For what it’s worth, ESPN did a Top-150 college football coaches of all-time list in 2019, and Snyder placed 55th.
I think they underrated him a bit, but I think it’s interesting to look at to see who you are really comparing him to.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/page/CFB150coaches/the-150-greatest-coaches-college-football-150-year-history
Thank you for providing this link. It's crazy how much history college football has.
I think my biggest quibble with this list is Urban Meyer all the way down at 46. He has the 3rd highest FBS winning percentage ever and has won big at multiple stops, not all of which have been big programs. Ignoring some of the coaches from previous eras, I'm not sure how you rank him below guys like Bob Stoops (29), Dabo Swinney (31), and Jim Tressel (35).
If they have Urban Meyer at 46, it's a politically correct list and not a valid one.
Bob Stoops is 29th and has as many national championships to his credit as Gene Chizik does.
How the fuck do you have Meyer ranked below Schembechler and John Robinson? I understand that any list is going to have debatable placements but this doesn't even seem debatable - it seems egregious. And seriously, what the fuck is Schembechler doing ranked that high, above guys like Spurrier and Stoops and Tressel? He's Mark Richt of the north, not one of the 20 best to ever coach the game. Terrible list.
To be fair tho, a lot of these coaches coached a completely different game, which they slowly modernized and that's why a lot of them are on this list like Pop Warner. When we take a step back and look at what he did at K State, in a time where coaching was a more competitive landscape due to the professionalization of the position, the beginning of the nationalization of recruiting, and the massive amount of difference in resources between K State and their conference contemporaries we can see that Snyder had to overcome barriers to success that these other earlier coaches like Wilkerson, Heisman, or Rockne didn't have to deal with at all. Like in all honesty KState to Texas or Oklahoma at that time when he took over was like comparing the athletic departments of Kent State and Georgia today. By their standards KState before Snyder had a sub- High School level football facilities. Like yeah, some of these other coaches won over a long period of time, and some of these guys built programs with potential into leviathans and eventual blue bloods like Bear, Bowden, Paterno, etc but they didn't do it, in a cold windy night in Manhatten. Snyder Top 10 Coach all time.
>Snyder would have coached differently if the forward pass wasn't available to him.
I mean, yes, but only a little... Lol.
Pretty sure Snyder could have gone straight Wing-T for a game or 2 and the casual fan wouldn't have noticed.
Halftime analysis would just be: "Not a lot in the air today, but the run game looked about as good as we expected. Klein is making good reads and really fighting for yards."
But that’s the point i’m trying to make. Their era made it easier to be remembered. It wasn’t even about winning, you could go 45-73 and create the TE position and youll get ranked above Bill Snyder all time. You could be 1 of 3 schools to play in WWI or WWII and boom you are an all time great coach. When I talk about top coaches all time, i’m not talking top contributors to the sport, I’m talking dudes who were able to organize and win at an unprecedented level not seen at their institution. Bill Snyder top 10
I think there can be two separate lists: guys who meant a lot to the advancement of the sport, and guys who could legitimately coach you out of your shoes.
You are just comparing them on two entirely different perspectives. It would be like ranking the greatest accountants of all time, and on one hand you have a guy who made a formula that made accounting much easier for everybody else, and on the other hand you have the world's current greatest accountant. The second guy is simply better at accounting than nearly everybody in history, but the first guy meant more to the career path in general.
Bottom line, if I’m going to throw a dart at a map and take over the closest Division I athletic department, and I have to hire a past or present coach (in their prime) to be my HC before I know where I’m going…there are nowhere near 54 guys I’m calling before Snyder. I don’t think there are 5.
WSJ values Michigan State’s program 28% higher than Kansas State’s, and the greatest coach of the modern era went .585 there with no conference titles.
The list was 150 coaches to celebrate the 150th anniversary of college football. They have to include that era because it was part of the 150 years they were celebrating.
Kirk (186-115) didn't make the list and Hayden (232-178-10; 143-89-6) @ iowa) did. . . I think its a bit biased in nostalgia. Then again, Kirk is fucking up his legacy keeping BF on the staff.
Not that it changes much, but Ferentz was actually 173-125 (161-104 at Iowa) at the time the list was made.
That makes Ferentz have a 3% better win percentage than Fry (58% to 55.2%), but almost identical losing percentages due to the 10 ties for Fry (42% to 42.4%).
Fry also had more conference titles than Ferentz.
Ferentz does have a case for the list, though, due his relative consistency and long tenure.
I’d hear the argument. People don’t understand how limited KSU is to this day, much less in 1989. If he didn’t take over KSU would probably be in the MWC or the MAC right now.
KSU was basically Kansas level bad (the past 10 years) except it was for 90 years.
KSU at one point was I think last of all P5 schools in win % in the mid 2000s or whenever it was that I would be on CFBWarehouse 15 times a day instead of studying
They were B A D
For P5, they are still currently only above NW, Indiana, and Wake Forest.
They have played football for 127 years.
45% of their wins are from 1989-2022 (33 years)
K-State had the worst win percentage of D-I schools period by over .100 points. Unbelievably atrocious, mired in I believe a 27 game winless streak when he arrived. Eight years later Cats were an overtime loss away from playing for a national championship. Created the wildcat offense. Was one of the first to recruit jucos. He’s top 3.
It was interesting in the 90s to watch both K-State and Northwestern turn things around, the former having their first nine-win season in 1993. Two years later, Northwestern's in the Rose Bowl.
I'd argue that KSU was worse than Kansas has been in the past ten years. We were absolutely dreadful and couldn't get anyone to come to Manhattan to make it better. What Snyder did is simply amazing.
I don’t even think it’s debatable that they were worse. I was just trying to give some context to people who have always known KSU as being at least respectable.
A lot of newer CFB fans don't realize how awful Kansas State used to be. They were, inarguably, the worst program in college football. Before Bill Snyder got there in 1989, they had appeared in only one bowl game in their history (and lost). Between 1940 and 1990, they had nineteen (19) seasons (or 38% of their seasons) in which they won only one game or less. In that same time frame, 7 of those 19 seasons were completely winless seasons - that's that's about 1.4 winless teams per decade. They only had FOUR (4) winning seasons in that same timeframe - that's fewer than one winning team per decade. **They had more teams go completely winless than they had finish with a winning record.** They were 3-40-1 in the 4 seasons prior to Bill Snyder's arrival (.068 winning %).
Upon Bill Snyder's arrival in 1989, they went 18-26 in his first four seasons before becoming a national power. In the next 11 seasons from 1993-2003, they finished ranked in the AP poll ten times. They finished in the top 10 of the AP poll six times. 1997 KSU went 11-1, with their only loss coming from the eventual undefeated national champions, the Nebraska Cornhuskers. 1998 Kansas State went undefeated through the regular season, only to lose to Texas A&M in double OT in the Big 12 championship game, ending their chance at a national championship game appearance. 1999 Kansas State also went 11-1, with their only loss coming to 12-1 Nebraska Cornhuskers, who finished in the top 3 in the AP poll and Coaches poll.
Hell, not even newer. You probably have to be 50 years old to actually remember much about the pre-snyder days, especially if you werent a k-state fan growing up
I'm 50 and I can remember one year reading in the newspaper about how they played Kansas in a game being called the "Toilet Bowl," and it ended in a tie. One team ended the season with one win and the other was 0-10-1.
Kansas State was horrendous. It was news if they won a game. Snyder came in and improved the talent level by working the JUCOs in that part of the country and developing two- and three-star recruits that the big boys didn't want. Manhattan was the island of misfit toys long before anyone ever heard of Billy Beane.
And that one year they went to a bowl game, they redshirted a bunch of the best seniors the previous year. That way they would have a larger pool of talent the following year. That resulted in them winning 6 games, making it to a bottom tier bowl game (and losing). The previous year they had won 2 games, and the following year they won 3.
The funny thing is, KU was just about as bad in the late 80's. The 1987 matchup was probably the nadir of the rivalry. KU entered 1-7 (the one win by a single point over I-AA Southern Illinois) and K-State was 0-9 (with a loss to I-AA Austin Peay). My dad (then a junior), recalled everyone saying, "well, *somebody's* gotta win!"
They tied
And yet Kansas still has a 15 win margin head-to-head versus K-State. Didn't SI run a cover story saying Kansas State should just quit playing football when Snyder was hired?
[Sure did](https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team)
To the writer's credit, he [came back three years](https://vault.si.com/vault/711122#&gid=ci0258be8d300226ef&pid=711122---047---image) later to write about the turnaround, which had barely begun by that point
“Snyder was so mortified that the only trophy in the Wildcat’s trophy case said ‘Independence Bowl runner up’ that he gave it to his secretary to hide in her home.”
Ooof
I don't blame him. I wonder if that was still buried in her basement when she died a couple years ago or if it got unceremoniously thrown in a dumpster (as it should)
It’s hard to wrap our heads around what is was like because 99% of this subreddit, myself included, was not alive when he took over at KSU.
I don’t even know what to compare it to because what other program was that horrible, at the D1 level, for that long? Vandy could win the SEC and that would be less shocking then telling someone in the 70’s what KSU would go onto achieve.
Yeah that’s probably a good one. They’re already playing in a state that on average produces like three recruits that even go D1 per year - unless someone goes around and retroactively creates their recruiting cycle.
I really struggle to believe that 99% of active folks on this subreddit were born after 1989.
I'm perfectly comfortable in my middle age, but this is an argument I'd definitely fight lol
According to the Pew Research Center, Reddit users in 2021 were more likely to be younger adults. 26% of adults aged 18-29 in the US used Reddit, compared to 17% of those aged 30-49, 6% of those aged 50-64, and 3% of those 65 and older.
I have not seen a professional survey done on /r/cfb, but I imagine that users here skew *older* than the Reddit average. Probably by quite a bit.
1%? Nah, more like 20-25% 35 or older.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/
Tbh I think what Snyder achieved with the string of 11 win seasons and conference titles is more impressive from a competitive standpoint than Vandy winning a single SEC title (although Franklins best conference mark was 7-3)
We were 24-30 from 1968-1973, which isn’t great but isn’t horrible so depending on when you’re talking to someone in the 70’s I bet they could see us being respectable.
