The Fire Still Burns Inside of Bill Snyder

Should Kansas State coach Bill Snyder go searching for a sure sign college football hasn't stood still in his brief retirement, all he has to do is look at "this Blackberry thing" that is usually attached to his hip.

For a coach who can remember when handwritten letters were the must-have tools of recruiting, Snyder's newly issued BlackBerry seems to always be vibrating or making a noise or doing both. In the morning when Snyder awakens. In the evening when he's ready to turn in.

Sometimes, the 69-year-old coach can't help but feel like a victim of information overload.

"It's got all the recruiting services, and they each have a long story on every youngster that is above the age of four in the nation," Snyder said. "(It) tells you what he had for breakfast and what position he plays and who's recruiting him and so on."

Indeed, Snyder has found that much has changed since he decided to step away from the program that is almost synonymous with his name. But it is the fundamental love he holds for the university and Manhattan, Kan., in general and specifically the football program that plays its home games in a stadium bearing the name Bill Snyder Family Stadium that brought him back to coaching.

So despite being happily retired and enjoying his fill of his grandchildren's Little League baseball games, Snyder accepted the challenge to steady the waters in Manhattan after three rocky seasons under Ron Prince and after the administration bungled Prince's firing and the subsequent coaching search last November.

Snyder's life of leisure was placed on hold, but after going through his internal and external process, to step in to stabilize the program Snyder built from almost nothing 20 years earlier was just the right thing to do.

This program -- or the task of remaking it -- is nothing close to what Snyder found when he originally took over the Wildcats in December 1998 with 47 scholarship athletes out of a possible 95. But he has work to do after Prince's three seasons produced one winning season and consecutive 5-7 campaigns.

His decision to return didn't come easily.

"It took some deep thought on my part," said Snyder, who compiled a 136-68-1 record in his first 17 years, which spanned both the Wildcats' membership in both the Big 8 and Big 12. "The reasoning for coming back was simply the feeling that was projected to me was (that the program was in a state of flux). The feeling was since I had been here for an extended period of time (before) that I might be able to calm the waters a little bit. That was important to me because I have a tremendous sense of loyalty to Kansas State University and its people.

"I needed to advance that thought to my family. So I sat down with all of our five children and with my wife and we talked about it at great length. It wasn't a matter of being supportive, it was something that they truly wanted me to do. But they also wanted to make sure I felt good about it and felt comfortable about it."


Who knows how long this run will last or if Snyder can come close to duplicating the success he had during his first run at Kansas State, when the Wildcats became a power in the Big 12 North. Under Snyder, they strung together 11 straight bowl appearances between 1993 and 2003 while also winning four North titles and one Big 12 championship inside. The odds are against Snyder coming anywhere close to those achievements this time.

NFL Hall of Famer and football genius Bill Walsh tried it at Stanford without much success, and the same went for newly selected College Hall of Fame coach John Robinson in his second USC stint.

"I don't know if it will be any different than maybe what some others have experienced," Snyder said. "That wasn't the purpose behind re-entering Kansas State University's football program. It had something to do with things I think that are above and beyond that."

Most close to the program say if Snyder doesn't succeed it won't be for a lack of trying and working hard. His inherited players say Snyder is as tough and demanding as the stories that have been passed down say.

"I think he just brings out the best in people," said junior quarterback Carson Coffman, who was just named the starter this week. "He's very demanding of the assistant coaches and the players. I think we've made huge strides since he's been back just in work ethic and respect."

Once a gruff and no-nonsense coach, Snyder, who flirted with running for lieutenant governor of Kansas during retirement, has returned to college football slightly kinder and gentler. He has also come back with a plan to use his coaching platform to promote his worthwhile causes.

"Really I came back so that every press conference," said Snyder, who begins his second stint in earnest Saturday when KSU opens the season hosting UMass. "I can promote Kansas Mentors, Kansas Leadership Center and the Kansas State University Leadership College and a variety of different entities I got involved with. They are significant. If you can do anything to promote mentoring in your community, you will have done a great service to your community."

That's not to imply Snyder isn't as serious about making the Wildcats winners again. He has once again surrounded himself with familiar trusted people like his son, Sean Snyder, who is the program's associate head coach/associate athletic director for football operations. In fact, 10 of the top 13 people surrounding the program either worked previously for Snyder or played for him -- or did both.

What is different are the administrators who once gave Snyder free reign to build the Wildcats with an oftentimes less-than daunting schedule and a hefty influx of junior college player. They allowed him to successfully campaigned to upgrade the facilities to decent standards.

Since then, Kirk Schulz has taken over as KSU president, and John Currie came from the Tennessee to assume control as the new athletic director. Both men were caught up in a mess left behind by the old regime, which had a secret deal with Prince that the current administration is doing all it can not to pay.

Snyder, who was never more than a few steps away from the program in retirement, seems comfortable with all the changes.

"They are just trying to get their feet on the ground," he said. "They just want to find out where they are and what they've got, which is exactly what I'm trying to do. So we are all kind of in the same boat that way.

"When you do that, it can slow a process down. So it's required some patience, but I think they are doing very very well."

For now, Snyder wants to concentrate on the task at hand, a task that broke him from a leisurely life of retirement.

"What the outcome will be, I have absolutely no idea," he said. "But if we can settle the waters, it will have been worth the effort."