Lon Floyd says bittersweet goodbye to Kansas State’s Catbacker tour

If you have ever been to one of Kansas State’s many Catbacker events, you have likely met Lon Floyd.

For the past 19 years, he has served as lead organizer for K-State’s summer tour of fan gatherings, which lets coaches and student-athletes interact with supporters in laid-back settings across Kansas.

He has made countless friends and stories along the way, but retirement looms. This is his final summer on the job, and he has already taken a step back. He plans on attending Wichita’s Catbacker Banquet on Wednesday as an auctioneer. Not that it will stop friends from congratulating him on the way out.

“People make a big deal about it, and I’m embarrassed,” Floyd said. “They make me out to be a hero, and I am no hero. I am just an old man who has loved K-State for a long time. Not much else. All I can say is it is pretty cool that you can get paid for loving your university the way I have all these years.”

Floyd leaves behind a lasting impact that spreads wider than his job description. He has raised funds for nearly two decades, helped student-athletes overcome their fears of public speaking and impacted pregame football rituals.

If not for Floyd, the yearly tradition known as Harley Day, in which bikers rev their engines and circle Snyder Family Stadium before kickoff, might not exist.

“It was designed on a whim with our former athletic director, Max Urick,” Floyd said. “We had no concept it was going to take off like it has. It was an idea born out of one too many bottles of wine.

“We were talking about how to create a more festive game-day atmosphere when a guy rolled around us on a Harley. Max looked at me and grinned. He said, ‘We need that. It’s a lot of noise and what our fans want. Go see if you can do it.’ Everything fell into place, and we still do it today.”

Of course, the first Harley Day in 1998 looked much different than it does today.

“There were no shiny, perfect bikes like you see now,” Floyd said. “It was all true Harley riders, most of them had probably never been to a K-State football game. You would not believe the smoke they made. I remember standing on the track and watching what looked like a dense fog overtake the field. I thought Bill Snyder was going to come out and go ballistic. I was ready to drive to Colorado to avoid him.”

Floyd didn’t have to. As it turned it, he said, opposing coaches complained so much about motorcycle noise interrupting pregame meetings that Snyder decided it gave K-State an advantage.

“We are very proud of that,” Floyd said.

He is also proud of the relationships he formed with the Catbackers. Each summer tour consists of 28 events that are all unique in some way. In Scott City, they fry mountain oysters. In Emporia, they do a pot-luck dinner. In Wichita and Topeka and Kansas City, they pack fans into big rooms. He missed two events in 19 years, growing close with student-athletes traveling to and from each one.

Coaches and athletes speak at each gathering. Some have been better than others. Years ago, Floyd remembers former running back J.J. Smith saying so little at his first Catbacker event that Floyd did not have time to sit down after introducing him. But by the final stop of the summer, Smith talked for 15 minutes.

“He went from saying nothing to hosting the Jay Leno Show,” Floyd said. “It was incredible.”

Those stories are what he will miss most about his job. But he is ready to step down.

“If I know what bittersweet means, this is bittersweet,” Floyd said. “I am going to miss tremendously the kids and the people. I have made some of my very, very best friends at this job. But I’m ready. It is time. I’m 70 years old and I don’t get around like I used to.”

Still, he may stop by an event or two next summer. He knows they will be fun. After all, he says Snyder and the rest of K-State’s coaches, who commit to more than a dozen Catbacker events each summer, are the true stars of the tour.

“They make this possible by being so generous with their time,” Floyd said. “It’s a credit to them, not to me. I coordinate it, but they allow us to do it.”

This story was originally published June 9, 2015 at 9:54 AM with the headline "Lon Floyd says bittersweet goodbye to Kansas State’s Catbacker tour."