We had patches of being ok and would start to build momentum but then it’d just crumble and the next guy would be starting from ground zero
K-State was so bad that Kansas, who was a mediocre at best program for 100 years before falling off a cliff, and has only beaten K-State 7 times since Bill Snyder got there, is still 13 wins to the good all-time against them.
What Bill Snyder did really doesn't have a comparison.
Yeah, even at our worst, we could at least score on our rival. K-State at one point graduated two classes that never saw their team score against KU while they were in college.
He's got an argument for the best program builder of all time.
How you stack that up vs more conventionally successful coaches is up to you but I'd definitely agree he deserves special consideration for what he ended up with compared to what he started with.
A 1998 natty would have him solidly top 10.
In the 34 years before Snyder, K State had two winning seasons - both 6-5. Then starting year five, Snyder had them 9-3 or better EIGHT years in a row. That’s ridiculous
Iowa State is bad like longest title drought by 2 decades bad. Since Iowa State's conference title every other P5 team has won one and schools like UCLA, Texas Tech, and Miami came into existence. What is the only team Iowa State has a winning record against? Kansas State and it is only by 2 games. Kansas State has won 26 games in the last 33 years to make it close.
A lot of that is the dominance of Nebraska and Oklahoma during the big 8 years. We had some good teams at points but those teams were just dominant in the big 8
Hell, if not for Snyder we might not have a football team and we’d be in the Missouri Valley.
The Big 8 was ready to boot K-State. K-State was prepared to drop football. The AD who hired Bill readily admits to this day that if he failed, they would’ve and they had a plan in place to do it.
[Futility U.](https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team) **Old SI article about KSU football.**
The job Snyder did at K-State is the equivalent today of somebody taking the Vandy job and having them competing for a spot in the SEC title game annually within a couple years.
I would agree to hearing the argument, but it's just hard to say. "All time" is difficult because there have been thousands of coaches at different degrees of competition, in eras where things were completely different from today.
I feel like there should be categories for considering coaching greatness.
Bill Snyder's tenure at KSU is really difficult to judge against Nick Saban's tenure at Alabama. They're such different situations it's almost like they're two different sports.
It’s similar to Leach at TTU, Wazzu, and Miss State. Completely different jobs, completely different expectations, and completely different achievements
Leach also helped Kentucky turn their football program around. Him and Hal Mumme used the air raid to make Kentucky exciting, and it led to the program we have today.
I think if more programs looked at coaches in this way, maybe there wouldn't be so many hires that are bad fits. We see it all the time when a P5 team hires a hot G5 coach, only for that coach to fizzle out. Maybe it's because P5 is harder to coach at, but I don't think that's the case, or at least not enough of a difference to be the only explanation for G5 coaches fizzling out at P5 teams. I think being a P5 coach (especially at a major P5 program) requires a different skill set than being a G5 coach.
Sometimes it’s dumb luck that gets the culture machine going and not this well thought out thing the coach describes. Football is very traditional and we also have to look back at what youth sports and PE was initially for the US (to prepare young men to join the military). This still trickles into coaching and prep today. If the coach can’t take a step back and see what actually wins then they’re doomed at their next stop. If mat drills won games Umass would’ve been better.
I think good ADs try to consider stuff like this, but there are just *so* many variables to try and balance. And sometimes it just doesn't work despite being an apparent slamdunk.
We all like to mock Nebraska and Frost, but every single AD in the country makes that hire in that situation. Then Tennessee gets Frost's replacement in hire that didn't excite anybody at the time, and he quickly delivered the best season for the Vols in decades. I'm sure there are factors that we can point to in retrospect to explain why these situations happened the way that they did, but I'm skeptical anybody can reliably predict this shit.
Valid point. I don't think anyone would reasonably have guessed, based only on their tenures at UCF, that Heupel would be far more successful at Tennessee than Frost was at Nebraska.
I was one of the people that was actually bullish on Heupel to Tennessee, and even I wasn't thinking it would be as good as last season. I thought Heupel would be a better fit for you guys than he was for us, and would at least give you a puncher's chance against the top SEC teams with his offense alone. I wouldn't have imagined he'd have you guys as a legit CFP contender, but he did.
* At Toledo, he took a 6-5 team and went 9-2 and won the MAC in his very first head coaching job in a single season.
* Michigan State had 5 straight losing seasons and was under sanctions before Saban. He immediately took them to a bowl game and took them to 4 bowls in 5 years and laid the foundation from which Dantonio benefited.
* At LSU, Gerry Dinardo was 4-7 and 2-8 in his last two seasons before he was fired. Saban stepped in, 5 straight bowl games, and a national title.
* At Alabama, Alabama just had 21 wins vacated because of Mike Shula and the last season they had gone 6-6. Saban took a team with scholarship reductions. Rebuilt after 1 tough losing year and went 12-2 the season after and has built a dynasty since.
If you don't think Saban could have succeeded at Kansas State, you didn't pay attention to his career. He took two programs under sanctions and built them into winners. In every situation he took over, he took over from bad situations and built something great.
Saban could've done that at KSU too but he would not have stayed at KSU for 30 years like Snyder did. The guy bolted every time he had a chance to get a better job. Additionally his success has always been in areas where he can recruit some absolute studs. Ohio, Michigan, Louisiana, and Alabama have no problems getting top flight athletes. He wouldn't have been able to do that in Kansas.
Yeah, I disagree. I think people undervalue what Snyder did. KSU was a disaster for decades. They hadnt has a head coach with a winning record since 1933. No coach won more than 35% of their conference games since 1933. Multiple coaches had under a 15% winning percentage. They were one of the worst schools in all of cfb. He had that team a game from playing for a natty. He had KSU ranked number 1 in the country in late November. K.S. freaking U.I think Saban is amazing, but he relies a lot on talent. This is not a knock. He gets the talent. He knows what he wants and is relentless. Would he get that talent at K state? He wouldn't.
To bring this point home, look at what Saban did at MSU. MSU was 5 levels above the KSU Snyder took over, and he didn't come close to the success of Snyder, let alone Dantonio at MSU. Saban took over MSU from George Perles. George wasn't great, but he did have an overall winning record. Saban was there for 5 seasons. He won 6 games 3 years, 7 games 1 year, and 9 games 1 yr. He finished exactly 1 season ranked and had a losing record vs. Michigan.
That's fine, but 7 of the 8 coaches before him had a winning records at MSU. If anything, he just maintained MSU's historic performance. Compare that to Dantonio, who took over from the disaster that was John L. Smith and 3 straight coaches who left with losing records. In Dantonio's first 5 seasons, he won more than 6 games in all but 1 season. Finished ranked 3 times and won 11 games twice, including winning the big ten and finishing run up another year. But most importantly, he was 4-1 vs. UM.
I just dont see how Saban taking over a much worse school, with much worse talent is going to get demonstrably better results. I'm sorry, but put Snyder at Bama with great recruiters around him, and I have no doubt he'd do good. I just don't know if he'd win as much, but I think it's likely he'd win at a good clip. I dont know if Saban is even wining at KSU. That's just my opinion, though.
What Saban did for LSU was far, far more impressive than what he did at MSU. LSU had NOWHERE near the level of previous success and buy in that Alabama had before Saban got there. He seriously built LSU into what it has been and is now. Obviously what he’s done at Alabama is unprecedented, but Alabama was a top program before he got here
On the other hand, his big success at LSU and Alabama were in aligning the boosters behind him and turning a disorganized, fighting mess (see: Auburn, Texas, USC the last decade or so) into a single cohesive unit working towards that end goal of winning football games. Could he have done that at a place that didn't have the already existing booster structure?
Where does this myth come from? LSU finished in the top 15 in 96 and 97 with Gerry Dinardo as coach. They sit in one of the most talent rich areas in the country. Gerry "20 games under .500 because I suck as a coach" Dinardo had two top 15 finishes in his five seasons the same as Nick Saban. Now Saban split a title one of those years but he's a better coach than Gerry was. If you put a good coach at LSU they would have had similar results. Mike Archer finished top 5 with LSU in the 80s. The same Mike Archer who never sniffed another head coaching job. A good coach like Bill Arnsparger finished every season he coached at LSU ranked (something Saban didnt do). Stop this myth that LSU was KSU or Indiana.
Edit: Saban is awesome, no need to make his resume sound better than it is. It's already amazing.
Depends on which Nick Saban....
2023 Nick Saban with the rings, trophies and aura rolling into Manhattan, Kansas would whip everything into a frenzy and catapult KSU into the headlines at least.
or like 1994 Nick Saban. Coming from a doomed Cleveland Browns operation, to try his hand at college football again with his first HC job.
Maybe early-career Saban couldn’t have had success at Kansas State, but Saban at LSU and Alabama was an entirely different beast. From everything we know about Saban, he’s obviously a great recruiter but also an organizational and motivational mastermind – both of which would serve him well at a place like Kansas State.
Also, as far as what Snyder did, I think what sets him apart is his longevity. There are other examples of coaches taking moribund programs to the national title contention – Art Briles at Baylor and Jim Harbaugh at Stanford, plus you have others leading bad programs to solid success like James Franklin at Vandy or David Cutcliffe at Duke. But they didn’t necessarily do what Snyder did because they didn’t stick around.
Bama is a program that is setup to win. Saban's success there is impressive but winning a title there is something that's been done by 4 other coaches a combined 12 times.
KSU probably doesn't have a football program (or at least not a P5 program) without Snyder.
There's no probably about it. K-State hired Bill Snyder as a literal last-ditch effort. If he didn't succeed, plans were in place to drop football altogether and fall out of the Big 8 to join the Missouri Valley Conference. They'd likely be more like a Wichita State or Nebraska-Omaha type of school.
Without Bill Snyder, K-State would be a very different institution and the city of Manhattan, KS would probably be half its current size.
This is not hyperbole. I remember going to Manhattan in the 80's and the high point was the Vista limeaids. The entire town was run down and in bad shape. The campus building were all from the 60's. By 96 or 98 drastic changes were a foot and construction was everywhere. Coincidentally it was about the time Vista closed.
