K-State in search of new recruiting blood

Jan. 18, 201310:40 a.m.

First Joe Bob Clements. Now Michael Smith.

In the span of five days, the Kansas State football team surprisingly lost two longtime assistants that once played for the Wildcats and started their coaching careers under Bill Snyder.

Clements, K-State’s former defensive ends coach and defensive run game coordinator, is off to Oklahoma State as the Cowboys’ new defensive line coach. Smith, K-State’s former receivers coach, will be in charge of the same position at Arkansas.

Their absences will be noticeable. On the field, Clements and Smith did a fine job of developing talent. Meshak Williams and Adam Davis were two of the top pass-rushers in the Big 12 last season. Chris Harper came to Manhattan hoping to play quarterback and left as a productive receiver with a future in the NFL. They helped K-State win 21 games the past two seasons.

But their biggest contributions came in recruiting.

Smith and Clements were without a doubt K-State’s top two recruiters. Smith, a New Orleans native, regularly signed prospects from Florida and Louisiana, where he faced competition from SEC schools. He spoke passionately about “not taking a backseat” to other programs and Rivals labeled him as one of the top 10 recruiters in the Big 12 last year. Clements, an Emporia native, was well-liked in the Sunflower State and helped seal the deal with many local recruits.

They were the two youngest assistants on the Wildcats’ staff (Clements is 37 and Smith is 42) and had outgoing personalities that high school seniors could easily relate to.
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Fiesta Bowl Countdown: Dana Dimel Q&A

Dec. 30, 20124:39 p.m.

Dana Dimel has one of the most interesting backgrounds of anyone on Kansas State’s coaching staff. The co-offensive coordinator, who also oversees running backs and tight ends, is just about to finish his fourth straight season at the helm of K-State’s offense.

Before that, though, he was a head coach at Wyoming and Houston and the associate head coach at Arizona. He is a K-State grad and got his coaching start with the Wildcats, originally serving as a graduate assistant and becoming offensive coordinator in 1995. He was with Bill Snyder at the start of his first successful run at K-State and came back for his second.

He has coached a Heisman Trophy finalist (Collin Klein), he has helped K-State reach two Cotton Bowls (1997 and 2012), he is about to coach in the Fiesta Bowl and he recruited Rob Gronkowski. He went 22-13 in three years at Wyoming. He went 0-11 in his second year at Houston and only lasted three seasons with the Cougars.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, interesting.

On Sunday, at a Fiesta Bowl news conference, he talked about his background, his dream of following Snyder as K-State’s head coach, the Wildcats’ 11-win season and the upcoming game against Oregon.

What does it mean to you, personally, to be part of K-State’s recent success?

It’s been very nice. Nice personally to be back with my family, back at Kansas State, where I went to school. To be around the community, where I know so many people, to see them as they raise their families, it’s home for me. I’ve spent 16 years of my life in Manhattan, Kansas. More than any place else.

Do you want to be a head coach again?

Sure, yeah, absolutely. That is always important for people to want to do that. I have been there and done it a couple times. I enjoyed it and want the challenge again. I always learned to be a good head coach you have to be good at what you are doing right now. So I don’t think about that. I just try to be the best running backs, tight end, fullback coach and offensive coordinator that I can be.

Do people around campus ever talk to you about the possibility of being the head coach at Kansas State?

Sure, absolutely. But it’s just something you don’t talk about that much. Obviously that would be a goal of mine. That is something I would want to happen, and hopefully someday it does happen. But right now let’s just do the best at what we are doing right now. To answer your question very candidly, though, yes — of course.

So that’s a dream of yours?

Sure.

You want to take over the program when Snyder steps down?

Sure. Absolutely. I think it would be a challenge, but obviously I understand the inner workings of this program. I saw coach come in when we weren’t very successful. So I’ve seen what can make K-State not successful. I’ve been around for the losing years. I’ve also been around here during the transition and around for the positive years. I have seen the whole gambit of what K-State football is about. I have a great understanding of what it takes to win here, but also what not to do here.
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Fiesta Bowl Countdown: K-State’s defense will stick with fundamentals against Oregon

Dec. 29, 20125:10 p.m.

With Oregon only losing one game this season, it’s easy to sit back and say Kansas State should devise a defensive gameplan similar to the one Stanford used during a 17-14 victory in Eugene.

The Cardinal out-gained the Ducks that night and held Oregon well below its average scoring output. Heck, it scored at least 42 points in each of its other 11 games. Stanford must have been onto something, right?

Perhaps, but K-State coaches aren’t thinking that way.

“That would be a game that a lot of people would say, ‘You could feed off of that,’” coach Bill Snyder said. “But all teams are different. Our defense is different from Stanford’s defense and vice-versa. You have to be careful. You can’t say, ‘They did it, so we can do it.’ It doesn’t work that way.”

So what will K-State’s defensive strategy be against Oregon? Snyder runs far too tight a ship to come out and diagram his plans with the media. But after talking to Snyder and defensive coordinator Tom Hayes, it is clear they won’t be using any brand new schemes or formations.

“We are not going to gimmick and do a bunch of crazy things,” Hayes said. “Several of these teams that have gotten in trouble against Oregon gimmicked and got caught out of gaps – woosh, 50, 70 right over the top – misreads, misexecution if you will. Hopefully we stay away from that.”
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Fiesta Bowl Countdown: When it comes to football uniforms, Oregon is a trendsetter

Dec. 18, 20122:47 p.m.

Before the Oregon Ducks take the field next month at the Fiesta Bowl, they will need to figure out what they’re going to wear.

