At the time Snyder took over the program in 1988, K-State was the worst football program in Division 1-A history. It was the only collegiate football team to lose 500 games, with just one win in its last 38 games and having gone winless in 27 straight games.
Bill Snyder staged one of the greatest turnarounds in college sports. In his new memoir, 'Bill Snyder: My Football Life and the Rest of the Story' he offers an in-depth look at his life as a coach and at what it took to turn Kansas State into a winning program.
About his decision to take the job Snyder recalls, "By and large there wasn't time to have second thoughts . . . it was just something new pops up every five minutes."
It took long hours and hard work to get Kansas State to be a top program. Snyder remembers his one meal and ten cups of coffee a day, one of the sacrifices of his early years in coaching and a testament to his commitment to achieving his goal.
Convincing the best players to come to a losing program wasn't easy and Coach Snyder and his staff found no degree of success in their attempts to recruit them.
"What became important to us was to define young people who fit our value system of intrinsic values and were wiling to put in the time, and the effort, and the work and the commitment to become the best that they could possibly be and then rely on being able to develop them," Synder says.
Despite having a number of big wins in his 25 years at Kansas State, Snyder says "most of the real joys are seeing young people that come through a program develop as individuals . . . to go on and have success in their lives."
- Bill Snyder, former Kansas State head football coach, author of 'Bill Snyder: My Football Life and the Rest of the Story'
