Bill Snyder Position: Head Coach

In his 13 seasons in Manhattan, Kansas State Head Coach Bill Snyder has taken the Wildcat football program from the depths of college football to one of the nation's premier programs, making Snyder one of the most respected head coaches in the game

Since Bill Snyder took over the Kansas State football program prior to the 1989 season, he has triggered what many experts have called the greatest turnaround in college football history.

Snyder has led K-State to nine straight bowl games, one of seven schools in the nation to currently have that long a string of postseason appearances. The Wildcats also have been one of college football’s best home teams under Snyder, compiling an impressive 67-8-1 record at KSU Stadium since 1990.

In 2001, Snyder directed one of the best in-season turnarounds in school history. Despite losing four straight in the middle of the year and facing the fourth-toughest schedule in the nation, the Wildcats recovered to win four of their last five games to end the regular season with a 6-5 record and a berth in the Insight.com Bowl.

Despite the record, the quality of the players produced by the Snyder-led coaching staff continued to attract national attention from those who best know the game.

Six Kansas State players were selected in the 2002 NFL Draft, the most of any team in the Big 12 Conference, with only six schools in the country having more players picked in the draft.

The Wildcats started the 2000 season ranked in the Top 10 for just the second time in school history and made a four-week run into the Top 5 that saw K-State climb as high as No. 2 in the nation.

K-State won the Big 12 North Division for the second time in three years and earned at least a share of the title for the third consecutive season. K-State had six players named first team All-Big 12 by the league’s coaches, and PK Jamie Rheem, DT Mario Fatafehi and WR Quincy Morgan earned All-America honors.

The 1999 season saw the Wildcats climb from No. 20 in the preseason poll to finish at No. 6 after starting the season with nine straight victories and win 11 games for the third straight year. K-State tied Nebraska for the Wildcats’ second consecutive Big 12 North Division Championship. All this in what many thought would be a rebuilding season. K-State led the conference in first-team all-conference picks with seven players.

In 1998, Snyder led K-State to its second straight 11-win season and a No. 4 ranking in the final regular season polls. In November, K-State occupied a No. 1 ranking in a national poll for the first time in school history. The Wildcats won the Big 12 Conference North Division and advanced to a postseason bowl game for the sixth year in a row. K-State won its first 11 games of the season and ran its winning streak to a school-record 20 games before falling to Texas A&M in the Big 12 Championship game.

Quarterback Michael Bishop became the first Wildcat to be a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, and a total of six K-Staters earned All-America honors.

Snyder earned National Coach of the Year honors from the Walter Camp Foundation, the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Foundation, the Associated Press, the Paul “Bear” Bryant Award and the Schutt Sports Group.

Snyder’s unprecedented success at Kansas State hasn’t gone unnoticed. Snyder has been named the National Coach of the Year on three occasions (also by ESPN in 1991 and by CNN in 1994). He has been a finalist for the prestigious Bear Bryant/FWAA National Coach of the Year Award in 1993 and 1995 before winning in 1998; a finalist for the Football News National Coach of the Year Award in 1995 and 1998; and a finalist for the Kodak/AFCA National Coach of the Year Award in 1993 and 1998.

In 1997, Snyder led the Wildcats to their first 11-win season in school history, a No. 7 final ranking and the first 10-win regular season since 1910. It was just the third 10-win season in 102 years of K-State football. Kansas State won a school-record seven conference games, finishing second in the North Division to undefeated and eventual national champion Nebraska.

The Wildcats defeated South Division champion Texas A&M, 36-17. The season ended with a 35-18 win over Big East Conference champion Syracuse in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, with an estimated 50,000 K-State fans attending K-State’s first-ever Alliance Bowl.

The 1996 season saw K-State finish with a 9-3 record, while more than 45,000 Wildcat fans painted Dallas purple for the Southwestern Bell Cotton Bowl, Kansas State’s first-ever New Year’s Day Bowl. Despite a 19-15 loss to No. 5 Brigham Young, the support and respect for the K-State program grew to unprecedented heights.

In 1995, Snyder guided K-State to a 10-2 record, including a 5-2 Big Eight record to tie for second place behind national champion Nebraska. Following a 54-21 blitzing of WAC champion Colorado State in the 1995 Holiday Bowl, the Wildcats finished the season ranked sixth in the USA Today/CNN Coaches Poll and seventh in the Associated Press Poll. Both rankings were the highest ever attained by a Kansas State football team to that point.

In 1993, he joined legendary Nebraska head coach Bob Devaney as the only head coaches in Big Eight history to be named Associated Press Big Eight Coach of the Year three times in a four-year period (1990, 1991 and 1993). The Houston Chronicle named him the 1996 Big 12 Coach of the Year, while he earned 1997 and 1998 Big 12 Coach of the Year honors from the Kansas City Star. Snyder also was the 1998 Big 12 Coach of the Year by the Associated Press and by a vote of league coaches.

During the last eight seasons, the Wildcats have amassed an 87-22-1 record, the second-best overall mark among teams in the Big 12 Conference.

Those numbers alone indicate the emergence of a new power in the Big 12 Conference and with it the recognition that Snyder is truly one of the finest coaches in college football today.

“Bill Snyder isn’t the coach of the year, and he isn’t the coach of the decade,” said former Oklahoma and Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer. “He’s the coach of the century.”

But to put the significance of that success into proper perspective, one must consider the not-so-distant history of what was the worst football program in the country and the profound impact Snyder has had not only on the football program, but Kansas State University as a whole.

Perhaps former Colorado head coach Bill McCartney said it best.

“I don’t think anybody has approximated what he’s done,” McCartney said in 1994. “He’s taken a team that didn’t have a good football tradition. Colorado had a good tradition at one time, but what has happened at Kansas State is unprecedented.

