Daily Archives: July 23, 2012

A few minutes with … Sean Snyder

July 23, 20121:47 p.m.

Sean Snyder is coming off his first season as Kansas State’s special teams coordinator, and he can’t wait for year No. 2 to start. The son of Wildcats football coach Bill Snyder has been associated with the program for years, and he likes the direction it is going.

He thinks highly of both kicker Anthony Cantele and punter Ryan Doerr. With both coming back as veterans, he thinks K-State’s special teams unit is capable of big things.

While participating in Big 12 Media Days alongside his father, he discussed those topics and more on Monday. Here is the conversation:

How did you enjoy your first year as special teams coordinator?

I enjoyed it a great deal. The transitional part was interesting, because I had to just get my hands on a lot of different things. That was probably the most difficult part. But being able to get on the field and coach the kids and watch them develop was great.

One of the things that made it a lot easier is all our coaches are instrumental in special teams. We didn’t really have a major hiccup in the transition, because all of our coaches are involved in special teams and they have been for years. We all worked together and made the transition smooth. The players handled it very well.

K-State special teams appear to be in good shape with Anthony Cantele returning at kicker and Ryan Doerr coming back as punter. How much of an advantage is it to have two experienced guys at those positions?

It helps a lot. The more returners you have back the more comfort you have. What I like about those guys is they have the drive to get better. They want to get better and know how to get better. I think they have gotten better and I expect a strong year for them. That part of it is good. There is some stability and continuity there. The new guys who are coming on the unit can learn it fast.
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Bill Snyder speaks at Media Days

July 23, 201211:59 a.m.

Bill Snyder just stepped off the stage at Big 12 Media Days. He addressed several topics. Here is a quick recap:

– Coming off a 10-win season and an appearance in the Cotton Bowl, many thought the Kansas State football team would face extremely high expectations this year, especially with Collin Klein and Arthur Brown returning. But when the Big 12 released its preseason media poll, the Wildcats were picked sixth.

How does Snyder think his team will respond to that? He isn’t sure, but in his experience it’s easier to deal with being the underdog than the favorite.

“If you look back at last season, we moved up maybe six slots,” Snyder said. “I just hope we can do something similar to that. For us that’s not really significant … Last year we obviously played reasonably well under those circumstances.”

He is urging his players not to take anything for granted, and focus on internal expectations more than outside expectations.

– Snyder thinks the Big 12 is now a stable conference and in much better shape than it has been in recent years.

“The universities that make up the Big 12 right now are heavily committed to the conference,” Snyder said.

– Because Tyler Lockett suffered a minor injury at the end of spring practices and didn’t participate in the spring game, Snyder worries some think the sophomore wide receiver is behind schedule in his recovery from a lacerated kidney, which cut his season short a year ago.

But that is not the case.

“He has recovered fully and is having a productive summer as well,” Snyder said. “He should be well prepared to play.”

– When Snyder came out of retirement to coach K-State a few years ago, his biggest concern was team leadership. He no longer has that fear. He thinks the Wildcats have more than enough players capable of becoming leaders this season.

“I see a great deal of growth in that respect,” Snyder said.

By Kellis Robinett | Filed under Football | Comments Off

Big 12 unlikely to expand anytime soon

July 23, 20129:35 a.m.

While addressing reporters Monday morning at the start of Big 12 Media Days in Dallas, conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby emphasized that expansion isn’t high on the Big 12′s list of priorities at the moment.

“If we voted today we wouldn’t take any new members,” Bowlsby said.

Bowlsby also said that he will always keep an eye on expansion. He thinks it would be foolish for any conference not to at least monitor the national conference realignment landscape. But he said the league’s members are happy with the additions of TCU and West Virginia, prefer deciding a true champion via a round-robin schedule and like the conference’s current trajectory. For those reasons, he doesn’t think expansion would get more than two votes in a conference-wide poll.

Florida State, Clemson, Notre Dame and others were rumored as potential expansion targets earlier in the summer, but Bowlsby threw water on them Monday. The Big 12 is happy at 10, it seems.

Bowlsby discussed two other interesting topics before taking questions.

1. As good as the regular season is in college football, Bowlsby doesn’t think nonconference games in September are nearly as entertaining as they could be.

“The first month of the season is not always terrific,” Bowlsby said.

He will encourage Big 12 teams to schedule “high-level matchups” before conference play begins with the hope that a better strength of schedule rating will help teams in the new playoff arrangement. He doesn’t think an early loss should cripple any team’s championship hopes.

“It is not fair to lose a game in September and be taken out of national championship dialogue,” Bowlsby said. “We need to encourage those games. We need to relish those games. We need to make the month of September as good as October and November.”

2. The Big 12 is positioned for a terrific year of football.

“We are salty from top to bottom,” said Bowlsby, before adding that the Big 12 has three teams that won conference championships a year ago. Never thought about that before, but it’s true. TCU won the Mountain West, West Virginia won the Big East and Oklahoma (of course) won the Big 12.

One other note from Bowlsby’s address: The Big 12 has decided to honor Chuck Neinas, who led the conference in a transitional period last year, by attaching his name to the league’s Coach of the Year award.

By Kellis Robinett | Filed under Football | Comments Off