here, I would’ve told you that you were crazy,” Mestemaker said. “It all happened so fast.”
Young, his go-to receiver with 1,264 receiving yards in 2025, was planning to take official visits to Michigan, Louisville and Missouri after his visit to Stillwater. For a former three-star recruit who made around $7,000 last year, it was exciting to be in demand. Several schools offered significantly more money than Oklahoma State could. For Young, it came down to trust.
“Wherever Drew was going, that’s where I wanted to go. Why would I want to play with any other quarterback? I feel like he’s the best in the country.”
For freshman running back Caleb Hawkins, there was no beating his relationship with his position coach Patrick Cobbs. The AAC Rookie of the Year was following Cobbs no matter what. When the portal opened, Hawkins intentionally did not have an agent because he didn’t want anyone to convince him to go elsewhere.
“You didn’t have to convince Caleb,” Mestemaker said. “Caleb didn’t even know Texas and Oklahoma and all these schools wanted him.”
In high school, Hawkins was being recruited by Division II schools before North Texas found him. Young couldn’t get admitted to Rice and thought he’d end up at Blinn College. And Mestemaker was considering walking on at Sam Houston or trying the junior college route at Laney College until Morris gave him a roster spot. They bet on the coaches who’d believed in them.
This offseason, Oklahoma State was one of 11 FBS programs with new head coaches who signed double-digit players from their previous school. Penn State led the way when it imported 24 players from Iowa State’s roster.
In all, 20 former North Texas players made the move to Stillwater. The new staff was off to a solid start. Now they just needed to go find 60 more.
OKLAHOMA STATE’S NEW coaching staff hosted one big official visit weekend for its North Texas players starting on Jan. 3 after the transfer portal officially opened.
For everyone else? The Cowboys were flying players in and out every day for sped-up, 24-hour visits, striving for efficiency during a period of pure chaos.
By the end of January, Oklahoma State had hosted 89 players on official visits in 26 days. Even for the Cowboys’ head coach, it was a dizzying experience.
“We had to change this roster so fast, so many spots,” Morris said. “You meet with all these guys and it’s just an information overload. Sometimes it was hard for my brain to process so many different kids. It’s not a fun few weeks, in my opinion. I don’t care if you have money or you don’t have money, old job or new job, I don’t think it’s a great model for your brain to process really important information.”
Five days after Morris accepted the job, he sent Murti up to Stillwater on Nov. 30 to get to work. The 25-year-old general manager joined the staff at North Texas last spring after one year at TCU and five at Houston. At Oklahoma State, he was diving right into the deep end of the pool with this roster rebuild.
Oklahoma State players were permitted to enter the portal right after Gundy was fired, so quite a few — most notably guard Noah McKinney (signed with TCU) and tight end Josh Ford (Alabama) — were long gone along with the team’s 20 graduating seniors by the time Morris showed up. Murti estimates fewer than 50 players attended their first team meeting.
“Coach walked in and whispered to me, ‘Where’s everyone else?'” Murti said. “I said, ‘Coach, this is it.'”
Those who stuck around had to meet with Morris or Murti and find out whether they were being offered a new deal for 2026 or being encouraged to continue their playing careers elsewhere. It’s an uncomfortable process, one every new staff entering Year 1 undertakes in this rev-share era.
Defensive linemen were a priority in their retention efforts, and they convinced a bunch of promising contributors on defense to stay in the program. Among the 66 players who transferred out of Oklahoma State this offseason, only 25 (37%) landed at other Power 4 programs.