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It has been four years since I saw Perrish Cox return a kick for a touchdown the first time he touched the ball as a Cowboy.
It has been four years since I first met Russell Okung during the craziest snow storm to ever hit Stillwater. He hung out where I was working because he didn’t want to go back outside and face the cold.
And it has been four years since I first saw Zac Robinson throw three touchdown passes against Texas A&M as a redshirt freshman and thinking he had a chance to be good two years later after Bobby Reid graduated.
I have watched as Beau Johnson and Swanson Miller got into a massive water fight with other members of the team during the slow and boring summer nights here in Stillwater.
And I remember the first time I talked to Lucien Antoine and hearing the excitement he had to be a Cowboy and to start practicing with the team and how appreciative of the opportunity he was being given after growing up with much less in Haiti.
This senior class of Oklahoma State football holds, in my mind, a significant place in the history and future of Oklahoma State football.
When Mike Gundy was hired in 2005, little did he know his first recruiting class would lead Oklahoma State to four consecutive bowl games and two of the better seasons in Oklahoma State history.
When this group first took the field in 2006 they were playing in stadium that was under renovations and had a mudhole for a west endzone.
For four years they have seen the west endzone grow, while seats were added and attendance records were broken.
Players said they had tears in their eyes as they ran out against Georgia at the beginning of this season knowing they had been part of the new age of Oklahoma State football.
Oklahoma State President Burns Hargis called this class the avant-garde for the renaissance of Oklahoma State football.
The character of this senior class has never been in question either.
Although OSU had several chances to fall apart this season with numerous injuries to key players, the early loss to Houston and the Dez Bryant situation. Gundy credited this senior class for keeping his team together and pressing on to what could be one of the Cowboys’ most successful seasons if they were beat Oklahoma after Thanksgiving and get an at-large-bid to the Fiesta Bowl.
Among the 22 seniors, there is a collective 407 starts.
But perhaps the most astounding thing about this senior class is out of the 22 seniors, only two have not received significant playing time since being here.
But even offensive lineman Mark Chesnut and receiver Nathan Gilsleider should be lauded with the same amount of credit as a Zac Robinson or Andre Sexton for their hours of practice and dedication to being a Cowboy.
Now after a victory against Colorado where senior Keith Toston had one of his finest games of his career and Perrish Cox returned a punt to bookend his career with returns for touchdowns. On a night that had every chance to go wrong, the seniors on defense held the group together and the Cowboys still have a fighting chance at a trip to Arizona.
Watching the seniors standing at midfield with their loved ones, I wondered what the next group of Cowboys will bring.
They will have large shoes to fill.
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