Posted: Friday, October 22, 2004 7:00 pm
When Rev. Jim Reed, senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Manhattan, Kan., is asked about God these days, he might still pause, but he's probably safe pulling out a reference from the Bible before he reaches for the Kansas State football team's media guide.
Mind you, throughout the Flint Hills region that surrounds Manhattan, there could be a healthy debate over who has had the greatest presence over the community since Reed arrived in 1998 to spread the good word.
That year, Bill Snyder's Wildcats continued with their meek shall inherit the Earth' story by ending 29 years of famine against the devilish Nebraska Cornhuskers.
That season, and in four of the next five, K-State won 11 games. The Wildcats also beat the Huskers again in their Manhattan temple in 2000 and 2002. Then, last year, they slew the Big Red army on its hallowed ground for the first time since 1968, catapulting them to their first Big 12 championship.
In Bill, these long-persecuted fans trust.
But alas, the sword hath not remained true and steady, and Snyder's troops march into today's battle against the heathens from north of the border a bloodied 2-4.
Just don't, for a second, think that any of Snyder's disciples are close to wavering in their support of the man who laid his healing hands on a dying program.
"We don't like to lose, but there isn't any of us after Snyder's job," Reed said in a calming tone that his Sunday-morning congregation might recognize.
And to think, in 1966, this man experienced a slice of heaven while doing his internship in Lincoln (where he lived a block from the original Valentino's on Holdrege Street).
There are some who would tell Reed that converting from Bob Devaney to Bill Snyder borders as the sacrilegious.
To that, he and the proud Purple Nation respectfully turn a deaf ear.
Kenny Mossman was the sports information director at Kansas State when Snyder arrived following the 1988 season as a relatively unknown assistant from the University of Iowa.
One of the first actions Snyder took was to close practices to the media. Mossman, now in charge of media relations at Oklahoma, remembers the move causing an uproar, but it quickly died because "it was very seldom they attended practices" before his arrival.
Snyder, of course, had bigger concerns than the media.
The Wildcats were riding a 27-game non-winning streak when he took control. It was at 30 when K-State, on the final play of a contest against NCAA Division I-AA North Texas State, scored a touchdown to pull out a 20-17 win.
Snyder was not amused by fans tearing down the goal posts. Nor the school producing a videotape titled "A Great Finish to a Great Beginning" in honor of it.
"I was all giddy and I remember him being completely unimpressed (by the win)," Mossman said. "He had a much better grasp of the long term than any of us did."
One week later, Nebraska welcomed Snyder to the Big Eight by blasting Kansas State 58-7. The Wildcats wouldn't win again until the 1990 season opener.
They followed that with a 52-7 victory against New Mexico State, one that Mossman remembers coming as a complete surprise.
"I was sitting in the back row of the press box next to a door," he said. "(Former K-State men's basketball coach) Jack Hartman comes strolling down the hallway and in his old, shy Texas look, says, Paad-ner, there's bulbs lit up on that side of the scoreboard ain't never been lit before.'
"None of us knew what was about to happen."
Rusty Wilson got married on Sept. 30, 1989, the day of the big win against North Texas State.
Wilson was a freshman at K-State in 1982, when the Wildcats produced their first winning season since 1970 and got invited to a bowl (the Independence) for the first time in school history.
Over the next six seasons, Kansas State won just nine games, so Wilson, who had just opened a bar and grill called Rusty's Last Chance in Manhattan's "Aggieville" college district, had no problems leaving his business on a game day to get hitched.
"I remember Stan Parrish," Wilson said of the coach who preceded Snyder, and in three years compiled a 2-30-1 record. "They called him Air Parrish' and made a whoop-de-do. Then Snyder came in and changed our logos. We were like, OK, whatever,' that type of deal, because we were so used to losing."
That attitude started to turn when Snyder's third team, one that had Nebraska on the ropes in Lincoln before losing 38-31, went 7-4. Two years later, the Wildcats were back in the postseason, walloping Wyoming 52-17 in the Copper Bowl to wrap up a 9-2-1 campaign.
By then, Rusty's had become the place to raise a toast to the boys.
"Before (Snyder), football players would come in and we'd have no respect for them," Wilson said. For one, they weren't winning. And they were troublemakers. These guys, their attitude was so good, and they talked about Snyder. Before that season, they were saying, Watch what we're going to do.' From then on, that's when we knew what was going to happen."
Quentin Neujahr came to Kansas State from Ulysses, Neb., as a member of Snyder's first recruiting class in 1989, a 22-player bunch. He was one of just 10 players who made it all the way to the Copper Bowl.
"Coach Snyder was very demanding," said Neujahr, now living in suburban Denver after a successful professional football career. "He demanded respect, attention and focus from day 1. He came in with a definite plan and if you didn't like it, Here's the door.' "
Neujahr remembers watching the scene after the victory over North Texas State during his redshirt season and thinking the fans were acting as if Kansas State had won the Super Bowl.
"The joke 15 years ago was if you got pulled over for speeding in Kansas they gave you a pair of tickets to a Kansas State game," Neujahr said. "If you got pulled over again, they made you go.
"I don't think the people that were in his (Snyder's) first class truly knew how bad K-State really was. The first sense I got that the program was headed in the right direction was 1990. We started out 3-1 and, you know, the story about success breeds more success. That was us."
Dana Altman was an assistant men's basketball coach at Kansas State who left to take over at Marshall just after Snyder came to Manhattan.
One year later, Altman returned to lead the Wildcats' storied hoops program. By the time he left again in 1994, for Creighton, the Snyder Express was on a roll.
"You saw his tremendous focus," said Altman, who marveled at how Snyder would engulf himself in his work, often forgoing sleep. "A typical approach or something ordinary? It took somebody like him to get it turned around.
"I think (athletic director) Steve Miller just pulled a rabbit out of the hat. If anybody had told you then what was going to happen, they'd be lying."
Snyder is 65 years old and in the fourth year of a six-year contract.
Since he came to Kansas State just more than 15 seasons ago, there have been 33 coaches at the other 11 Big 12 schools. He's also had 34 full-time assistants, meaning that on average, his staffs have had more than two changes each year.
But his formula has produced 129 wins, the third-highest total among Big 12 schools (Nebraska has 160 and Texas A&M 132) while he's been coaching.
Snyder shows no visible signs of slowing down. Some day, though, the man Barry Switzer called the Coach of the Century will agree to pose for the statue that will surely be the centerpiece of the entrance to KSU Stadium and leave the keys to somebody else.
Then, what?
"When he does retire, you never hope there's a letdown," Neujahr said. "But let's face it, not everybody's Coach Snyder."
If he'd been in Wildcat Country, Neujahr might have whispered that response. Such thoughts there are taboo.
Yes, even in a rare moment when Snyder looks like a mere mortal.
"His age, or whatever I have never ever heard anybody bad mouth Coach Snyder," Wilson said. "From where we were and where we are now if you'd bet me in 1983 that Nebraska would become our biggest rival, that we actually would think we could beat Nebraska? No way. We all still have faith in Coach Snyder."
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.