“I don’t think anybody in college football can compare to what they’ve done in Manhattan. It looks like the entire university has gotten behind him. They’re hitting on all cylinders in recruiting, academically and in their cohesiveness.”

The list of accomplishments Snyder has amassed in just 13 years is as endless as the time most people thought it would take for the Wildcats to be a consistent threat in the Big Eight, and now, Big 12 Conference.

In 1993, Snyder guided K-State to its first bowl win in school history and, in 1994, the Wildcats cracked the Top 10 for the first time in school history. In 1998, the Wildcats achieved a No. 1 national ranking in one of the major polls for the first time in the program’s history.

In 1995, the Wildcats finished tied for second in the Big Eight and their 5-2 league mark gave K-State two consecutive 5-2 Big Eight seasons. In the last three years of the Big Eight, the Wildcats defeated or tied every team in the league except Nebraska. Against everyone in the Big 12 except Nebraska and Colorado, the Wildcats are 42-4 since 1993. Since the inception of the Big 12 in 1996, K-State trails only Nebraska with a league-games record of 37-11.

While some of those feats would be considered modest at some schools, history tells why they are so impressive at Kansas State.

In the last 12 years, Snyder has resurrected the Wildcats from a 1-36-1 stretch to close the 1980s to a 98-33-1 (.746) mark since.

In fact, one has to add all victories from 1950 to 1988 to total 105 wins at K-State.

Individually, Snyder has produced 37 different All-Americans during the past 13 years, including eight consensus first-team All-Americans: in 1992 (his son, Sean Snyder), 1993 (FS Jaime Mendez), 1995 (CB Chris Canty and DT Tim Colston), 1996 (Canty), 1997 (PK Martin Gramatica), 1998 (PR David Allen) and 1999 (LB Mark Simoneau).

Gramatica was the 1997 Lou Groza Collegiate Place-Kicker Award winner, the first major award winner in Kansas State history. Quarterback Michael Bishop became the first K-State player to be named a finalist for the Heisman Trophy (finishing as runner-up) while winning the Davey O’Brien Award as the nation’s outstanding quarterback.

Hayden Fry, the former Iowa head coach who watched Snyder direct a dangerous Hawkeye offense for 10 years during that program’s amazing turnaround, was the first to forecast K-State’s rise.

“I think he’ll do a job much quicker than anyone anticipates in regards to taking Kansas State to respectability,” Fry said. “He’s a quality coach and gentleman.”

And yet it’s probable that even Fry looks on in amazement when pondering where the Kansas State football program was before Snyder’s arrival and the level it has ascended to today.

The foundation for K-State’s turnaround was laid in 1989 during Snyder’s first season in Manhattan. Although the season yielded just a 1-10 record, it became evident to everyone involved in the program that something special was happening. Most importantly, Snyder instilled a winning attitude and a healthy dose of self-respect and enthusiasm to a program that had been given up for dead more than once over the years.

In 1990, Kansas State was one of just four teams in the country to improve its record by four games with a 5-6 mark, including its first Big Eight Conference wins in four seasons with victories over Oklahoma State and Iowa State. Snyder again beat those two schools with impressive wins in 1991, while adding Kansas and Missouri to the list of his Big Eight victims to finish at 7-4.

Heavy graduation losses on the offensive side of the ball resulted in a 5-6 mark in 1992, but the Wildcats were still able to hang their hats on their first perfect home season (5-0) since 1934.

Of course, it should come as no surprise that Snyder would be this kind of architect for a building program. At Iowa, he played a key role in the renaissance of a Hawkeye program that went from 17 consecutive losing seasons to eight straight bowl appearances. Snyder was the mind behind Iowa’s potent offensive attack.

The Hawkeye offense ranked first in passing efficiency and third in passing yardage nationally in Snyder’s last five years of direction. In his final Iowa season, the Peach Bowl team led the Big Ten, and ranked seventh nationally, with 277 passing yards per game. That team was second in the Big Ten with 416 yards of offense per game.

Snyder also served as quarterback coach at Iowa and helped develop some of the best quarterbacks in NCAA history, including NFL players Chuck Long (second in Heisman voting with over 10,000 passing yards in Iowa career), Mark Vlasic and Chuck Hartlieb, who wrapped up his career as the first Hawkeye quarterback to throw for 3,000 yards in back-to-back seasons.

Snyder, a member of the American Football Coaches Association Rules Committee and Ethics Committee and a speaker at the 1991 and 1995 NCAA Football Forum, began his full-time coaching career in 1964 as an assistant at Indio High School in California. In 1966 he served as a graduate assistant at USC under John McKay before returning to become head coach at Indio High School in 1967. He accepted the same position at Santa Ana Foothill High School in 1969, where he stayed until 1973. In 1974, Snyder became the offensive coordinator on the football staff and head swimming coach at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. He joined the University of North Texas staff in 1976 where he helped author an impressive turnaround with a three-year record of 26-7. With the Hayden Fry staff, he left UNT in 1979 to take over at Iowa.

Snyder, who was hired as Kansas State’s 32nd head football coach on Nov. 30, 1988, received his B.A. from William Jewell in 1963. He earned his M.A. from Eastern New Mexico in 1965. As a player, he was a three-year letterwinner as a defensive back at William Jewell. Snyder and his wife, Sharon, have two sons (Sean and Ross) and three daughters (Shannon, Meredith and Whitney). They also have four grandchildren, Sydney, Katherine, Tate and Matthew.

Sean was a first-team All-America punter by Associated Press, Kodak and Athlon’s for Kansas State in 1992, and is currently on the Wildcat staff as associate AD/football operations.

Bill Snyder Capsule

Coaching Experience