No. 14 UCLA Bruins (9-3, 6-3) vs. No. 11 Kansas State (9-3, 7-2)
Kickoff: Friday, Jan. 2, 3:45 p.m. PT, Alamodome (San Antonio)
TV: ESPN (Joe Tessitore, Brock Huard, Shannon Spake)
Radio: AM 570 (Chris Roberts, Matt Stevens, Wayne Cook)

Coach: No team is as synonymous with a single coach as Kansas State is with Bill Snyder.

The Wildcats first hired Snyder in November 1988, plucking away the 49-year-old offensive coordinator from Iowa. At that point, K-State was arguably the worst football program in the country. It was the only one to have lost 500 games, including 114 over the previous 14 years. It had reached just one bowl game, which it lost. (Fun fact: That was the 1982 Independence Bowl, the first college football game ever broadcast live on ESPN. This year, the network will air all but four of the 38 bowls.) Things were so bad that Sports Illustrated asked: “Why bother? Why send fine young men onto the field every Saturday in autumn to be humiliated?”

Snyder won just one game in his debut season, but that at least ended the program’s three-year wait (!) for No. 300 all-time. He quintupled that the following year, and by 1993, he had already pushed the Wildcats to nine wins and a top-20 finish in the AP poll. Since then, he has only ever had two more losing seasons: four- and five-win campaigns that preceded his brief retirement.

When Snyder stepped down after the 2005 season, athletic director Tim Weiser said: “No matter how successful the next person is, it’s not going to be possible to replace Bill.”

Ron Prince tried for the next three years, to the tune of a 17-20 record. And so, Snyder returned to “soothe the waters.”

Since then, Kansas State has gone 51-25 with a pair of BCS bowl appearances — both losses, but enough for the team to stay in the top 15 at year’s end. Continue reading “First look: No. 11 Kansas State” »