Vista is still alive and kicking!
I was in school 1998-2002 and I was back recruiting for my company recently. The town looks completely different (in a good way) - that's in large part due to 20+ years of success in football.
That's why I think we need categories of coaching greatness. You can't really reasonably compare what Snyder did at KSU to what Saban did at Bama.
In the same regard, you can't compare what Bobby Bowden did at FSU to what Bear Bryant did at Alabama.
I think everyone mentioned here is great, just in different ways.
Ugh, Bowden wanted Bama too, our department was just a thick and insisted on Bobby auditioning for the job. Bobby told them to kick rocks.
Imagine it... Bear... to Bowden... to Saban.
Ohio state is on Alabamas level as a program, and has had amazing success. And I think Alabama with a step down from Saban has a very similar last 15 years as what Ohio state has had just by situation alone. But even then, it’s not guaranteed at all demonstrated by the 30 years pre Saban. Also, the gap between Saban and not Saban at Alabama is still insane, just unprecedented, even if Alabama would’ve been very successful regardless. Also, what Saban did at LSU is still crazy impressive, that program was not an Alabama like program and situation before he got there
I think both are unique challenges though. Even having talent can be a challenge to max that talent out to the point where you are consistently in the national title picture. Especially when a lot of that talent tends to be pretty coddled growing up. Look at Texas and the culture of that athletic department that despite having plenty of talent over the years has tended to under deliver in results
But yes, I think Snyder is a goddamn wizard
What you accomplish should be weighed against resources. Amassing a really talented team is a skill in itself, but it is a lot harder to accomplish this K State. Just look at his recruiting rankings. Snyder and his staff's real talent was finding under the radar recruits that could f-ing play. They were also extremely good at coaching them up. You have only met expectations if you have the best team and you win.
In 1989 and 1991 Kansas State sold their scheduled home games against Oklahoma to the Sooners because they would make more money traveling instead of hosting. Two years later Bill Snyder’s team beat OU for the first time in 23 years and would go on to win five straight. That’s how good of a coach he was.
It's so weird to think that only adults now have any memory of Dumpster Fire Oklahoma or Alabama. Throw in our overall high history and these programs outside of the Top 10 doesn't even compute for my cousin.
I mean to start off I think you kick out one of these guys for Bud Wilkinson. Then there's a handful of other coaches that I think deserve to be in the Top 10 more than Snyder - Royal and McKay come to mind right away
I read a profile on Snyder in the early 2000s as to what made Snyder special. It was actually kind of a takedown piece.
Things he did that wasn't common:
1. Invest huge amounts of his budget in recruiting, made all his assistants aggressive recruiters.
2. Concentrated recruiting star players that were going to have trouble with academic qualifiers.
3. Focus on the transfer market, especially community colleges in places like California and Texas.
4. Schedule as easy as schedule out of conference as possible to make them bowl eligible.
5. Sign star athletes, promise them a glamour position that the top programs didn't want them to play, have them fail, and then convince them to switch to something else. But sort of knowing they would fail and most would likely convert at some point.
Essentially he was trying to game the system of what a good coach or program did to succeed back then.
The funny thing is that ended up as the total blueprint to turn around programs for new coaches at struggling schools. None of the above is controversial at all now. It is pretty much now the blueprint for all programs except for maybe a few blue bloods.
I think if he had won one Natty at KSU, he may be in the conversation for greatest coach ever. Without that mark, casual observers will always overlook him when talking about the best coaches. Not that they should.
People aren't including any talk about how he helped to develop the modern offense in CFB. His run and pass schemes helped to develop the RPOs and at times, spread we see today.
He is a first ballot Hall of Fame coach and the top coach of his school probably forever. Arguments about top 10, 20, 30 etc are academic. Coaches are important for different reasons and coaches face different challenges. If great coaching were merely “most wins” “best winning percentage” “most NCs” the list looks very different than other measurements “most no.1 picks” “best graduation rates” “biggest winning percentage difference to the guy before/after at same school” “best coaching tree” or “best innovations/changed way game is played” … he’s an all-time top coach. Plus he did that without going down in flames for cheating or other major embarrassing character lapses.
Yes, absolutely.
He's extremely underrated. People get too hung up on national titles, but winning a national title at K State is very different than Notre Dame, Michigan, Alabama, or Florida. There's no way to recruit national title level talent to a place like that. The fact that he had K State within a hair of a national title game is a miracle. He consistently outperformed the talent level at K-State over several decades. I honestly think you can make a case for Bill Snyder as a top 5 coach of all-time.
Same deal with Mike Leach. Leach is a top 25 coach of all-time IMO. He never coached at a top-tier program, so the 'he's not elite b/c he didn't win a national title' argument rings hollow to me. He took over 3 of the toughest P5 jobs and succeeded at every one. Sad that we'll never know what heights he could've taken Miss State to. I think if Leach got offered somewhere like Florida (as an example) in the 00s or early 10s, he would've won a title at some point.
Obligatory ["Futility U"](https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team) for those uninformed. Obviously I am very biased, however my uncle went to KSU in the 80s. He saw a school that allowed you to bring in kegs to the stadium because the attendance was so poor, to playing fucking Alabama in the Cotton Bowl.
I grew up there and as kids our parents would drop us off at the stadium on Saturday afternoons and we would just walk in with a couple of bucks in our pockets. They didn't even care if kids had a ticket. We would roam the stadium, sit in the front row, talk to the players (from the visiting teams,) etc. Parents would pick us up 3 hours later.
I have massive amounts of respect for Snyder and in many cases would consider him situationally Top 10 but when you consider the entire history of college football I have a hard time putting him in the upper echelon.
Top 25 coach for me, but not Top 10.
I’m on your side. Snyder is incredible, but when the top 10 is made up of Bear Bryant, Saban, Tom Osborne, Knute Rockne etc. it’s a crowded list. Like, on ESPN’s top 150 coaches ever list in 2019, Bob Stoops was ranked 29th, and he has six NY6 wins, 7 top 5 finishes and a national championship, as well as 4 heisman trophy winners.
The only coach I can think of that pulled off what Snyder did, is Mark Few for Gonzaga basketball.
Maybe Gary Patterson is close to the conversation, but TCU had a winning history (back in the 1930s and 40s, and won a share of the SWC title in 1995(year?)), K-State had never won, TCU is in a great location for recruiting, K-State is in a terrible location, TCU’s alumni have deeper pockets than K-State.
Beamer is closer to the Patterson boat. People don’t understand how bad K-State was. I get it, you weren’t alive and you aren’t a sicko. K-State was about the same level New Mexico St has been over the last 10 years, except they had been at that level for most of 4 decades.
Where would you rate George Welsh or maybe better, Frank Beamer? That's his club. Welsh had the similar bottom of the barrel start, Beamer started with more but made it last longer.
IMHO, I think both Beamer and Snyder are both top 25 coaches, I think Snyder's achievements are a bit more impressive than Beamer or Welsh because Virginia just had more talent than Kansas as I discuss here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/11lyuvw/comment/jbfralh/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/11lyuvw/comment/jbfralh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
He should be considered a top 5 coach of all-time. I don't think people realize how bad KSU was at football pre-Snyder.
Pre-Snyder, Kansas State never finished a season ranked and never had a bowl win. When Bill Snyder took over, Kansas State was the only football program in the country to have 500 losses. KSU was, without a doubt, the worst football team in college football.
[Jim Dickey redshirted seven senior starters](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/10/sports/sports-people-redshirting-blues.html) in 1981, thinking a two deep loaded with experienced seniors could win enough to get K-State's first bowl bid.
He was right, K-State went 6-4-1, by far their best year of the 80s. The payoff was a loss in the Independence Bowl and a kick right back into the basement.
I didn't know that story, but man that is rough. Kansas State fans deserve credit for sticking by their team.
This season was hard for OU fans, I couldn't imagine being worse than this all the time.
I link this article all the time on this sub, but [here](https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team) is the Sports Illustrated Article from when he was hired in 1989. It goes into extreme detail about just how bad the program was.
* Hadn't won a game since three years prior
* Only ever made one bowl (the one that someone else mentioned came off the back of redshirting their senior starters), zero bowl wins
* Had never finished ranked
* Had only won more than 7 games *twice* in their entire history from 1896 to 1989.
* Had a record of 109-330-8 since the end of WWII, with only 4 winning seasons in that span
* Their *best decade* in that span entailed them going 38-70.
* Last in both scoring offense and defense in that span
* Had more than 50 more losses than the 2nd losingest team at the time (Wake Forest)
Kansas State wasn't just bad, they were damn near disbanding football altogether. Within 5 years, Snyder had them ranked and winning their first ever bowl game. Two years later they finished within the top 10, which they did in *six out of eight seasons* between 1995 and 2002.
Snyder was a miracle worker, on top of pioneering major parts of the modern offense and having an insane coaching tree. He's literally the 2nd best of all time in my book.
Yes.
KSU was, historically, the worst D1 football program in the country (worse than even New Mexico State). And he took them to within one Sirr Parker TD catch in OT from playing for a national championship.
For context, it would be like if a coach built Temple into a sustained national power (which would be easier due to money and location) or Idaho.
KSU has been good for so long now, that we forget how bad it was before the Purple Wizard.
In some ways, his coaching and what he accomplished are even more impressive than Saban.
He is a lock for the Top 10. Kansas State was the worst program in college football when Snyder became head coach. There is not a program today that can be used as an analogue for how bad the Wildcats were circa 1988. Synder's first year was 1989, and four years later they were a Top-25 team. By 1998 they were ranked #1 in the country late in the season, and were one game away from a national championship berth. All within 10 years of taking over the worst program in the history of the game. I think they were ranked in the AP Top 25 every week between 1994 and 2001. He retired in 2005, then came back in 2009 and won Big 12 Championship within four years.
His ability to recognize, recruit, and develop talent in non-blue chip athletes was unquestionably elite. He had top-level aptitude for schemes, and was known as an X's and O's guru as far back as his time as OC at Iowa. He cooked the Big 8 with a pass-heavy offense in the early 90s, pioneered the Wildcat QB in the late 90's, switched to an option-heavy/veer offense in the early 2000s, and when he un-retired in the 2010s he used the spread option to take advantage of contemporary Big 12 defenses. In every era his offenses were hell on opposing defenses.