That’s never an easy task for a football team with close ties to Nike and Phil Knight. The Ducks have hundreds of different uniform options to choose from, and they go out of their way to make sure they don’t wear the same thing twice.

One week they come out with neon yellow numbers, the next their shoulder pads will feature wings or spikes. Sometimes they wear all white. Other times they wear black and green, yellow and green or throw in some gray. Point is: They never look the same.

Lots of teams (Oklahoma State, Baylor, Maryland) try to do the same with their uniforms. What they wear from week to week is considered news. Plenty more (TCU, Boise State, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Notre Dame) break out special uniforms for special games.

New and loud uniforms are practically common place in college football, but that wasn’t always the case. Oregon started it all. Oregon was the trendsetter.
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Fiesta Bowl Countdown: Commercials

Dec. 15, 201212:03 p.m.

Oregon football coach Chip Kelly starred in his very own UPS commercial this year. You’ve probably seen it already — Logistics! — but if you haven’t you can check it out above.

I’m not the biggest fan of those UPS commercials. It takes lots of work behind the scenes to do anything. Other than calling that hard work logistics, UPS is not doing anything special. But Kelly did a nice job and scored some face time and exposure for his offense.

Kansas State coach Bill Snyder has been in commercials before, too. Check this one out.


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Fiesta Bowl Countdown: Canceled game will be played thanks to BCS

Dec. 13, 20121:22 p.m.

One of the coolest things about bowl games: They give teams a chance to step outside their comfort zone and play opponents they wouldn’t normally schedule.

Such is the case with the Fiesta Bowl. Kansas State and Oregon will meet for the first time at University of Phoenix Stadium. The Ducks are one of the four Pac-12 teams the Wildcats have never played.

That will help make the Fiesta Bowl an enticing game for both sides, especially when you consider how much fuss was made earlier this year about K-State and Oregon cancelling a home-and-home series.

Remember that? Back when it looked like Alabama was going to go undefeated and Oregon was competing with K-State for the second spot in the BCS championship game, the fact that the Wildcats and Ducks weren’t playing was big news. Why should fans have to debate which team is better when they could have simply played?

Oregon fans blamed K-State for cancelling the series, even though the Ducks asked to reschedule the game so they could play LSU. K-State fans said it was a mutual decision, even though Snyder wanted it off the schedule the second he returned as coach. Then both teams lost on the same day, and the topic became moot.

Still, both Oregon coach Chip Kelly and K-State coach Bill Snyder were asked about not going through with the series during the Fiesta Bowl’s first teleconference earlier this month.

Said Kelly: “We were just told we had to find another game. I wasn’t told why.”

Said Snyder: “It just didn’t fit our scheduling philosophy.”
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Cats ready for first trip to Ames since 2007

Oct. 12, 201210:17 a.m.

The last time Kansas State traveled to Jack Trice Stadium, Iowa State handed the Wildcats a 31-20 loss in Ron Prince’s second year as head coach.

The Wildcats have since reeled off four straight wins over the Cyclones, but they came by an average of 5.75 points and none of them were played in Ames. K-State defeated Iowa State at home in 2008 and 2011. In between, the Farmageddon series briefly moved to Arrowhead Stadium.

So Saturday’s game will be a new experience for K-State players. None of them have played at Jack Trice Stadium before. Next week will bring a new stadium, too, when the Wildcats play their first game at West Virginia since 1931.

Question is: Will that have an impact on the games?

“I would like to think that’s not the case,” K-State football coach Bill Snyder said. “As we’ve said so many times, it’s keeping it all between the white lines. If you do that it all looks the same no matter where you happen to be. Grass is grass.”
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Sunday Rewind: K-State 51, Missouri State 9

Sept. 2, 20129:48 a.m.


Kansas State’s 51-9 victory over Missouri State on Saturday at Snyder Family Stadium was the closest 42-point victory you will ever see.

At halftime, the Wildcats led 9-6 and everyone feared this could be Eastern Kentucky all over again.

Early in the third quarter, the Bears tied things up at 9-9.

As the clock ran out, it was a blowout.

So how did K-State turn a game that was tied in the second half into the lopsided victory all BCS conference teams hope for on opening night?

Here’s a look at all that and more in this week’s Sunday Rewind:
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Crunching numbers on K-State’s defense

Aug. 6, 20121:24 p.m.


Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder and defensive coordinator Tom Hayes are using the same argument to explain why the Wildcats were better against the pass last season than the 263.3 yards per game they allowed indicate.

Said Snyder:

“Statistically, the defense against the passing game may have suffered, but you have to look at this conference. You look at the conference and there are teams that are throwing the ball an average of 400 yards per ballgame against some very fine football teams. In this league, statistics throwing the football are going to be significantly higher than they might normally be in most conferences.”

Said Hayes:

“Our stats are skewed somewhat in the way that we played against Oklahoma and Oklahoma State two weeks in a row. We didn’t play very well and they played very well and they were very talented on offense, both of them. We gave up a ton of yards to them and we lost both those games, but they kind of skew what happened in the whole scheme of things … They do that to everybody.”

There is truth in each of those statements. There is no shortage of offense in the Big 12. While K-State’s pass defense ranked a respectable sixth in the conference last season, it ranked an ugly 103rd nationally.

Maybe Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville said it best in Dallas last month when he described the Big 12 as “a points league.”

“You’re still going to have to score a lot of points no matter what,” Tuberville said. “You’re going to give up points in this league. This is a points league. I mean, we scored close to 40 points a game last year and won five games.”
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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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