Legendary former coach Bill Snyder makes Hall of Fame case for pair of K-State greats
Retired Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder is ready for some more of his former players to join him in the College Football Hall of Fame.
With Michael Bishop and Darren Sproles both listed on the current ballot, that could happen as soon as 2021 at a December ceremony in New York.
For Snyder, the thought of those iconic K-State players getting inducted together is a dream come true.
“It would be amazing,” Snyder said during a video teleconference on Tuesday. “I certainly pray that it happens, but as I have shared with them I only get one vote. That is one out of an awful lot, and I’m not sure my vote will make that much of a difference. But they are both prominent young people and prominent young athletes. They were very skilled as athletes but they are also quality people. I am proud of them to the nth degree and always have been.”
Snyder was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame class of 2015, joining former player Mark Simoneau in the club, as well as other K-State legends Gary Spani, Charles Bachman and Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf.
That was an honor for him. But it would be equally, if not more, rewarding for him to watch two of his best players earn the same recognition for everything they did with the Wildcats.
Both players have a case for inclusion.
Bishop is arguably the best quarterback in K-State history and captained two of the best teams the Wildcats have ever fielded in 1997 and 98. They won 11 games in both of those seasons and rose to No. 1 in the coaches poll when Bishop was a senior.
Sproles was an electric running back who holds the school’s all-time rushing record ... by more than 2,100 yards. Sproles rushed for a whopping 4,979 yards during his college career and helped K-State win a Big 12 championship in 2003. He also went on to have a stellar career in the NFL, lasting 15 years with the San Diego Chargers, New Orleans Saints and Philadelphia Eagles.
In case those numbers aren’t enough to wow voters, Snyder made his own case for them on Tuesday.
Snyder began with a story about Sproles and why he was sold on him as a running back when other college teams had doubts about his size.
“I have never been a person who has been all that caught up in the size element,” Snyder said. “I thought he was a very fine athlete and the type of person that certainly fit our program. I didn’t have any doubt about his capacity to be a prominent member of our program.”
In a weird way, Snyder said Sproles used his diminutive stature (5-foot-9 and 190 pounds) to his advantage.
“When you get into college they are all 6-7 and 300 pounds, and if you are on the other side of the ball you can’t find him because all those other guys kind of hide him,” Snyder said. “He was always at the line of scrimmage before anyone had an idea where he was. Consequently, his explosiveness and his speed took over from there.”
Sproles was a Heisman Trophy finalist as a junior. So was Bishop when he was a senior.
It still amuses Snyder that K-State was one of the few schools that recruited Bishop as a quarterback when it came time for him to transfer away from Blinn Junior College in Texas.
He never saw Bishop as a defensive back, receiver or running back. Even though he had the athleticism to play those positions, he fit K-State’s offense like a glove at quarterback. Snyder remembers being sold on Bishop when he asked him to launch a ball as far as he could during a preseason practice back in 1997. Bishop was standing at the 30-yard line and hurled the pigskin more than 70 yards beyond the end zone on the far end of the field “with one step” of a buildup.
“He was a young guy who was a multi-talented athlete,” Snyder said. “He could run it every bit as well as he could throw it, and he was a better passer than people want to give him credit for.”
Bishop was actually a bit ahead of his time as a dual-threat quarterback. He threw for 4,401 yards and rushed for 1,314 during his two seasons with the Wildcats. He was such a running threat out of the backfield that some have traced the origins of the wildcat offense, in which a quarterback runs out of the shotgun formation, back to Bishop in 1997.
Mobile quarterbacks with big arms are now commonplace in the NFL. But Bishop’s playing style seemed cutting edge when he was in college.
Bishop was so talented that Snyder named him the starting quarterback as a junior despite arriving late for summer workouts and only having a few weeks to learn K-State’s offense.
He thinks a player like that deserves to be in the College Football Hall of Fame.
“He made a lot of mistakes, but the great thing about Michael was that he made up for mistakes,” Snyder said. “I always said Michael was the greatest sandlot football player that ever existed. He just loved to play the game and went out there and played. All the X’s and O’s didn’t mean all that much in the beginning. I probably tempered his talent by trying to make him learn more than time allowed.”
This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 2:15 PM with the headline "Legendary former coach Bill Snyder makes Hall of Fame case for pair of K-State greats."