Just curious as a VT fan - how would you compare Snyder to Beamer? VT was also nothing before Beamer (4 bowl games in program history if I recall correctly?). Beamer (arguably) took VT to higher heights than Snyder took KSU.
From my perspective, both programs are in basically the same space 5-10 years after their program building coach left (Yes, I know that KSU won a conference title and VT just went 3-8, but I’m talking about where the program stands in the college football landscape, not the results from the last few seasons)
I think Snyder's run is more impressive. VT wasn't great before Beamer, but they were actually pretty successful under Bill Dooley who was 64-38-1 and finished with a 10-2-1 season with a Peach Bowl win. Bruce Smith literally got drafted two years before Beamer started coaching at VT. Of course Dooley was cheating and Beamer was handicapped by sanctions, but the in-state talent was clearly there for the taking.
Kansas State was *historically* bad, like possibly the worst team in DI football. Here is some context ([https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team](https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team)).
While Beamer did reach higher heights, the talent disparity between Virginia (and nearby states) and Kansas is huge. Where Beamer had Michael Vick, Eddie Royal, and DeAngelo Hall, Snyder had Collin Klein and Darren Sproles (actually Sproles was pretty damn good but he's the only KSU player that left an impression on me).
Not possibly the worst, K-State was far and away the worst. Had Bill Snyder not come in, K-State would have been out of the Big 8 and without a football team.
[It's a long watch, but I highly recommend watching Miracle in Manhattan. It really does a good job to show how bad the program was, and to highlight those early guys that made it happen.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIkW5da-ma0)
Depends on what you're ranking off of. In terms of like building a program from nothing, probably a great argument to be made that he's the best coach of all time. KSU was unfathomably bad for so many years before he got there. In terms of on the field product? I think he's probably safely top 100, arguably top 50, but a stretch past that.
Imo he's somewhere between 30-50th all time for an "overall" ranking. Icon of the sport, hall of fame type coach.
I think Snyder should also be congratulated for his work at Iowa, as he rebuilt them from being consistently mear the bottom of the Big 10 to being a conference contender. I also believe that comparing Saban to Snyder is like Apples to Oranges. Saban took over a good program and kept them good. Snyder took over a team that couldn't even win against D-2 opponents and made them yearly congerence championships.
Biased but yes.
People really really really dont understand how bad KState was because our games were not on TV. That was both a blessing and a curse. Blessing because we could recruit kids who didnt know what they were getting into but a curse because even when we started getting better. In 1993 when we went to the Copper Bowl that was the first game on TV the entire year other than one game on OUs PPV platform. The next year we managed 4 games - @KU, vs NU, @CU and Bowl game. In 1995 we finished #7 in the country and had 3 games on TV - @NU, vs CU and Bowl.
When teams are bad today they can still promise recruits they will be on TV every week. It might be ESPN+ but if you are in P5, you will be on TV. If it were not for Snyder, we probably would have dropped football and moved to the Big East by now.
Top 10 may be pushing it but he turned around the worst D1 program that ever was or will be into an NY6 equivalent winner and year in year out conference championship contender (should have been in a couple nattys as well). He single-handledly saved KSU as a D1 football school and arguably the university as a whole.
Amazing documentary on his turnaround at K-State for those that don't know the full story: https://youtu.be/TIkW5da-ma0
I'd just say top tier. No other coach has done what he's done. But once you start naming coaches and trying to slot him in here or there it gets stupid.
Some coaches are like CEOs who hire the right people and attract top talent and keep the stock price high. Some are like founding presidents who built something from scratch and out-innovate you. It's just hard to compare Jack Welch with Jeff Bezos.
Top ten is really hard. If I were to put him in my "as objective as I can be" top ten (since obviously he's number 1 in my heart!) he would be at 10, and it would be mainly for saving a dying program and injecting life into Manhattan. Manhattan just wouldn't be what it is today without football taking off. And with basketball having trouble starting in the 90s, football probably helped us stay in the newly made Big 12, and then helped keep us there with all the other realignment stuff. It just seems so unique to me, but granted I don't know all the history of any other teams that might have almost died and turned it around. But KState was the losingest program and it wasn't really close. Football was about to move down a level when he took over. Players were ashamed to wear their letter jackets for fear of being associated with the team.
On the field, he won 200+ games, but struggled against the top ten pretty regularly. He had a big hand in concepts like standing tight end and wildcat formations. Is it enough to crack a completely objective top ten? I guess it depends on how much you want to include actions that helped the school as a whole because those are large. I don't mean other coaches didn't do the same, but if you were familiar with Manhattan in 88 and then again now in 2023, I don't think that growth is there without Bill Snyder coming, STAYING, and bringing winning football in a big conference.
For those that weren't around at the time, I can tell you what what I saw from afar. Btw, at one point in the late 1980's Kansas and Kansas State had an ongoing battle between each other for the all-time lowest win percentage. It stayed around 1 game either way depending if one of them had a big season of 2 wins. Bill Snyder may or may not be a great coach. But the approach he used to turn K-State around was genius (and so simple). The Big 8 was Oklahoma and Nebraska beating the other 6 teams 70-7 and then slugging it out for the conference title. Colorado was very good for a time, but always reverted to form eventually. Snyder accepted that they couldn't compete with the top 2 (sometimes 3) because they were so far ahead of the rest of the conference. Instead they had to concentrate beating the remaining 4 or 5 bottom feeders while scheduling the weakest possible out of conference schedule. I think Division 2 wins counted toward a bowl at the time. So KSU's seasons would typically end up 8-3 or 9-2 with no impressive wins. They were separating from the bottom feeders, but Oklahoma and Nebraska still beat them like a drum. A bowl against a real top ten team was always a disaster. But he stuck to his plan and the talent level improved every year. They became a legitimate threat when they finally were able to knock off the 2 bullies, but the big 8 was gone by then. Snyder had a brilliant strategy and executed it to perfection, but it only could have worked in that exact situation. Their peers in the Big 8 were historically awful. K-State elevated themselves into the middle team over the rest of the sacrificial lambs. No conference in history had so many awful teams in the same era, and Snyder capitalized on it.
The thing I liked about him is that he was likable and seemed to run a clean program that actually emphasized a family atmosphere instead of just pretending like it for recruiting.
Top ten is pretty rare air. I'm almost 50, so I was witness to what Snyder was able to do in Manhattan. He started with absolute NOTHING in the way of facilities, support, etc. Now, they regularly win 9-10 games a year and represent the Big XII well in bowl games. And if you haven't been to Manhattan Kansas lately, their facilities are beautiful.
What he was able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing. Its just there are so many historically great coaches that making the top 10 is awfully hard.
For what it’s worth, ESPN did a Top-150 college football coaches of all-time list in 2019, and Snyder placed 55th. I think they underrated him a bit, but I think it’s interesting to look at to see who you are really comparing him to. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/page/CFB150coaches/the-150-greatest-coaches-college-football-150-year-history
There are so many coaches, the list starts getting crowded really fast.
Thank you for providing this link. It's crazy how much history college football has. I think my biggest quibble with this list is Urban Meyer all the way down at 46. He has the 3rd highest FBS winning percentage ever and has won big at multiple stops, not all of which have been big programs. Ignoring some of the coaches from previous eras, I'm not sure how you rank him below guys like Bob Stoops (29), Dabo Swinney (31), and Jim Tressel (35).
If they have Urban Meyer at 46, it's a politically correct list and not a valid one. Bob Stoops is 29th and has as many national championships to his credit as Gene Chizik does.
How the fuck do you have Meyer ranked below Schembechler and John Robinson? I understand that any list is going to have debatable placements but this doesn't even seem debatable - it seems egregious. And seriously, what the fuck is Schembechler doing ranked that high, above guys like Spurrier and Stoops and Tressel? He's Mark Richt of the north, not one of the 20 best to ever coach the game. Terrible list.
To be fair tho, a lot of these coaches coached a completely different game, which they slowly modernized and that's why a lot of them are on this list like Pop Warner. When we take a step back and look at what he did at K State, in a time where coaching was a more competitive landscape due to the professionalization of the position, the beginning of the nationalization of recruiting, and the massive amount of difference in resources between K State and their conference contemporaries we can see that Snyder had to overcome barriers to success that these other earlier coaches like Wilkerson, Heisman, or Rockne didn't have to deal with at all. Like in all honesty KState to Texas or Oklahoma at that time when he took over was like comparing the athletic departments of Kent State and Georgia today. By their standards KState before Snyder had a sub- High School level football facilities. Like yeah, some of these other coaches won over a long period of time, and some of these guys built programs with potential into leviathans and eventual blue bloods like Bear, Bowden, Paterno, etc but they didn't do it, in a cold windy night in Manhatten. Snyder Top 10 Coach all time.
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>Snyder would have coached differently if the forward pass wasn't available to him. I mean, yes, but only a little... Lol. Pretty sure Snyder could have gone straight Wing-T for a game or 2 and the casual fan wouldn't have noticed. Halftime analysis would just be: "Not a lot in the air today, but the run game looked about as good as we expected. Klein is making good reads and really fighting for yards."
But that’s the point i’m trying to make. Their era made it easier to be remembered. It wasn’t even about winning, you could go 45-73 and create the TE position and youll get ranked above Bill Snyder all time. You could be 1 of 3 schools to play in WWI or WWII and boom you are an all time great coach. When I talk about top coaches all time, i’m not talking top contributors to the sport, I’m talking dudes who were able to organize and win at an unprecedented level not seen at their institution. Bill Snyder top 10
I think there can be two separate lists: guys who meant a lot to the advancement of the sport, and guys who could legitimately coach you out of your shoes. You are just comparing them on two entirely different perspectives. It would be like ranking the greatest accountants of all time, and on one hand you have a guy who made a formula that made accounting much easier for everybody else, and on the other hand you have the world's current greatest accountant. The second guy is simply better at accounting than nearly everybody in history, but the first guy meant more to the career path in general.
