MANHATTAN, Kan.—One parting of the Red Sea was plenty for Moses. Nobody asked Lazarus to escape two graves. Bill Snyder? He’s hoping to burnish his resume as miracle worker.
The white-haired coach, who labeled his autobiography “the greatest turnaround in college football history,” has chucked a restless three-year retirement for the challenge of turning Kansas State around once more.
The first time, he quite possibly saved the program from extinction. He is rightly revered. To get to Bill Snyder Family Stadium, turn off Interstate 70 onto Coach Bill Snyder Highway.
But he’ll be 70 in October and it’s a much tougher football neighborhood than when he arrived in 1989 as a tireless 49-year-old.
Perhaps he’ll have a triumphant return and K-Staters will happily go off in search of other objects to name in his honor. Or perhaps coming back will prove a legacy-damaging mistake, a serious setback for the program he loves so very much.
“What the outcome will be, I have absolutely no idea,” Snyder said. “But, you know, if we can, and I’ve said this so many times, if we can settle the waters, it will have been worth the effort.”
On the field, the team’s fortunes are expected to hinge on the quarterback who replaces Josh Freeman, the school’s career leader in yards, completions and touchdowns. It will likely be Carson Coffman or Grant Gregory, who may be best suited for the option offense that Snyder’s quarterbacks ran so effectively during his first 17 years as Kansas State head coach.
Even though the Wildcats finished 117th in defense last year and won only two Big 12 games, things are not nearly so dire as they were before Snyder’s “Miracle in Manhattan.”
Twenty years ago, Kansas State was the worst program in major college football, bar none. The only school with 500 losses, they had won just two Big Eight Conference games the previous four years.
Against this daunting backdrop arrived Snyder. Players and assistants quickly learned his workaholic ways made most coaches look lazy, that his attention to detail made Bill Belichick seem slapdash.
He won only one game his first year, snapping a 30-game winless streak. But the Wildcats began their ascent the very next year and starting in 1993, they went to 11 consecutive bowl games.
Incredibly, the losingest program in major college history actually reached No. 1 in the national poll. The zenith came at the Big 12 championship game in 2003 when the Wildcats handily beat Oklahoma. When he retired after the 2005 season with a record of 136-68-1, Snyder had won as many games in 17 years as the previous 11 coaches from 1935-88 combined.
In came Ron Prince. Three years later, out went Ron Prince. Fans were restless, and so was Snyder.
“Joe Paterno called,” Snyder recalled. “He said, ‘You’re going to really get sick and tired of all those Little League baseball games that you go to. Just think about this, 7 innings, 35-32, baseball game. How many of those are you going to be able to handle?’ And so I said, ‘OK, Joe, it makes sense.'”
As venerated as he is, not all fans were enthusiastic about Snyder’s return. His last two seasons, 2004 and ’05, he lost more than he won.
And some wonder if he’s up for the challenge in the Big 12.
Snyder is trying to rebuild Kansas State at a time when Oklahoma contends for the national championship almost every season, Kansas and Missouri are perennial top 25 programs and Nebraska is back on the rise. Texas and Texas Tech are powerhouses. Everybody is pouring more money and resources into football than they were in 1989.
Plus, angry Kansas State fans are suffering a crisis of confidence after an audit this summer revealed shocking fiscal mismanagement.
The audit embarrassed even Snyder, revealing payments totaling more than $800,000 to him and two former athletic directors for which documents could not be found.
Snyder hotly denies any wrongdoing and is fully backed by a brand-new administration of president Kirk Schulz and athletic director John Currie.
In fact, they have made him the cornerstone of their campaign to recapture the trust of K-Staters everywhere.
“There is no better scenario in all human history than to come into a new presidency and a new athletic directorship and have the greatest coach in the history of the institution as a ‘new’ coach on the sideline,” said Currie. “We have unbelievable confidence in coach Snyder and I’ve been really, really honored to spend time with him.”
Being a Snyder admirer puts Currie in good company. Switzer, who won three national championships at Oklahoma, once said he should be the coach of the century.
Of course, that was the 20th century.
