How many schools tried to poach Bill Snyder from K-State? Answer revealed in new book
It’s hard (nay, impossible) to imagine Bill Snyder wearing any other color than purple or coaching any other college football team than Kansas State.
Once K-State hired Snyder as its head coach in 1989, he famously stayed loyal to the Wildcats for 29 seasons and continued working in Manhattan until he initially retired in 2005 and later called it quits for good in 2018.
You probably know the story. Snyder took over a moribund football program and built it into a consistent winner. Along the way, he won 215 games, qualified for 19 bowls and claimed a pair of Big 12 championships. He had such an impressive run that K-State named its football stadium in Snyder’s honor and he is now a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
But his journey could have taken a much different path.
Many other schools and at least one NFL team attempted to hire him away from K-State when they saw his early success. For the first time, at least publicly, Snyder shared some of the details surrounding those job opportunities in a memoir co-written by D. Scott Fritchen that will be released later this month.
The closest Snyder ever came to leaving K-State was in 1995 when UCLA expressed interest in hiring him. Snyder considered the possibility, because he got his coaching start in California and worked as an assistant at nearby USC. He even agreed to sit down for an interview with the Bruins, but not until the Wildcats finished their season at the Holiday Bowl.
“I had a history within the state of California both at the high school level and during my brief time under Coach (John) McKay at USC,” Snyder wrote in his upcoming book, “so the opportunity was intriguing.”
But somewhere along the way, Snyder had a change of heart and wrote that K-State “had been loyal to me, and I wanted to repay that loyalty.” Many friends urged him to leave K-State as quickly as possible, because it was a dead-end program. But he felt differently.
“Although I was their top candidate, we never sat down for an interview,” Snyder wrote. “I told UCLA no.”
That didn’t stop other schools from trying to lure him away when K-State kept winning. Two years later, as K-State was about to embark on a run of greatness with Michael Bishop at quarterback, Frank Broyles offered him the Arkansas job.
Once again, Snyder thought about it and declined.
“Although it was an appealing position,” Snyder wrote, “I had a sense of loyalty to our program, our players, our university and our fans.”
Things heated up even more on the job front when the Wildcats won 11 games in each of the next four seasons. Snyder declined to mention any other schools by name, but he did share an interesting story about a NFL team showing so much interest that its owner said he could take over as head coach without even interviewing for the position.
“One NFL team, and for the life of me I never understood why, called me and said, ‘The contract is in the mail,’” Snyder wrote. “That was the first thing they told me. Sure enough, an NFL contract showed up in my mailbox. I put that contract in a box somewhere.”
Snyder declined to name the NFL team in his book, but sources over the years have said that the Jacksonville Jaguars expressed interest at about that time.
“There were some attractive offers,” Snyder wrote, “but I did not allow myself to be lured.”
Snyder valued coaching loyalty and pushed for K-State to hire several of his former assistants when he initially retired in 2005.
His list of potential successors, according to his book: Sean Snyder, Jim Leavitt, Phil Bennett, Dana Dimel and Del Miller.
Snyder lobbied hardest for Leavitt to get the job and called him with a sales pitch when it became apparent that K-State favored Ron Prince. But Snyder wrote that Leavitt, who was working as the head coach at South Florida at the time, informed him he had recently signed a contract extension with the Bulls and the timing wasn’t going to work.
When Prince was fired after three seasons on the job, Snyder returned to the K-State sidelines and remained there until the end of his coaching career.
Snyder once again endorsed Leavitt and his son as potential successors when he retired a second time. K-State interviewed Leavitt, but he did not advance to the finalist stage. Chris Klieman got the nod.
Interestingly, Snyder wrote that he often considered retirement during his first stint as coach and nearly called it quits at the end of several seasons, particularly 2003, because the job was becoming too stressful. But he was dead set on returning throughout his encore.
Perhaps losing to Texas A&M in the 1998 Big 12 Championship game was part of the reason why. Snyder dedicated a large chunk of his book to discussing the pain that followed that loss. The Wildcats would have played for a national championship had they won. Even when K-State won its first Big 12 title in 2003, Snyder wrote that he couldn’t fully enjoy the moment because “that loss still lingered. It had taken its toll.”
“I would like to think that the 1998 Kansas State football team was the best team in college football history to not play for a national championship,” he wrote.
Maybe spending a few years away from coaching provided some perspective. Defeats didn’t seem to sting quite so much the second time around.
Even as he was battling cancer near the end of his career and butting heads with former athletic director John Currie, which Snyder shares a few stories about in the book, he wanted to keep coaching.
It wasn’t until a nightmarish season filled with coaching turmoil, quarterback controversy, a pair of devastating losses (51-17 at Oklahoma, 42-38 at Iowa State) and a losing record came along in 2018 that he reluctantly agreed it was time for him to hang up his headset.
His time as a head coach ended at the same place it started. He was loyal until the end.
This story was originally published November 12, 2021 at 10:09 AM with the headline "How many schools tried to poach Bill Snyder from K-State? Answer revealed in new book."