THOMAS WOLFE famously observed, “You can’t go home again.”
But Wolfe did not know Bill Snyder and Kansas State University’s football fans.
For the state’s football fans who bleed purple, the announcement that Snyder, who retired three years ago, was coming back to lead once more the program he dragged from obscurity to national prominence was an early Christmas present. Indeed, it was as if Christ had come back to hang out with the disciples three years after the resurrection, having grown weary of the perfection of heaven.
Sports fanatics will be able to cite other cases, but it is likely that Snyder will be the only active Division I football coach in the nation whose team is playing on a field named for him. He may also be the only coach who gets to drive in and out of town on a state highway named for him.
None of the above comments are intended to mock the Wildcat euphoria, but to illustrate to height, depth and breadth of it. What other announcement could make the K-State fans rejoice at the tail end of a terrible season in a string of terrible seasons?
Poor Ron Prince, the coach who replaced Snyder and will be replaced by him, could never get a handle on building a new team at K-State. He’s a smart guy and in many ways a good coach, but he was not the coach for K-State. He did not have the knack to take a winning program and keep it winning, as Bill Self did with the basketball program at the University of Kansas after Roy Williams quit to go home to North Carolina.
Ah, yes ... KU. K-State fans could forgive Prince a lot, but they could not forgive him for allowing the Jayhawks — who are having only a middling season after last year’s rocket ride to the Orange Bowl — to embarrass the Wildcats so thoroughly earlier this month. Soon after the loss, Prince was fired.
Will Snyder immediately turn the K-State program around? It’s not likely. But 20 years ago, he showed that he knew how to rebuild a broken football program, one season at a time. He has learned a lot over the years and can probably avoid some of the mistakes that a younger coach would make. It is a good bet that each year, Snyder’s teams will be better than the year before.
For now, that will be enough for the Wildcat fans — a sense of progress and of possibility. Football programs keep score by victories, but they survive on hope and expectations.
Just by agreeing to come home, Bill Snyder gives K-State fans both of those in abundance.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor
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