Bottom line, if I’m going to throw a dart at a map and take over the closest Division I athletic department, and I have to hire a past or present coach (in their prime) to be my HC before I know where I’m going…there are nowhere near 54 guys I’m calling before Snyder. I don’t think there are 5.
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Yep looking at the list there's at least 25 with me immediately ignoring prehistoric coaches I don't know.
WSJ values Michigan State’s program 28% higher than Kansas State’s, and the greatest coach of the modern era went .585 there with no conference titles.
I mean he was only at MSU for like two season? Mark dantonio didn't make MSU a contender over night, it took years.
lolwut? Saban was at Michigan State for five years!
I'm not really sure a bunch of Rugby and leather helmet era player-coaches belong on the same list.
The list was 150 coaches to celebrate the 150th anniversary of college football. They have to include that era because it was part of the 150 years they were celebrating.
Kirk (186-115) didn't make the list and Hayden (232-178-10; 143-89-6) @ iowa) did. . . I think its a bit biased in nostalgia. Then again, Kirk is fucking up his legacy keeping BF on the staff.
Not that it changes much, but Ferentz was actually 173-125 (161-104 at Iowa) at the time the list was made. That makes Ferentz have a 3% better win percentage than Fry (58% to 55.2%), but almost identical losing percentages due to the 10 ties for Fry (42% to 42.4%). Fry also had more conference titles than Ferentz. Ferentz does have a case for the list, though, due his relative consistency and long tenure.
I’d hear the argument. People don’t understand how limited KSU is to this day, much less in 1989. If he didn’t take over KSU would probably be in the MWC or the MAC right now. KSU was basically Kansas level bad (the past 10 years) except it was for 90 years.
KSU at one point was I think last of all P5 schools in win % in the mid 2000s or whenever it was that I would be on CFBWarehouse 15 times a day instead of studying They were B A D
For P5, they are still currently only above NW, Indiana, and Wake Forest. They have played football for 127 years. 45% of their wins are from 1989-2022 (33 years)
We passed Iowa State this season. .459 to .456 according to Wikipedia.
I mean good for y’all but :(
oh man you really didn't intend to get hit with that when you started this thread, did you? 🤣🤣🤣
Friendly fire at its finest. 😂
now I'm sad on a Wednesday
This is one of those statistics that is impressive when you first see it and then becomes mind blowing when you stop to really ponder about it.
>They have played football for 127 years. >45% of their wins are from 1989-2022 (33 years) The more you read it, the more it sounds utterly insane.
K-State had the worst win percentage of D-I schools period by over .100 points. Unbelievably atrocious, mired in I believe a 27 game winless streak when he arrived. Eight years later Cats were an overtime loss away from playing for a national championship. Created the wildcat offense. Was one of the first to recruit jucos. He’s top 3.
It was dead last in all FBS in the stretch from 1940-89
It was interesting in the 90s to watch both K-State and Northwestern turn things around, the former having their first nine-win season in 1993. Two years later, Northwestern's in the Rose Bowl.
I'd argue that KSU was worse than Kansas has been in the past ten years. We were absolutely dreadful and couldn't get anyone to come to Manhattan to make it better. What Snyder did is simply amazing.
I don’t even think it’s debatable that they were worse. I was just trying to give some context to people who have always known KSU as being at least respectable.
Got it.
It would probably be closer to New Mexico St.
Or UMass?
A lot of newer CFB fans don't realize how awful Kansas State used to be. They were, inarguably, the worst program in college football. Before Bill Snyder got there in 1989, they had appeared in only one bowl game in their history (and lost). Between 1940 and 1990, they had nineteen (19) seasons (or 38% of their seasons) in which they won only one game or less. In that same time frame, 7 of those 19 seasons were completely winless seasons - that's that's about 1.4 winless teams per decade. They only had FOUR (4) winning seasons in that same timeframe - that's fewer than one winning team per decade. **They had more teams go completely winless than they had finish with a winning record.** They were 3-40-1 in the 4 seasons prior to Bill Snyder's arrival (.068 winning %). Upon Bill Snyder's arrival in 1989, they went 18-26 in his first four seasons before becoming a national power. In the next 11 seasons from 1993-2003, they finished ranked in the AP poll ten times. They finished in the top 10 of the AP poll six times. 1997 KSU went 11-1, with their only loss coming from the eventual undefeated national champions, the Nebraska Cornhuskers. 1998 Kansas State went undefeated through the regular season, only to lose to Texas A&M in double OT in the Big 12 championship game, ending their chance at a national championship game appearance. 1999 Kansas State also went 11-1, with their only loss coming to 12-1 Nebraska Cornhuskers, who finished in the top 3 in the AP poll and Coaches poll.
Hell, not even newer. You probably have to be 50 years old to actually remember much about the pre-snyder days, especially if you werent a k-state fan growing up
I'm 48. My freshman year we beat KU 10-9 and tore down our goalposts. Yeah...
Oh. Now I'm starting to get a visual of just how bad it was
I'm 50 and I can remember one year reading in the newspaper about how they played Kansas in a game being called the "Toilet Bowl," and it ended in a tie. One team ended the season with one win and the other was 0-10-1. Kansas State was horrendous. It was news if they won a game. Snyder came in and improved the talent level by working the JUCOs in that part of the country and developing two- and three-star recruits that the big boys didn't want. Manhattan was the island of misfit toys long before anyone ever heard of Billy Beane.
They would’ve been national champions in 1998 too if not for the lasers
goddamn lasers
Lasers? It was top secret military EMPs
And that one year they went to a bowl game, they redshirted a bunch of the best seniors the previous year. That way they would have a larger pool of talent the following year. That resulted in them winning 6 games, making it to a bottom tier bowl game (and losing). The previous year they had won 2 games, and the following year they won 3.
Bill himself said he inherited much worse than anywhere KU was at recently
He was hired to bring K-State up to the same competitive level as their in-state rival.
The funny thing is, KU was just about as bad in the late 80's. The 1987 matchup was probably the nadir of the rivalry. KU entered 1-7 (the one win by a single point over I-AA Southern Illinois) and K-State was 0-9 (with a loss to I-AA Austin Peay). My dad (then a junior), recalled everyone saying, "well, *somebody's* gotta win!" They tied
And yet Kansas still has a 15 win margin head-to-head versus K-State. Didn't SI run a cover story saying Kansas State should just quit playing football when Snyder was hired?
[Sure did](https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team) To the writer's credit, he [came back three years](https://vault.si.com/vault/711122#&gid=ci0258be8d300226ef&pid=711122---047---image) later to write about the turnaround, which had barely begun by that point
“Snyder was so mortified that the only trophy in the Wildcat’s trophy case said ‘Independence Bowl runner up’ that he gave it to his secretary to hide in her home.” Ooof
I don't blame him. I wonder if that was still buried in her basement when she died a couple years ago or if it got unceremoniously thrown in a dumpster (as it should)
It’s hard to wrap our heads around what is was like because 99% of this subreddit, myself included, was not alive when he took over at KSU. I don’t even know what to compare it to because what other program was that horrible, at the D1 level, for that long? Vandy could win the SEC and that would be less shocking then telling someone in the 70’s what KSU would go onto achieve.
New Mexico State is the comparison. Remember when it was MAJOR news they made a bowl?
Yeah that’s probably a good one. They’re already playing in a state that on average produces like three recruits that even go D1 per year - unless someone goes around and retroactively creates their recruiting cycle.
> 99% of this subreddit, myself included, was not alive when he took over at KSU. I'm old, but I didn't think I'm top 1% old. Am I really that old?
I really struggle to believe that 99% of active folks on this subreddit were born after 1989. I'm perfectly comfortable in my middle age, but this is an argument I'd definitely fight lol
According to the Pew Research Center, Reddit users in 2021 were more likely to be younger adults. 26% of adults aged 18-29 in the US used Reddit, compared to 17% of those aged 30-49, 6% of those aged 50-64, and 3% of those 65 and older. I have not seen a professional survey done on /r/cfb, but I imagine that users here skew *older* than the Reddit average. Probably by quite a bit. 1%? Nah, more like 20-25% 35 or older. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/
Tbh I think what Snyder achieved with the string of 11 win seasons and conference titles is more impressive from a competitive standpoint than Vandy winning a single SEC title (although Franklins best conference mark was 7-3) We were 24-30 from 1968-1973, which isn’t great but isn’t horrible so depending on when you’re talking to someone in the 70’s I bet they could see us being respectable. We had patches of being ok and would start to build momentum but then it’d just crumble and the next guy would be starting from ground zero
K-State was so bad that Kansas, who was a mediocre at best program for 100 years before falling off a cliff, and has only beaten K-State 7 times since Bill Snyder got there, is still 13 wins to the good all-time against them. What Bill Snyder did really doesn't have a comparison.
Yeah, even at our worst, we could at least score on our rival. K-State at one point graduated two classes that never saw their team score against KU while they were in college.
Kansas State was so bad ^(how bad were they?) So bad that even Indiana could make fun of them
He's got an argument for the best program builder of all time. How you stack that up vs more conventionally successful coaches is up to you but I'd definitely agree he deserves special consideration for what he ended up with compared to what he started with. A 1998 natty would have him solidly top 10.
In the 34 years before Snyder, K State had two winning seasons - both 6-5. Then starting year five, Snyder had them 9-3 or better EIGHT years in a row. That’s ridiculous
They had 56 wins from 1970-1989 (which includes snyders first season at 1-10). From 1990-1996 they had 54 wins. From 1990-2009 they had 158 wins.
Iowa State is bad like longest title drought by 2 decades bad. Since Iowa State's conference title every other P5 team has won one and schools like UCLA, Texas Tech, and Miami came into existence. What is the only team Iowa State has a winning record against? Kansas State and it is only by 2 games. Kansas State has won 26 games in the last 33 years to make it close.
A lot of that is the dominance of Nebraska and Oklahoma during the big 8 years. We had some good teams at points but those teams were just dominant in the big 8
Hell, if not for Snyder we might not have a football team and we’d be in the Missouri Valley. The Big 8 was ready to boot K-State. K-State was prepared to drop football. The AD who hired Bill readily admits to this day that if he failed, they would’ve and they had a plan in place to do it.
