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Wefald’s passion for K-State athletics was obvious
By HOWARD RICHMANThe Kansas City Star
Archer had visited Iowa, Illinois and North Carolina. At none of those places did he meet the university president. But when Archer came to K-State, school president Jon Wefald made it a point to welcome him.
“I sat down and talked with him, and I could tell he was die-hard Kansas State. Just devotion,” said Archer, a Wildcat linebacker during 2003-06 currently with the Denver Broncos. “You could see the passion right away. It was cool that he found time for me.”
Now, the clock is ticking on Wefald’s career at K-State.
Wefald announced Monday that he will retire at the end of the 2008-09 school year.
Wefald’s legacy, in terms of athletics, starts and ends with the risk he took to revive K-State football.
Not long after he took office as the school’s 12th president in 1986, Wefald put K-State in hock in an attempt to save football, a big loser on the field and at the ticket booth. The university borrowed $12 million to aid a program in need of bolstering facilities and boosting salaries.
On Wefald’s watch, K-State hired coach Bill Snyder. In time, Snyder guided the Wildcats to 11 consecutive bowl games, placed K-State on the cusp of a shot at the national championship and led what is considered one of the greatest turnarounds in sports history.
“Jon and Bob Krause (new K-State athletic director) were able to have a vision and had an interest and made what was important to us important to them,” said Snyder, who came aboard in 1989. “I’m not so sure back then it was really popular for a president to expose his interest in athletics, but Jon did so.”
Under Wefald’s watch, the Wildcats experienced a surge in success and interest in its women’s basketball program, while men’s basketball appears to be on the upswing again.
“It’s really hard to find positive people anymore like Dr. Wefald,” K-State women’s basketball coach Deb Patterson said. “His passion has made him great. He’s been amazing and inspirational. That’s what makes this so emotional, dramatic for me. He just lived and breathed passion across all phases of this university.”
But his legacy will always surround football.
“I’m at an Orange Bowl cocktail party in the 1980s,” former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer told The Star last summer, “and Jon Wefald comes over and introduces himself. He was outgoing, captured me right away. All of a sudden he says, ‘I can’t wait to bring a Kansas State team to the Orange Bowl.’ The guy was totally serious.
“I yelled across the room to (a friend) saying, ‘You’ve got to hear this.’ ”
Years later, after K-State reeled off several 11-win seasons, Switzer phoned Wefald.
“I called his office, and they tell me he’s at the dentist’s office,” Switzer says, “so I say, ‘Give me that number.’ I call him, they put him on the phone and I say, ‘Jon, I owe you an apology.’ ”
Snyder, who said Wefald united K-State in all aspects, hopes Wefald laid the groundwork for his successor to pick up where he left off come 2009-10.
“You’d like to think a very successful precedent has been set, and whoever follows would be wise enough to recognize the value of having a complete president,” Snyder said.
Krause, who has known Wefald for 31 years, said: “You never replace a person like Jon Wefald. … Jon dreams big, works hard, never gives up. This is a marking of time. A watershed event.”
Archer laughed when the story comes up about how Wefald dons a K-State jersey every year before football season and participates in a pickup game with the team. Wefald serves as quarterback, appropriate for a man who armed Snyder with the tools to breathe life into K-State football and cement Wefald’s place in Wildcat lore.
“We made sure he was on the team that would win,” Archer said. “We helped him like he helped us.”
Arriving in 1986, Jon Wefald directed Kansas State through difficult times. | B1