His tenure as Kansas State football coach extends for one more day, and Ron Prince can&#8217;t help but consider the future in Manhattan. A future that doesn&#8217;t include him.</p><p>&#8220;I think one of the best things about the situation right now is that (Missouri&#8217;s ) Chase Daniel is leaving,&#8221; Prince said, smiling. &#8220;I think that&#8217;s one of the best things about this situation. (Nebraska&#8217;s Joe) Ganz is leaving, and some of the quarterbacks are in the latter parts of their career. I still think there are some really good ones that most people don&#8217;t know about, but from recruiting, we all know.</p><p>&#8220;All of these teams have a guy like Carson (Coffman) waiting in the wings, ready to go and be very successful. I think it will be a quarterback-driven league for some time, but I think people will commit a lot of resources to defense and trying to play good defense.&#8221;</p><p>It will be a challenge, and it&#8217;s been established that Prince believed he and his staff weren&#8217;t given enough time to meet the program&#8217;s standards. That&#8217;s up to someone else now &#8212; K-State athletic director Bob Krause said Wednesday night his &#8220;end of the season&#8221; deadline was loose and there is no definitive date for an announcement &#8212; but it also raised the following question: Is K-State regarded as a good job?</p><p>The logical starting point was Bill Snyder, who may or not be an option in Krause&#8217;s search. But Snyder did not return phone messages Thursday. From there, it was off to the Internet. Consider this jab from Pat Forde at Espn.com:</p><p>&#8220;The Big 12 North is about as scary as an episode of &#8216;Barney.&#8217; You don&#8217;t need a defense to succeed. We&#8217;ve been known to condone scheduling nothing but chumps out of conference. And if you want to recruit nothing but jucos, we&#8217;re cool with that, too.</p><p>&#8220;What they won&#8217;t tell you: We trap-doored the last guy after 2&#189; seasons. And the talent pool around Manhattan is shallower than Paris Hilton.&#8221;</p><p>A different outlook was necessary. Dennis Franchione, the former Texas A&amp;M coach who admits having an interest in the vacancy, insists K-State is &#8220;a great job.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Coach Snyder made it into something special,&#8221; Franchione said. &#8220;It&#8217;s in a great conference, and the people &#8212; the K-State people I know are some of the most understanding people in the world.&#8221;</p><p>The pros, according to Franchione, are the program&#8217;s recent tradition as a selling point, the expectations of being successful, and Manhattan, which he deemed &#8220;a wonderful town.&#8221; As for the cons, it was the same perceived issues that have been trotted out against K-State forever &#8212; not a long, rich tradition and because of Manhattan&#8217;s isolated location, recruiting is difficult.</p><p>And according to a West Coast agent who requested anonymity, it&#8217;s all about recruiting at the collegiate level. Actually, it&#8217;s one of two areas that must be addressed.</p><p>&#8220;If you aren&#8217;t a good recruiter, you have to hire good recruiters,&#8221; the agent said. &#8220;And you have to look at the ability of a candidate to coach and lead. He must be a good leader, a developer of young men.&#8221;</p><p>Development, though, is time-consuming. Franchione was asked about Prince getting only 2&#189; years, and whether that decision and the looming selection of a new university president could be viewed as deterrents.</p><p>&#8220;It probably makes you wonder, but you&#8217;d probably have a belief that enough good has happened that people want to keep that going,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been out of coaching for a year, so I don&#8217;t like the trend (a coach getting less than three years) in that regard.