Berry Tramel: Don’t look now, but Kansas State's Bill Snyder is doing it again

The riddle is not why Bill Snyder returned to coaching. Returned to Kansas State, where he fashioned the greatest college football story ever told.

The riddle is why Snyder ever left in the first place.

Snyder’s own son, once his punter and now his chief lieutenant, didn’t think his dad should have walked away from football four years ago.

"When he retired, I didn’t think he was really ready,” Shawn Snyder said. "I saw more gas in the tank.”

That tank indeed seems far from empty.

The architect of the Manhattan Miracle, the coach who flourished in the job where the brave dared not go, is at it again.

Twenty years after Snyder began building the Wildcats from hopeless rumdum to perennial Big 12 contenders, he has K-State on top again.

In Snyder’s first season back after a three-year hiatus, the Wildcats lead the Big 12’s North Division. They struggled in September, going 2-2, but bring a 3-1 league record into OU’s Owen Field on Saturday.

"It’s just second nature to him,” Shawn Snyder said of his dad’s penchant for reconstruction. "He’s built to do things.”

Don’t get the wrong idea. The current Snyder salvage plan pales in comparison to 1989, when his Iowa-rooted staff included the brothers Stoops.

"There’s no way it (current K-State football) was in the position it was when we walked in there,” said Bob Stoops, who is 5-1 against his old boss, the defeat coming in the 2003 Big 12 title game.

K-State’s 50-year futility is well-documented. Many talk about the decrepit facilities. Snyder most remembers the squashed spirits.

When Snyder took the job in 1989, he met with the outgoing seniors who never would play for him.

Twenty years later, Snyder remains stunned at what he encountered. Calls it amazing.

"They were predominantly good people, but losing had impacted them so many different ways,” Snyder said.

The players told Snyder they wouldn’t go to Aggieville, the hopping campus entertainment district, on Saturday nights after games. Wouldn’t wear their letter jackets.

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