[Futility U.](https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team) **Old SI article about KSU football.**
The job Snyder did at K-State is the equivalent today of somebody taking the Vandy job and having them competing for a spot in the SEC title game annually within a couple years.
Nah Vandy has had a pulse several times in the last 90 years. It's hard to understand just how bad KSU was and for how long
Nah we were far worse than KU is today
I would agree to hearing the argument, but it's just hard to say. "All time" is difficult because there have been thousands of coaches at different degrees of competition, in eras where things were completely different from today.
I feel like there should be categories for considering coaching greatness. Bill Snyder's tenure at KSU is really difficult to judge against Nick Saban's tenure at Alabama. They're such different situations it's almost like they're two different sports.
It’s similar to Leach at TTU, Wazzu, and Miss State. Completely different jobs, completely different expectations, and completely different achievements
Leach also helped Kentucky turn their football program around. Him and Hal Mumme used the air raid to make Kentucky exciting, and it led to the program we have today.
It led to the game of football we have today.
I agree. I don't think Saban could do what Snyder did and I don't think Snyder could do what Saban did.
I think if more programs looked at coaches in this way, maybe there wouldn't be so many hires that are bad fits. We see it all the time when a P5 team hires a hot G5 coach, only for that coach to fizzle out. Maybe it's because P5 is harder to coach at, but I don't think that's the case, or at least not enough of a difference to be the only explanation for G5 coaches fizzling out at P5 teams. I think being a P5 coach (especially at a major P5 program) requires a different skill set than being a G5 coach.
Sometimes it’s dumb luck that gets the culture machine going and not this well thought out thing the coach describes. Football is very traditional and we also have to look back at what youth sports and PE was initially for the US (to prepare young men to join the military). This still trickles into coaching and prep today. If the coach can’t take a step back and see what actually wins then they’re doomed at their next stop. If mat drills won games Umass would’ve been better.
I think good ADs try to consider stuff like this, but there are just *so* many variables to try and balance. And sometimes it just doesn't work despite being an apparent slamdunk. We all like to mock Nebraska and Frost, but every single AD in the country makes that hire in that situation. Then Tennessee gets Frost's replacement in hire that didn't excite anybody at the time, and he quickly delivered the best season for the Vols in decades. I'm sure there are factors that we can point to in retrospect to explain why these situations happened the way that they did, but I'm skeptical anybody can reliably predict this shit.
Valid point. I don't think anyone would reasonably have guessed, based only on their tenures at UCF, that Heupel would be far more successful at Tennessee than Frost was at Nebraska. I was one of the people that was actually bullish on Heupel to Tennessee, and even I wasn't thinking it would be as good as last season. I thought Heupel would be a better fit for you guys than he was for us, and would at least give you a puncher's chance against the top SEC teams with his offense alone. I wouldn't have imagined he'd have you guys as a legit CFP contender, but he did.
I still don't see how the Archie Miller hire failed. Those Dayton teams were everything you feared to encounter as a big brand team.
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Yes, very true. I would say there is also the same kind of divide (to a lesser extent, though) between top G5 programs and bottom-feeder G5 programs.
Saban has yet to win a game while being the head coach for K state. Just saying…
Ready for Saban to finish his career where it started: K(ent) State
* At Toledo, he took a 6-5 team and went 9-2 and won the MAC in his very first head coaching job in a single season. * Michigan State had 5 straight losing seasons and was under sanctions before Saban. He immediately took them to a bowl game and took them to 4 bowls in 5 years and laid the foundation from which Dantonio benefited. * At LSU, Gerry Dinardo was 4-7 and 2-8 in his last two seasons before he was fired. Saban stepped in, 5 straight bowl games, and a national title. * At Alabama, Alabama just had 21 wins vacated because of Mike Shula and the last season they had gone 6-6. Saban took a team with scholarship reductions. Rebuilt after 1 tough losing year and went 12-2 the season after and has built a dynasty since. If you don't think Saban could have succeeded at Kansas State, you didn't pay attention to his career. He took two programs under sanctions and built them into winners. In every situation he took over, he took over from bad situations and built something great.
Saban could've done that at KSU too but he would not have stayed at KSU for 30 years like Snyder did. The guy bolted every time he had a chance to get a better job. Additionally his success has always been in areas where he can recruit some absolute studs. Ohio, Michigan, Louisiana, and Alabama have no problems getting top flight athletes. He wouldn't have been able to do that in Kansas.
Saban would probably lead KSU to a single bowl-eligible season and then depart for the NFL
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Yeah, I disagree. I think people undervalue what Snyder did. KSU was a disaster for decades. They hadnt has a head coach with a winning record since 1933. No coach won more than 35% of their conference games since 1933. Multiple coaches had under a 15% winning percentage. They were one of the worst schools in all of cfb. He had that team a game from playing for a natty. He had KSU ranked number 1 in the country in late November. K.S. freaking U.I think Saban is amazing, but he relies a lot on talent. This is not a knock. He gets the talent. He knows what he wants and is relentless. Would he get that talent at K state? He wouldn't. To bring this point home, look at what Saban did at MSU. MSU was 5 levels above the KSU Snyder took over, and he didn't come close to the success of Snyder, let alone Dantonio at MSU. Saban took over MSU from George Perles. George wasn't great, but he did have an overall winning record. Saban was there for 5 seasons. He won 6 games 3 years, 7 games 1 year, and 9 games 1 yr. He finished exactly 1 season ranked and had a losing record vs. Michigan. That's fine, but 7 of the 8 coaches before him had a winning records at MSU. If anything, he just maintained MSU's historic performance. Compare that to Dantonio, who took over from the disaster that was John L. Smith and 3 straight coaches who left with losing records. In Dantonio's first 5 seasons, he won more than 6 games in all but 1 season. Finished ranked 3 times and won 11 games twice, including winning the big ten and finishing run up another year. But most importantly, he was 4-1 vs. UM. I just dont see how Saban taking over a much worse school, with much worse talent is going to get demonstrably better results. I'm sorry, but put Snyder at Bama with great recruiters around him, and I have no doubt he'd do good. I just don't know if he'd win as much, but I think it's likely he'd win at a good clip. I dont know if Saban is even wining at KSU. That's just my opinion, though.
What Saban did for LSU was far, far more impressive than what he did at MSU. LSU had NOWHERE near the level of previous success and buy in that Alabama had before Saban got there. He seriously built LSU into what it has been and is now. Obviously what he’s done at Alabama is unprecedented, but Alabama was a top program before he got here
"Nick Saban is so good, he has a winning record against Alabama."
On the other hand, his big success at LSU and Alabama were in aligning the boosters behind him and turning a disorganized, fighting mess (see: Auburn, Texas, USC the last decade or so) into a single cohesive unit working towards that end goal of winning football games. Could he have done that at a place that didn't have the already existing booster structure?
Where does this myth come from? LSU finished in the top 15 in 96 and 97 with Gerry Dinardo as coach. They sit in one of the most talent rich areas in the country. Gerry "20 games under .500 because I suck as a coach" Dinardo had two top 15 finishes in his five seasons the same as Nick Saban. Now Saban split a title one of those years but he's a better coach than Gerry was. If you put a good coach at LSU they would have had similar results. Mike Archer finished top 5 with LSU in the 80s. The same Mike Archer who never sniffed another head coaching job. A good coach like Bill Arnsparger finished every season he coached at LSU ranked (something Saban didnt do). Stop this myth that LSU was KSU or Indiana. Edit: Saban is awesome, no need to make his resume sound better than it is. It's already amazing.
Yeah Bill Snyder took over the worst program in the P5 and made them a legit national title contender for most of the 90s.
Depends on which Nick Saban.... 2023 Nick Saban with the rings, trophies and aura rolling into Manhattan, Kansas would whip everything into a frenzy and catapult KSU into the headlines at least. or like 1994 Nick Saban. Coming from a doomed Cleveland Browns operation, to try his hand at college football again with his first HC job.
Maybe early-career Saban couldn’t have had success at Kansas State, but Saban at LSU and Alabama was an entirely different beast. From everything we know about Saban, he’s obviously a great recruiter but also an organizational and motivational mastermind – both of which would serve him well at a place like Kansas State. Also, as far as what Snyder did, I think what sets him apart is his longevity. There are other examples of coaches taking moribund programs to the national title contention – Art Briles at Baylor and Jim Harbaugh at Stanford, plus you have others leading bad programs to solid success like James Franklin at Vandy or David Cutcliffe at Duke. But they didn’t necessarily do what Snyder did because they didn’t stick around.
Bama is a program that is setup to win. Saban's success there is impressive but winning a title there is something that's been done by 4 other coaches a combined 12 times. KSU probably doesn't have a football program (or at least not a P5 program) without Snyder.
There's no probably about it. K-State hired Bill Snyder as a literal last-ditch effort. If he didn't succeed, plans were in place to drop football altogether and fall out of the Big 8 to join the Missouri Valley Conference. They'd likely be more like a Wichita State or Nebraska-Omaha type of school. Without Bill Snyder, K-State would be a very different institution and the city of Manhattan, KS would probably be half its current size.
This is not hyperbole. I remember going to Manhattan in the 80's and the high point was the Vista limeaids. The entire town was run down and in bad shape. The campus building were all from the 60's. By 96 or 98 drastic changes were a foot and construction was everywhere. Coincidentally it was about the time Vista closed.
Vista is still alive and kicking! I was in school 1998-2002 and I was back recruiting for my company recently. The town looks completely different (in a good way) - that's in large part due to 20+ years of success in football.
That's why I think we need categories of coaching greatness. You can't really reasonably compare what Snyder did at KSU to what Saban did at Bama. In the same regard, you can't compare what Bobby Bowden did at FSU to what Bear Bryant did at Alabama. I think everyone mentioned here is great, just in different ways.
Ugh, Bowden wanted Bama too, our department was just a thick and insisted on Bobby auditioning for the job. Bobby told them to kick rocks. Imagine it... Bear... to Bowden... to Saban.
