Chris Klieman defends team (and program) after K-State football falls to Iowa State
Chris Klieman understands that Kansas State football fans wanted a better season this.
He knows it had to be disappointing for them to watch the Wildcats fall to the Iowa State Cyclones 29-21 on Saturday at Jack Trice Stadium, especially on a night when their Farmageddon rivals celebrated their first 10-win season in school history and earned a berth in the Big 12 championship game.
K-State could have spoiled that party and closed out the regular season with a bang. Instead, it suffered a mistake-filled loss that epitomized the entire year. The end result was an 8-4 overall record and 5-4 mark in Big 12 play, which was only good enough for eighth place in the final standings.
The Wildcats appeared to be destined for much more after perennial powers Oklahoma and Texas left the Big 12. Some were dreaming of a playoff berth when they started 7-1. But they fell short of those expectations.
Klieman acknowledged all of that but still chose to unleash a fiery defense of his team and the program he has built in Manhattan during his postgame news conference.
“I know that everybody wants K-State to go undefeated,” Klieman said. “I want to go undefeated, and it’s frustrating that we’ve lost a couple games that we felt like we had a chance to win. OK? This one is a tough frigging game to win. But I am going to support, and I’m going to back, this football team and back the coaches.”
Klieman began coaching at K-State in 2019. He has since led the Wildcats to records of 8-5, 4-6, 8-5, 10-4, 9-4 and now 8-4 with a bowl game still to play.
He has guided K-State to five bowls and one conference championship. He thinks more people should respect his teams for their consistency instead of criticizing them for failing to reach elite standards.
“I wish our kids would get respect,” Klieman said. “Our kids get, and our coaches really get, disrespected because of a loss, a poor play call, a poor tackle, a poor something. This is a hard business right now. It’s a really hard business, and we won eight games for the fourth year in a row. There are only eight teams in college football that have done that.
“There’s some teams in our league that went the other way, and this team didn’t do it. I think we need to at least acknowledge that. Sometimes I don’t think it gets acknowledged.”
It will be interesting to see how K-State fans view this season.
There were certainly positives, like a road win at Tulane, a dramatic home victory against rival Kansas and a memorable comeback against Deion Sanders and Colorado.
But double-digit losses to BYU and Arizona State left all of EMAW nation shaking their heads. Close losses to Houston and Iowa State were equally frustrating.
Klieman refused to point a finger at anyone for those setbacks. Changes may come to his coaching staff and the K-State roster in the coming weeks. But now is not the time for him to be critical of anyone.
“I’m not going to kill anybody,” Klieman said. “Everybody wants me to kill people in the program. It’s a collective effort, man. It’s a collective effort of not executing to jumping offside to a holding penalty to lining up wrong. There’s a lot that goes into that.”
Before he left the media room and traveled home with his team, Klieman was asked how he would grade his team’s performance this season.
He had to give the question some thought before responding.
“Just some really good moments and some disappointing moments,” Klieman said. “That’s the season. You know, there were some really good highs and then we had some lows.”
The Wildcats ended on a low against Iowa State.
But Klieman doesn’t want K-State fans to forget about the highs, or the bowl game that is on the horizon for this group.
This story was originally published December 1, 2024 at 12:11 AM with the headline "Chris Klieman defends team (and program) after K-State football falls to Iowa State."