Chris Klieman respects FCS football too much to let K-State overlook Nicholls

It’s human nature to overlook a football team like Nicholls.

The Colonels are not members of a power-five conference or the FBS. They play in the FCS. When they take the field against Kansas State in Saturday’s season-opener at Bill Snyder Family Stadium they will do so with fewer scholarship players than the Wildcats and will receive $450,000 simply for participating in the game.

K-State should easily beat an opponent like that, right?

Perhaps. But new football coach Chris Klieman isn’t letting the Wildcats think that way.

“When I talk to the guys about playing Nicholls, I talk to the guys about playing a quarterback that has been there going on his fourth year,” Klieman said. “I talk about playing a team that is used to winning, that has that pedigree of expecting to win. I don’t talk about we’re playing an FCS team. That just doesn’t get talked about. You talk about the task at hand and the opponent you have. There are too many good football players across the country to worry about divisions and level of play.”

He knows what he is talking about. Klieman spent the past five seasons coaching at the FCS level with North Dakota State, where his teams dominated on their way to four national championships.

The Bison regularly went on the road and defeated power-five opponents with Klieman on the coaching staff. He was part of upset victories over Kansas, Iowa, Iowa State and (who can forget?) K-State.

No one respects FCS football more than Klieman, and that, combined with his previous knowledge of Nicholls, should help the Wildcats in their first game.

He watched Nicholls defeat Kansas last season and then play in the FCS playoffs. Klieman knows many of their players by name.

“We’re not going to overlook them,” Klieman said. “I can promise you that.”

K-State fans are certainly hoping for a drama-free victory. That hasn’t always been the case in recent openers.

The Wildcats needed a fourth-quarter comeback to beat South Dakota (another FCS foe) 27-24 last season and lost to North Dakota State 24-21 back in 2013. K-State has lost two of its last six opening games and flirted with defeat another two other times over the past decade.

“We can’t have any more of that,” K-State linebacker Elijah Sullivan said. “After what happened last season, we know how important it is to come out and start fast. The coaches remind us about it every day.”

Klieman is certainly taking K-State’s first game more seriously than the previous staff did a year ago.

For starters, K-State coordinators Courtney Messingham and Scottie Hazelton say they won’t hold anything back in the opener.

They don’t care about saving special plays of schemes for Big 12 opponents. They just want to beat Nicholls.

“I’m a one-game guy,” Hazelton said. “Whatever we have to do to win (game) one, let’s win one. Then we will worry about (game) two when we get there.”

That’s a change from previous years.

Senior receiver Dalton Schoen said the Wildcats spent significant portions of the 2018 preseason focusing on the second opponent on their schedule (Mississippi State) instead of the first (South Dakota), a decision he described as “a waste of time.”

They are better prepared this time around.

“Last year, a lot of guys fell into the trap of ‘Oh, we have Mississippi State in Week 2,’” Schoen said. “We spent time in camp preparing for Mississippi State. Now it’s like, ‘No, we know we have Nicholls in Game 1. We have to focus on that. We have got to take this process one game at a time.’ We are definitely more focused on Week 1 this year.”

This story was originally published August 30, 2019 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Chris Klieman respects FCS football too much to let K-State overlook Nicholls."