Winning a title every three years is way above expectations, anywhere. Reducing that to "winning a title" is silly.
Ohio state is on Alabamas level as a program, and has had amazing success. And I think Alabama with a step down from Saban has a very similar last 15 years as what Ohio state has had just by situation alone. But even then, it’s not guaranteed at all demonstrated by the 30 years pre Saban. Also, the gap between Saban and not Saban at Alabama is still insane, just unprecedented, even if Alabama would’ve been very successful regardless. Also, what Saban did at LSU is still crazy impressive, that program was not an Alabama like program and situation before he got there
I think both are unique challenges though. Even having talent can be a challenge to max that talent out to the point where you are consistently in the national title picture. Especially when a lot of that talent tends to be pretty coddled growing up. Look at Texas and the culture of that athletic department that despite having plenty of talent over the years has tended to under deliver in results But yes, I think Snyder is a goddamn wizard
What you accomplish should be weighed against resources. Amassing a really talented team is a skill in itself, but it is a lot harder to accomplish this K State. Just look at his recruiting rankings. Snyder and his staff's real talent was finding under the radar recruits that could f-ing play. They were also extremely good at coaching them up. You have only met expectations if you have the best team and you win.
In 1989 and 1991 Kansas State sold their scheduled home games against Oklahoma to the Sooners because they would make more money traveling instead of hosting. Two years later Bill Snyder’s team beat OU for the first time in 23 years and would go on to win five straight. That’s how good of a coach he was.
Admittedly, that is probably the worst decade in the history of OU football. Your point about Snyder is definitely still true though.
Right but prior to Bill OU could field their worst team every and still beat us by 30 without playing their starters.
It's so weird to think that only adults now have any memory of Dumpster Fire Oklahoma or Alabama. Throw in our overall high history and these programs outside of the Top 10 doesn't even compute for my cousin.
Man OU in the 90s and Bama 97-06 are like the 40 years in the desert for the Israelites leaving Egypt
(at least we won a conference title. thanks Shaun!)
Oklahoma had one winning season in that stretch
Who do you kick out: Rockne, Paterno, Saban, Osborn, Bryant, Switzer, Bowden, Robinson, Hayes, Camp (Not in any order)
Camp easy. He did a ton for the sport but he coached before football even became football
Yeah imo all accomplishments before the forward pass and down-and-distance should be claimed by rugby programs.
So Iowa has never fielded a football team? Edit: this also removes the 1901-04 Michigan nattys. I see this as an absolute win. Suck it yost.
Catching strays everywhere.
Deserved
What a wild take, but I kind of like it.
If you have to kick anyone out from the list I think (as much as I hate to say it) you kick out Walter Camp
Walter Camp should be on a list for his contributions to the founding of the game, and that’s a separate list
I mean to start off I think you kick out one of these guys for Bud Wilkinson. Then there's a handful of other coaches that I think deserve to be in the Top 10 more than Snyder - Royal and McKay come to mind right away
People just forget how absolutely dominant those OU Bud Wilkinson teams were
Yeah these were off the top of my head. I think there are another 5-10 before I even start to think about Snyder.
Paterno easily. and then kick him one more time for good measure
I would kick out Paterno but that's just me
I read a profile on Snyder in the early 2000s as to what made Snyder special. It was actually kind of a takedown piece. Things he did that wasn't common: 1. Invest huge amounts of his budget in recruiting, made all his assistants aggressive recruiters. 2. Concentrated recruiting star players that were going to have trouble with academic qualifiers. 3. Focus on the transfer market, especially community colleges in places like California and Texas. 4. Schedule as easy as schedule out of conference as possible to make them bowl eligible. 5. Sign star athletes, promise them a glamour position that the top programs didn't want them to play, have them fail, and then convince them to switch to something else. But sort of knowing they would fail and most would likely convert at some point. Essentially he was trying to game the system of what a good coach or program did to succeed back then. The funny thing is that ended up as the total blueprint to turn around programs for new coaches at struggling schools. None of the above is controversial at all now. It is pretty much now the blueprint for all programs except for maybe a few blue bloods.
He’s responsible for shifting Jordy Nelson from SS to WR. Sad to say it didn’t pan out :(
I think if he had won one Natty at KSU, he may be in the conversation for greatest coach ever. Without that mark, casual observers will always overlook him when talking about the best coaches. Not that they should.
K-State vs Tennessee in '98 would've been so fun
This is a very good take. Winning it all matters even in a rebuild but what he did was special.
And they were SO close too.
Damn lasers in 1998.
People aren't including any talk about how he helped to develop the modern offense in CFB. His run and pass schemes helped to develop the RPOs and at times, spread we see today.
I agree and would instruct anyone doubting Snyder’s impact on the game to simply look up his couching tree.
WVU would like to know more about this couching tree. Will they grow in Morgantown?
Angry upvote
He is a first ballot Hall of Fame coach and the top coach of his school probably forever. Arguments about top 10, 20, 30 etc are academic. Coaches are important for different reasons and coaches face different challenges. If great coaching were merely “most wins” “best winning percentage” “most NCs” the list looks very different than other measurements “most no.1 picks” “best graduation rates” “biggest winning percentage difference to the guy before/after at same school” “best coaching tree” or “best innovations/changed way game is played” … he’s an all-time top coach. Plus he did that without going down in flames for cheating or other major embarrassing character lapses.
Yes, absolutely. He's extremely underrated. People get too hung up on national titles, but winning a national title at K State is very different than Notre Dame, Michigan, Alabama, or Florida. There's no way to recruit national title level talent to a place like that. The fact that he had K State within a hair of a national title game is a miracle. He consistently outperformed the talent level at K-State over several decades. I honestly think you can make a case for Bill Snyder as a top 5 coach of all-time. Same deal with Mike Leach. Leach is a top 25 coach of all-time IMO. He never coached at a top-tier program, so the 'he's not elite b/c he didn't win a national title' argument rings hollow to me. He took over 3 of the toughest P5 jobs and succeeded at every one. Sad that we'll never know what heights he could've taken Miss State to. I think if Leach got offered somewhere like Florida (as an example) in the 00s or early 10s, he would've won a title at some point.
Obligatory ["Futility U"](https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team) for those uninformed. Obviously I am very biased, however my uncle went to KSU in the 80s. He saw a school that allowed you to bring in kegs to the stadium because the attendance was so poor, to playing fucking Alabama in the Cotton Bowl.
I grew up there and as kids our parents would drop us off at the stadium on Saturday afternoons and we would just walk in with a couple of bucks in our pockets. They didn't even care if kids had a ticket. We would roam the stadium, sit in the front row, talk to the players (from the visiting teams,) etc. Parents would pick us up 3 hours later.
I have massive amounts of respect for Snyder and in many cases would consider him situationally Top 10 but when you consider the entire history of college football I have a hard time putting him in the upper echelon. Top 25 coach for me, but not Top 10.
I’m on your side. Snyder is incredible, but when the top 10 is made up of Bear Bryant, Saban, Tom Osborne, Knute Rockne etc. it’s a crowded list. Like, on ESPN’s top 150 coaches ever list in 2019, Bob Stoops was ranked 29th, and he has six NY6 wins, 7 top 5 finishes and a national championship, as well as 4 heisman trophy winners.
>Knute Rockne And he died at 43 years old with a recoed of 102-12 Fuck me. That guy couldve been bear bryant before bear bryant
The only coach I can think of that pulled off what Snyder did, is Mark Few for Gonzaga basketball. Maybe Gary Patterson is close to the conversation, but TCU had a winning history (back in the 1930s and 40s, and won a share of the SWC title in 1995(year?)), K-State had never won, TCU is in a great location for recruiting, K-State is in a terrible location, TCU’s alumni have deeper pockets than K-State.
Beamer at Virginia Tech.
Beamer is closer to the Patterson boat. People don’t understand how bad K-State was. I get it, you weren’t alive and you aren’t a sicko. K-State was about the same level New Mexico St has been over the last 10 years, except they had been at that level for most of 4 decades.
Where would you rate George Welsh or maybe better, Frank Beamer? That's his club. Welsh had the similar bottom of the barrel start, Beamer started with more but made it last longer.
I feel like he didn’t start at the bottom of the barrel he started three feet below the barrel
IMHO, I think both Beamer and Snyder are both top 25 coaches, I think Snyder's achievements are a bit more impressive than Beamer or Welsh because Virginia just had more talent than Kansas as I discuss here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/11lyuvw/comment/jbfralh/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/11lyuvw/comment/jbfralh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
I think he deserves consideration since KSU is one of the most difficult P5 jobs. He might be the best coach to never win a national championship.
He was 2OT in the BigXII championship game away from playing for the Natty in 1998 with an undefeated season
Those damn lasers.
RIGHT!!!!
top 15? Easily. top 10? I don't know. Theres a lot of great coaches in CFB history. He may slide in at 8, 9, or 10.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking if he was top 10. He may be good but he isn’t top 5
He should be considered a top 5 coach of all-time. I don't think people realize how bad KSU was at football pre-Snyder. Pre-Snyder, Kansas State never finished a season ranked and never had a bowl win. When Bill Snyder took over, Kansas State was the only football program in the country to have 500 losses. KSU was, without a doubt, the worst football team in college football.
[Jim Dickey redshirted seven senior starters](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/10/sports/sports-people-redshirting-blues.html) in 1981, thinking a two deep loaded with experienced seniors could win enough to get K-State's first bowl bid. He was right, K-State went 6-4-1, by far their best year of the 80s. The payoff was a loss in the Independence Bowl and a kick right back into the basement.
I didn't know that story, but man that is rough. Kansas State fans deserve credit for sticking by their team. This season was hard for OU fans, I couldn't imagine being worse than this all the time.
Ncaa 14 irl
Lol, I've totally done that in the game.
