Why Chris Klieman isn’t opening a single K-State football practice to fans this spring
The Kansas State football team was supposed to end spring practice with a short scrimmage that would take place in front of fans on Saturday at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
But that is no longer the plan.
A throng of injuries has made it difficult for the Wildcats to make it through some practices this month, let alone simulate a game with a live crowd reacting to every play. With that in mind, K-State football coach Chris Klieman decided to quietly end spring practice without any sort of fan event this weekend.
No spring game. No spring showcase. No spring scrimmage. Nothing.
“I think we have 98 guys on our roster right now and I would think 30 of those aren’t practicing because of some kind of condition or surgery,” Klieman said. “You can’t do much with 60 guys. We’ve got a bunch of wide outs but we don’t have a bunch of defensive linemen, so you can’t scrimmage. We have got to be smart. We are trying to get everybody to the summer and everybody to the fall. You are going to win and lose with a spring game. We want to make sure we can get everyone to August healthy.”
The Wildcats will end the spring the way they started it, with a closed practice that focuses mostly on developing young and healthy players behind closed doors.
That is fine with Klieman, who has never been big on the idea of hosting a traditional spring game. He never hosted one when he coached at North Dakota State, and he has opted for an open spring practice during his first three years at K-State.
He wanted to stick with that plan. But players leaving for the NCAA transfer portal has made maintaining a full roster difficult in the spring. Plus, the Wildcats have been dealing with injuries. They lost all but three of their defensive linemen, many of their fullbacks, most of their tight ends and found it difficult to run more than a few consecutive plays during scrimmages.
Klieman said they rotated between special teams and scrimmages in order to give K-State’s defensive tackles and pass rushers a breather at practice.
“It’s just been hard,” Klieman said. “Every time we have a drill with offense versus defense, we have to supplement that with special teams for five or six minutes to get those three kids a breath and they go hang out on the sideline ... You can’t function as a normal practice. I hope we’re getting a lot better at special teams.”
There is no need to repeat that process in front of fans.
So there will be no open practice this weekend. K-State football fans will have to find something else to do with their Saturday.
But there are no plans to permanently do away with a spring football event that involves fans. Klieman would like to do something next spring.
“That would be great,” Klieman said. “Even if it was cut down to, we are going to practice for 45 minutes and we are going to have the younger guys scrimmage for 30 minutes, that would be neat. We just can’t even do that right now.”
This story was originally published April 13, 2022 at 4:02 PM with the headline "Why Chris Klieman isn’t opening a single K-State football practice to fans this spring."