K-State Q&A: How much has Collin Klein boosted Wildcats football recruiting?

It’s time for another K-State Q&A.

There isn’t much happening in the world of the Wildcats right now, outside of football recruiting. So let’s lead off this week’s mailbag with a question on exactly that topic.

Thanks, as always, for your participation.

Football recruiting seems to be going swimmingly right now under Collin Klein, but Kansas State football fans sometimes act like every recruit we land is going to be the next Michael Bishop. Be honest: How good (or bad) is our 2027 recruiting class? And how does it stack up against the rest of the Big 12? - Carl W. via e-mail.

Let’s start with this: There is nothing wrong with being excited about a football recruiting class, especially right now.

What else are college football fans supposed to be pumped up about at this time of year?

Still, much of the praise you see online about incoming prospects does have to be taken with a grain of salt.

Is Collin Klein off to a promising start on the recruiting trail? Yes. Is he recruiting at a higher level than Chris Klieman was at this time last year? Yes. Is he “cleaning up” or “dominating” like some have claimed on social media? No.

As of Thursday afternoon, K-State’s recruiting class for 2027 consisted of 18 members. Depending on your recruiting service of choice, one or two of those players carry a four-star rating. The rest are three-star prospects.

That is good enough for the No. 38 class nationally and No. 3 in the Big 12 at Rivals. Switch over to 247Sports, and those numbers shift to No. 28 nationally and No. 2 in the Big 12.

That’s solid, if not spectacular.

If those numbers hold until signing day, then we can give K-State a grading boost. Right now, some other schools only have a handful of high school commitments. So it’s hard to judge all the teams early on. We also need to remember that the transfer portal is now arguably more important than traditional recruiting.

Klein has said that he wants K-State to be a “developmental program,” so it’s a good sign that he is landing recruits early in the process. The most encouraging sign of all is that most of K-State’s pledges hold offers from other notable programs.

Cooper Ohnmacht (a four-star athlete from Great Bend) is the top-rated player in the Sunflower State for his grade. That’s a win. Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Minnesota, Penn State and Wisconsin all wanted him. That’s a big win.

The Wildcats may not be able to beat out the best names or biggest spenders for recruits, but they should aspire to win recruiting battles against that kind of competition. And they are doing it right now.

That is a good sign.

Klein deserves kudos for adding a fresh perspective and new energy to K-State recruiting. Every time I drive by the football complex, I see a dozen Ford Expeditions ready and waiting to take campus visitors anywhere in Manhattan as if they are celebrities. I bet those SUVs have made some fun trips across town. The commitments have been rolling in lately.

Anyway, back to the recruiting class.

Five-star recruits are always going to be good. You can usually take that to the bank. But it’s harder to know what a team is getting in a four-star recruit, even when he possesses clear and obvious upside. Three-star recruits can be total wild cards.

You don’t really see any two stars, or lower, anymore. But you’re mostly just hoping those recruits are late bloomers who develop into stars in college like Jordy Nelson or BJ Finney.

K-State hasn’t landed any five-star recruits in its 2027 class. So none of the 18 commitments that Klein has lined up for the Wildcats are going to be slam-dunk stars at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

But this batch of K-State recruits does look better than what fans have grown accustomed to.

Fans can be excited about that. They should just realize that teams at the very top of the recruiting services like Texas A&M, Miami, Oklahoma and Notre Dame are all operating at a much higher level with multiple five-star players and four-star prospects already committed.

What did you make of Gene Taylor’s fiery response to the Brendan Sorsby eligibility ruling for Texas Tech earlier this week. Personally, I thought it was pretty (expletive) awesome! - Jeff M. via e-mail.

Few people in college sports are more entertaining than a long-tenured athletics director with job security.

Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard isn’t afraid to call a bluff on the Big Ten and SEC about potentially breaking away from the other conferences and starting their own version of the NCAA. And K-State AD Gene Taylor is willing to call it “(expletive) bull (expletive)” when a Texas Tech quarterback regains eligibility after betting on games that involve his own team.

The old guard will speak freely when many of their peers will not.

For the record, I agree with Taylor’s assessment of the situation. It is ridiculous that a Texas judge granted an injunction that could pave the way for Sorsby to play next season. Every other player who has ever admitted to gambling on their own games has faced banishment from their sports. Why should Sorsby be the exception?

My hope is that the adults at Texas Tech will eventually come to their senses and choose to keep Sorsby on the bench. If not, the Big 12 should explore ways to help Texas Tech officials eventually reach that conclusion.

I wish influential college administrators would speak out about these court rulings more often. They should have done more to stand up to all the pro basketball players returning to play college hoops last season.

Schools and players shouldn’t be able to sue the NCAA whenever one of their rules negatively impacts them. Let’s hope something good comes out of this and conferences find a way to prevent that from happening in the future.

If K-State was a soccer team at the World Cup, which nation would it be? -Andrew B. via e-mail.

Based on how the previous athletic year went for K-State, a good choice would be Italy.

The Italians entered World Cup qualifying with high hopes and a top-15 ranking from FIFA. But they lost a bunch of games and didn’t even qualify for the tournament.

Sorry. Were you looking for a more positive comparison?

How about Brazil, because they refuse to alter their traditional home kits.

How in the world did we end up with Arizona State and Cincinnati as home-and-away opponents in basketball next season? -@Garrettb1983 via X.

It is beginning to annoy me that the Big 12 doesn’t respect Farmageddon as a rivalry.

K-State and Iowa State should play every single year in football. They should also play twice every regular season in basketball.

The fact that they are no longer scheduled to do that is just silly.

In a perfect world, K-State’s three home-and-away opponents would be Iowa Sate, Kansas and Oklahoma State.

Replacing the Cyclones and the Cowboys with the Arizona State Sun Devils and the Cincinnati Bearcats is an unfortunate result of conference realignment.

On the bright side, both of those teams have new coaches. That could make for some fun games next season.

At least K-State didn’t get stuck with Arizona, Houston and Kansas.

Kellis Robinett

The Wichita Eagle

Kellis Robinett covers Kansas State athletics for The Wichita Eagle and The Kansas City Star. A winner of more than a dozen national writing awards, he lives in Manhattan with his wife and four children.