Barfknecht: Result doesn’t do justice to Snyder’s progress

LINCOLN — The final report on Kansas State football for 2009 is in.

No Big 12 North Division championship.

No bowl game.

And sorry, Bill Snyder, but no conference coach of the year award, either. That will go to either Mack Brown of Texas or Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State.

Yet the college football world should come together in a solid round of applause for the 6-6 Wildcats, whose season ended Saturday with a 17-3 loss at Nebraska.

This is a program that is under-talented. This is a program with its class sizes screwed up by previous inept recruiting practices. This is a program that didn’t get its three biggest contributors in school until this summer.

In short, this is a program that had no business being within sniffing distance of a Big 12 North trophy.

Normally, Snyder eschews such talk. The 70-year-old future Hall of Famer is all about getting results, regardless of the circumstances.

“I don’t enjoy losing football games,’’ he said.

But with one simple sentence Saturday night — delivered in his usual low and steady tone — even Snyder realized this team had done enough to earn a salute:

“I’m proud of our football team for putting itself in the position that it was in this evening.”

A trip to the Big 12 championship game was, at times on Saturday, tantalizingly close for this ugly duckling of a team (0-5 on the road, plus no wins against Division I-A teams with more than six victories).

Seven times K-State got into Nebraska territory. But the result was just three points, stretching the Wildcats’ streak of no offensive touchdowns to nine quarters.

“In the Big 12, you’ve got to score touchdowns to win,” KSU receiver Brandon Banks said. “To fall short like we did the past two games, it’s pretty frustrating.”

Kansas State got its record to 6-4 after beating Kansas two weeks ago. But the Wildcats needed a seventh win for bowl eligibility because they had two Division I-AA victories.

After a 38-12 home loss to Missouri a week ago, I thought the K-State players looked pooped. KSU is one of only 16 I-A teams to play 12 straight games this season without a bye.

But Snyder wanted no part of that excuse for falling to Nebraska.

“I know that (no bye) is difficult,” he said. “I wouldn’t put this loss on that. But I know over the course of a year it has taken its toll.”

You might think a toll has been taken on Snyder, too.

He came out of a three-year retirement and jumped into the mess left by the firing of former coach Ron Prince, then the dismissal of the athletic director and two lieutenants over millions of dollars in secret payments.

But there Snyder stood Saturday night, after three hours of pacing a sideline, strongly and calmly answering questions after a disappointment of major proportion.

So has he ever second-guessed his decision to return?

“No,” he said, quickly. “I told you why I did it, and that is why I did it. And I’m still standing here.”

Snyder returned to “smooth the waters” among a K-State populace thinking its football boat was about to capsize.

“They’re not smooth with me yet,” he said. “But people have been very, very gracious. I don’t get any negative letters, I know that.”

Other good signs for the future are apparent, he said.

“I saw some heartaches tonight in the locker room that I didn’t see at Louisiana-Lafayette (after a loss),” Snyder said. “That tells me a lot about the emotional growth of this football team.”

The players notice it, too.

“The foundation will grow from here,” Banks said. “Coach Snyder knows what he’s doing. He knows how to win.”

Junior place-kicker Josh Cherry of McCook, Neb., also looked past Saturday night’s disappointment with hope.

“I see this season as the start of something good,” he said. “This is our third straight year of not going to a bowl. We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Contact the writer:

444-1024, lee.barfknecht@owh.com

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