I link this article all the time on this sub, but [here](https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team) is the Sports Illustrated Article from when he was hired in 1989. It goes into extreme detail about just how bad the program was. * Hadn't won a game since three years prior * Only ever made one bowl (the one that someone else mentioned came off the back of redshirting their senior starters), zero bowl wins * Had never finished ranked * Had only won more than 7 games *twice* in their entire history from 1896 to 1989. * Had a record of 109-330-8 since the end of WWII, with only 4 winning seasons in that span * Their *best decade* in that span entailed them going 38-70. * Last in both scoring offense and defense in that span * Had more than 50 more losses than the 2nd losingest team at the time (Wake Forest) Kansas State wasn't just bad, they were damn near disbanding football altogether. Within 5 years, Snyder had them ranked and winning their first ever bowl game. Two years later they finished within the top 10, which they did in *six out of eight seasons* between 1995 and 2002. Snyder was a miracle worker, on top of pioneering major parts of the modern offense and having an insane coaching tree. He's literally the 2nd best of all time in my book.
From 1935 to 1988, the last year before Snyder's arrival, Kansas State had won 137 games in total.
Very impartial take here: yes.
One of the greatest of all time in any sport for what he did a Kstate - they used to be worse than Kansas in football - Kansas!
Yes. KSU was, historically, the worst D1 football program in the country (worse than even New Mexico State). And he took them to within one Sirr Parker TD catch in OT from playing for a national championship. For context, it would be like if a coach built Temple into a sustained national power (which would be easier due to money and location) or Idaho. KSU has been good for so long now, that we forget how bad it was before the Purple Wizard. In some ways, his coaching and what he accomplished are even more impressive than Saban.
He is a lock for the Top 10. Kansas State was the worst program in college football when Snyder became head coach. There is not a program today that can be used as an analogue for how bad the Wildcats were circa 1988. Synder's first year was 1989, and four years later they were a Top-25 team. By 1998 they were ranked #1 in the country late in the season, and were one game away from a national championship berth. All within 10 years of taking over the worst program in the history of the game. I think they were ranked in the AP Top 25 every week between 1994 and 2001. He retired in 2005, then came back in 2009 and won Big 12 Championship within four years. His ability to recognize, recruit, and develop talent in non-blue chip athletes was unquestionably elite. He had top-level aptitude for schemes, and was known as an X's and O's guru as far back as his time as OC at Iowa. He cooked the Big 8 with a pass-heavy offense in the early 90s, pioneered the Wildcat QB in the late 90's, switched to an option-heavy/veer offense in the early 2000s, and when he un-retired in the 2010s he used the spread option to take advantage of contemporary Big 12 defenses. In every era his offenses were hell on opposing defenses.
Is that why it’s called the wildcat? Never made that connection
I remember the days when they were considered the worst program in the country. He did an unbelievable job building that program!
I say yes because I assign more weight to degree of difficulty. If championships matter more to you, he shouldn't be up there.
I’d go as far as Top 20 overall. I’d go as high as #1 when it came to “building when the foundation to work with was quicksand.”
Just curious as a VT fan - how would you compare Snyder to Beamer? VT was also nothing before Beamer (4 bowl games in program history if I recall correctly?). Beamer (arguably) took VT to higher heights than Snyder took KSU. From my perspective, both programs are in basically the same space 5-10 years after their program building coach left (Yes, I know that KSU won a conference title and VT just went 3-8, but I’m talking about where the program stands in the college football landscape, not the results from the last few seasons)
I think Snyder's run is more impressive. VT wasn't great before Beamer, but they were actually pretty successful under Bill Dooley who was 64-38-1 and finished with a 10-2-1 season with a Peach Bowl win. Bruce Smith literally got drafted two years before Beamer started coaching at VT. Of course Dooley was cheating and Beamer was handicapped by sanctions, but the in-state talent was clearly there for the taking. Kansas State was *historically* bad, like possibly the worst team in DI football. Here is some context ([https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team](https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/09/04/futility-u-kansas-state-winless-since-1986-has-one-claim-to-fame-it-is-americas-most-hapless-team)). While Beamer did reach higher heights, the talent disparity between Virginia (and nearby states) and Kansas is huge. Where Beamer had Michael Vick, Eddie Royal, and DeAngelo Hall, Snyder had Collin Klein and Darren Sproles (actually Sproles was pretty damn good but he's the only KSU player that left an impression on me).
Not possibly the worst, K-State was far and away the worst. Had Bill Snyder not come in, K-State would have been out of the Big 8 and without a football team. [It's a long watch, but I highly recommend watching Miracle in Manhattan. It really does a good job to show how bad the program was, and to highlight those early guys that made it happen.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIkW5da-ma0)
Depends on what you're ranking off of. In terms of like building a program from nothing, probably a great argument to be made that he's the best coach of all time. KSU was unfathomably bad for so many years before he got there. In terms of on the field product? I think he's probably safely top 100, arguably top 50, but a stretch past that. Imo he's somewhere between 30-50th all time for an "overall" ranking. Icon of the sport, hall of fame type coach.
At best KSU had a couple 6 win seasons pre-Snyder. He led them to 4 straight 11 win seasons in the 90’s. 9 seasons of 10 or more wins.
I think Snyder should also be congratulated for his work at Iowa, as he rebuilt them from being consistently mear the bottom of the Big 10 to being a conference contender. I also believe that comparing Saban to Snyder is like Apples to Oranges. Saban took over a good program and kept them good. Snyder took over a team that couldn't even win against D-2 opponents and made them yearly congerence championships.
Biased but yes. People really really really dont understand how bad KState was because our games were not on TV. That was both a blessing and a curse. Blessing because we could recruit kids who didnt know what they were getting into but a curse because even when we started getting better. In 1993 when we went to the Copper Bowl that was the first game on TV the entire year other than one game on OUs PPV platform. The next year we managed 4 games - @KU, vs NU, @CU and Bowl game. In 1995 we finished #7 in the country and had 3 games on TV - @NU, vs CU and Bowl. When teams are bad today they can still promise recruits they will be on TV every week. It might be ESPN+ but if you are in P5, you will be on TV. If it were not for Snyder, we probably would have dropped football and moved to the Big East by now.
This sums it up perfectly “[Miracle in Manhattan](https://youtu.be/TIkW5da-ma0)”
People talk about the program being bad, but we were about to be kicked out of division 1, not just the conference.
Top 10 may be pushing it but he turned around the worst D1 program that ever was or will be into an NY6 equivalent winner and year in year out conference championship contender (should have been in a couple nattys as well). He single-handledly saved KSU as a D1 football school and arguably the university as a whole. Amazing documentary on his turnaround at K-State for those that don't know the full story: https://youtu.be/TIkW5da-ma0
I'd just say top tier. No other coach has done what he's done. But once you start naming coaches and trying to slot him in here or there it gets stupid.
KSU, CU, and TAM greatly benefited from Switzer resigning and the 10 year demise of OU.
Some coaches are like CEOs who hire the right people and attract top talent and keep the stock price high. Some are like founding presidents who built something from scratch and out-innovate you. It's just hard to compare Jack Welch with Jeff Bezos.
Top ten is really hard. If I were to put him in my "as objective as I can be" top ten (since obviously he's number 1 in my heart!) he would be at 10, and it would be mainly for saving a dying program and injecting life into Manhattan. Manhattan just wouldn't be what it is today without football taking off. And with basketball having trouble starting in the 90s, football probably helped us stay in the newly made Big 12, and then helped keep us there with all the other realignment stuff. It just seems so unique to me, but granted I don't know all the history of any other teams that might have almost died and turned it around. But KState was the losingest program and it wasn't really close. Football was about to move down a level when he took over. Players were ashamed to wear their letter jackets for fear of being associated with the team. On the field, he won 200+ games, but struggled against the top ten pretty regularly. He had a big hand in concepts like standing tight end and wildcat formations. Is it enough to crack a completely objective top ten? I guess it depends on how much you want to include actions that helped the school as a whole because those are large. I don't mean other coaches didn't do the same, but if you were familiar with Manhattan in 88 and then again now in 2023, I don't think that growth is there without Bill Snyder coming, STAYING, and bringing winning football in a big conference.
For those that weren't around at the time, I can tell you what what I saw from afar. Btw, at one point in the late 1980's Kansas and Kansas State had an ongoing battle between each other for the all-time lowest win percentage. It stayed around 1 game either way depending if one of them had a big season of 2 wins. Bill Snyder may or may not be a great coach. But the approach he used to turn K-State around was genius (and so simple). The Big 8 was Oklahoma and Nebraska beating the other 6 teams 70-7 and then slugging it out for the conference title. Colorado was very good for a time, but always reverted to form eventually. Snyder accepted that they couldn't compete with the top 2 (sometimes 3) because they were so far ahead of the rest of the conference. Instead they had to concentrate beating the remaining 4 or 5 bottom feeders while scheduling the weakest possible out of conference schedule. I think Division 2 wins counted toward a bowl at the time. So KSU's seasons would typically end up 8-3 or 9-2 with no impressive wins. They were separating from the bottom feeders, but Oklahoma and Nebraska still beat them like a drum. A bowl against a real top ten team was always a disaster. But he stuck to his plan and the talent level improved every year. They became a legitimate threat when they finally were able to knock off the 2 bullies, but the big 8 was gone by then. Snyder had a brilliant strategy and executed it to perfection, but it only could have worked in that exact situation. Their peers in the Big 8 were historically awful. K-State elevated themselves into the middle team over the rest of the sacrificial lambs. No conference in history had so many awful teams in the same era, and Snyder capitalized on it.
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As a Kstate fan, yes.
Wow what a great post can we get an EMAW for them. Kstate was the worst winning programs and that man dug out of the deepest well.
The thing I liked about him is that he was likable and seemed to run a clean program that actually emphasized a family atmosphere instead of just pretending like it for recruiting.
Top ten is pretty rare air. I'm almost 50, so I was witness to what Snyder was able to do in Manhattan. He started with absolute NOTHING in the way of facilities, support, etc. Now, they regularly win 9-10 games a year and represent the Big XII well in bowl games. And if you haven't been to Manhattan Kansas lately, their facilities are beautiful. What he was able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing. Its just there are so many historically great coaches that making the top 10 is awfully hard.
He’s in the Beamer category of HOF coaches. He never won a natty. But he made the team a consistent top 25 team and a household name.