K-State notebook: Record number of scouts for Auburn game

A Bill Snyder Family Stadium record 25 NFL scouts attended Thursday’s Kansas State-Auburn game.

K-State normally is host to a handful of NFL scouts, seating them next to reporters in the press box. This time they were moved to the top level of the press box, next to the TV cameras. Other special guests included representatives from the Sugar Bowl, Texas Bowl and Florida Citrus Bowl.

Overall, K-State distributed a record 409 media credentials. That number was up nearly 200 from the season opener against Stephen F. Austin.

▪ Official attendance was 53,046, the fifth-largest Kansas State football crowd.

▪ K-State athletic director John Currie was hesitant to move the Auburn game away from its scheduled Saturday time slot, because he didn’t want to inconvenience fans that build their weekends around home games. But he approved the date change, because it provided K-State and Manhattan with a “showcase moment.”

Expect more Thursday home games in K-State’s future. Just not immediately. This was its first Thursday home game since Nebraska in 2010.

“We don’t want to do this every game,” Currie said. “We have done this once since I have been here, in 2010. Once every four or five years, that is a reasonable pattern, but there are also some great advantages … That doesn’t happen if you aren’t the Thursday night game because you are one of 30 games on Saturday.”

▪ ESPN and K-State fans treated the game like a special event. The student section was completely full 70 minutes before kickof,f and TV cameras followed K-State players during their walk from the team’s busses to the locker room.

This story was originally published September 18, 2014 at 8:26 PM with the headline "K-State notebook: Record number of scouts for Auburn game."