Long but important.
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I've heard Coach Snyder talk about the mentality of starting again, comparing it to 1989. From his perspective, you can understand why it feels like year one, where a foundation is being put in place - again. However, I see people giving up on this year's team tonight, waiting for us to be "good" and that isn't what 1989 or any other K-State year under Bill Snyder was about. We don't write off our kicker or anyone else in purple, expecting the team to get better while we go and do something else. The great thing about our success story is that it totally depended upon the enthusiasm and participation of every single fan.
If you have forgotten or are simply too young to have experienced it, the Miracle in Manhattan was built brick-by-brick, person-by-person, play-by-play and nobody took a play off, especially the crowd. Perhaps that is less true today. So important was every first down, every drive, that we literally started the good for a Wildcat First Down!! chant because we didn't score touchdowns in the beginning, but with each first down, you could tell that momentum was building.
If you can't see momentum building with this defense, you simply aren't looking. Scratch out Carson Coffman's name and insert Ell Roberson and you're back at 2001 when the Cats' went 6-6. As K-State QB's have learned the system, they've been greeted less than warmly by our fans. Not everyone possessed Michael Bishop's sandlot wizardry (or Josh Freeman's NFL frame). Most of our QB's started out rough.
Back in those days, Coach asked for us to contribute as fans. He asked us to believe. He asked us to show up, to wear purple, to be loud, to thank the players and to travel with the team, to contribute financially whatever we could. Ten years later, the program that couldn't fathom a 7-win season was ranked Number 1 in the Nation after all the Thanksgiving Turkey in the country had been eaten and December had begun. It is perhaps one of the most amazing feats in the history of sport because of the sheer size of the game of college football, the disparity of funding between the elite programs and everyone else. (Think uSA hockey team versus the Russians at Lake Placid if you were alive then - it's that big).
Do you really think that this evening is on an equal footing to 1989??? Please. Be rational for just a moment and remember what it felt like at KSU Stadium when Snyder first arrived. Our players looked like Kansas High School and JUCO All-Stars, only smaller and less agile.
There was only one person in the stadium who could even imagine, with any great degree of clarity, what winning football might feel like at Kansas State University. His name of course was Bill Snyder. Once everyone in the Wildcat Nation caught the fever, we found ourselves playing against the Ohio State's of the world in the Fiesta Bowl.
Compared to KSU Stadium in 1989, Bill Snyder Family Stadium is a bigger, more impressive facility, filled with bowl and conference trophies, photographs of current NFL stars, former All-Americans, real heroes of the gridiron.
Those helmets with the powercat and stripes over the top? They mean something. They have been held aloft in multiple victories over USC, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, Texas
A&M, Colorado, Washington and Syracuse.
In some ways I wish it was 1989 again, simply because of the newness of it all and the electricity within our fan base. Perhaps we were a little hungrier back then. Still, I like to think that there is just a little bit of fear in the eyes of our rivals, knowing that the old man is back.
Let's get behind this team and make another run. I think the players need us to succeed even more than we need them. Be loud. Be proud. Be purple.
