Is Snyder on his way out of K-State?
Bill Snyder will turn 77 this year. He is the oldest coach in college football, and he has a good five or six years on the next coach. The next oldest coach is Frank Solich of Ohio. OHIO. Ohio is in a mid-major conference, and he is only average seven wins a year. His bowl record is similar to Snyder's. He is at a minimum ten years older than the next oldest coach in the Big 12. I think we need to look at how old Snyder is and realize that most human beings who are 77 are retired from their jobs.
This is starting to show effecting in the coaching during the game - like last week. After the 17-16 loss to West Virginia this past weekend there is growing number of fans who want Bill Snyder to retire. They believe that the offensive problems are his fault. I would partly agree with them. He is not the only problem. Dana Dimel is also to blame because he is the offensive coordinator. He has been the offensive coordinator since 2009, but he was also a offensive linemen/running backs coach in the late 80's and mid 90's, as well. There are major communications on offense. Ertz and the rest of the offense would look to the sideline with ten seconds left on the play clock, and then Ertz would audible the play with five or six second left. This caused delay of games, timeouts that didn't need to be called, and the offense was in disorder. This happened the WHOLE game on Saturday. Even if you compare Snyder's coaching during the game last weekend to Dana Holgorsen's, the West Virginia football coach, you can see a major difference in just clock management. I'm not saying that Dana Holgorsen is a better coach than Bill Snyder, because he's not. But, these little errors and problems on the offensive side of the ball are stalling drives and have caused penalties as well.
When you look at what his record has been since he came out of retirement in 2009 - he has a 57-33 record (not including this season). That is an average of eight wins per year. Let’s compare that with other coaches in the Big 12: Bob Stoops - average of ten wins per year, Mike Gundy - eight and a half wins per year, Gary Patterson - nine and a half wins per year, Charlie Strong - eight and a half wins year, Dana Holgorsen - eight wins per year. These are the top five coaches in the Big 12, and only two of the coaches that I mentioned have an argument to be a better coach than Bill Snyder (Bob Stoops and Gary Patterson). Out of the coaches that I mentioned, Coach Snyder would be ranked last in wins per year (I didn’t mentioned coaches who had less than five years of coaching experience).
Many college coaches, analysts, and former players have said that Bill Snyder led the greatest turnaround in college football history. If you look at what K-State was before Snyder got there it was an atrocity. The nickname for Kansas State was “Futility U.” They had a twenty seven game losing streak prior to Snyder getting hired. Then Snyder came in and made it a Big 12 powerhouse by the end of his first stint with K-State.
If you compare Snyder’s two stints with Kansas State you can notice that one was more successful. Let's look at the statistics. The winning percentage in the first stint was 66% compared to the second when it was 63%. In the first stint K-State won one conference title, and won three division titles, but the problem is that there are no more divisions in the Big 12. So in the second stint, K-State won one conference title. This statistic is unreliable because the conference is shaped different. If you just look at the eye test you see that the first was extremely more successful than the first one. The K-State teams were more dominant and Snyder was at his coaching prime during the late 1990’s and early-to-mid 2000’s.
In conclusion, there is a growing number of football fans who want a new coach at Kansas State. To quote a number of fans, “we need some new blood in here, Snyder needs to go.” I think that it is time for him to retire and I think that we need to move on from the Snyder era. We need to make a big splash in coaching free agency, though.
