College football winners and losers: The seat got hotter at Oklahoma State, Wisconsin and Arkansas in Week 4

Week 4 was not kind to three coaches who badly needed to stack up September wins to secure their futures.

Friday night, Oklahoma State’s spiral continued with a 19-12 loss to Tulsa. It was the Golden Hurricane’s first win over the Cowboys since 1998 and the school’s first victory in Stillwater since 1951.

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At 1-2, Mike Gundy’s program is now facing the prospect of an even worse season than 2024 when the Cowboys went 3-9. As Gundy is in his 21st season in charge at Oklahoma State, it’s nearly impossible to see how he’ll be around for a 22nd.

Gundy is the winningest coach in school history by a wide margin and Oklahoma State has been consistently successful. 2024 was just OSU’s second losing season under Gundy and the Cowboys have won at least 10 games in eight of his seasons.

Oklahoma State’s last 10-win season came in 2023 as the Cowboys made the Big 12 title game. Two years feels like a long, long time ago.

OSU lost all nine conference games in 2024 and ended the season with a 52-0 thud at Colorado. After the season was over, Gundy’s rolling five-year contract was amended to a four-year deal and he took a salary decrease for the 2025 season.

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That new contract reduced his buyout to $15 million after the 2025 season and he brought in two new coordinators in well-traveled college assistants Doug Meacham and Todd Grantham. The changes haven’t worked so far. And as Big 12 play begins against Baylor in a week, Oklahoma State is staring at the prospect of an 11th straight loss to a conference opponent.

Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell would love to have Oklahoma State’s remaining schedule. The Badgers dropped to 2-2 with a 27-10 home loss to Maryland on Saturday. By the time Wisconsin scored a touchdown, the Terrapins led 27-3 in the fourth quarter and the game was wrapped up.

Heck, it was wrapped up in the first half. Maryland led 20-0 at the break and Wisconsin students broke into a “Fire Fickell” chant as the Badgers went into the locker room.

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Fickell is in his third season at Wisconsin and the Badgers are now 14-15 since the start of 2023. He was hired after Paul Chryst was fired in 2022 when Wisconsin started 2-3.

Wisconsin never won fewer than nine games in any full season of Chryst’s tenure. Nine losses looks exponentially more likely than nine wins do for the Badgers in 2025.

Saturday’s game against Maryland was Wisconsin’s most winnable Big Ten game of the season. If the Badgers can’t beat the Terrapins at home, who are they going to beat? The next eight games for Wisconsin include five ranked teams and games against Iowa, Washington and Minnesota.

Arkansas also fell to 2-2 as the Razorbacks blew an 18-point lead in a 32-31 defeat to Memphis. The Razorbacks led 28-10 in the first half and had an 11-point halftime margin before Memphis took a 32-31 lead with 4:51 to go.

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The Razorbacks had a fantastic chance to get the win too. After that Memphis TD, Arkansas’ offense went 68 yards in nine plays as running back Mike Washington Jr. was getting chunks of yards on the ground and through the air.

But Washington fumbled at the Memphis 7-yard line with 1:18 to go and the Tigers recovered before running the clock out.

Razorbacks coach Sam Pittman’s future has been a topic of discussion for years and Saturday’s loss isn’t going to quell anything in the state of Arkansas. Especially given Arkansas’ remaining schedule.

Seven of Arkansas’ eight remaining games are against teams currently ranked in the AP Top 25. And the only unranked team that Arkansas has is a Mississippi State team that beat Big 12 champion Arizona State in Week 2.

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The Razorbacks will likely play spoiler along the way and give a ranked team or two fits in October or November. But that’s not the expectation among the fanbase, even if the athletic director believes the team isn’t currently set up to compete for a national title.

Here are the rest of Week 4’s winners and losers.

Winners

North Texas: Look out, the Mean Green is 4-0 after a 45-38 overtime win at Army. North Texas blew out Washington State in Week 3 and looked on the way to a blowout win over the Black Knights before Army scored 17 points in the fourth quarter to force overtime.

But Caleb Hawkins scored his fourth TD of the day in OT for UNT and the defense held Army on its possession. Hawkins finished the game with 13 carries for 99 yards as the Mean Green could be an early contender in a very deep American Conference.

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TCU: The Iron Skillet is staying in Fort Worth for the foreseeable future. The Horned Frogs beat SMU 35-24 in the last scheduled rivalry game between the two Metroplex teams. TCU QB Josh Hoover was 22-of-40 passing for 379 yards and five touchdowns and a lot of those passes went to Eric McAlister.

McAlister was unstoppable with eight grabs for 254 yards and three touchdowns. The Horned Frogs should be ranked in Sunday’s AP Top 25.

Losers

No. 16 Utah: The Utes fell apart in the second half against No. 17 Texas Tech. After cutting Texas Tech’s lead to 13-10 in the fourth quarter, the Red Raiders scored 21 straight points with backup QB Will Hammond at the helm to close the game out.

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Hammond replaced starter Behren Morton after Morton took a shoulder to the head on a scramble. Hammond was 13-of-16 passing for 169 yards and two scores in relief as the Red Raiders moved to 4-0 and got a massive road win in what should be an extremely competitive Big 12.

Charlotte: Tim Albin’s got a rebuilding job on his hands. The former Ohio coach dropped to 1-3 as the 49ers’ coach on Thursday night with a 28-17 home loss to Rice. Charlotte has lost all three of those games by double digits and its only win came in a 42-35 victory over FCS-level Monmouth.

Albin moved to Charlotte and the American Conference after three straight 10-win seasons with the Bobcats. Those three seasons came after a 3-9 campaign in his first year in charge. Charlotte fans and administrators are certainly hoping for a sequel.