K-State’s Bill Snyder has withstood the Sunflower Showdown’s power of mediocrity

Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf was a smart guy. Really smart.

There’s a reason he’s one of the most heralded coaches in college football history, a man who did wonders at Northwestern in the 1930s and 1940s and who became one of the most successful coaches ever at California.

The man knew when to get out.

In 1934, after three years coaching football at Oklahoma City, Waldorf left. He had taken a seven-loss Goldbugs program and made it into an 8-1-2 Collegiate Conference champion. His work there was done and he left for … Kansas.

Oh boy.

Waldorf lasted one season as an assistant in Lawrence before leaving, at 26, for Oklahoma A&M, now Oklahoma State. He was the coach of the Cowboys for five years, where he took over a 1-7 team and transformed it into a 34-10-7 winner with three Missouri Valley Conference titles. His work there was done and he left for … Kansas State.

Oh boy.

Waldorf, perhaps sensing the approaching football tsunami, stayed in Manhattan for just the 1934 season. The Wildcats were 7-2-1, 5-0 in the conference.

And he was the last winning football coach at K-State until Bill “Grandpappy” Snyder arrived 55 years later.

Waldorf went on to highly-successful runs at Northwestern and California. Kansas State went on to five winning seasons over the next 56 years.

And then Snyder happened. He changed the course of K-State football after 14 previous coaches had failed. And when he stepped away for three seasons, from 2006 through 2008, the Wildcats once again began heading down that wrong road with which they were so familiar.

Over at Kansas, where football struggles have also been historically commonplace, a Snyder-like transformation has not occurred. Since 1954, only Jack Mitchell and Mark Mangino have had winning coaching records. And at 44-42-5 (Mitchell) and 50-48 (Mangino), they’ve barely scaled that .500 mountain.

Snyder is 19-1 in his past 20 games against KU and is likely to get his 21st overall win over the Jayhawks and his 200th win at K-State when this rivalry is renewed Saturday in Manhattan.

Snyder, in his 25th season at K-State, has a career record that sparkles — 199-105-1.

The other 32 coaches who have applied their wares at KU and K-State since Pappy Waldorf left Manhattan 81 years ago are a combined 504-874-38.

With a win Saturday, Snyder would assure himself of a 17th winning season at K-State. The other 32 coaches at KU and KSU since 1935 have combined for 28 winning seasons — out of 162.

Snyder will have had winning seasons at Kansas State 68 percent of the time. All of the others at both schools will have had a 17.2 winning-season success rate.

Kansas and Kansas State have met with simultaneous winning records only 12 times since 1960 and eight of those meetings have taken place since 1991, a couple of after Snyder’s arrival.

Just as things were getting good for Kansas under Mangino from 2006-08 — an Orange Bowl run, a 20-3 stretch, a Big 12 North co-championship — Snyder was off being retired.

He returned in 2009 at a time when the KU program was falling apart under Mangino and since 2010, Snyder has feasted on Turner Gill, Charlie Weis and David Beaty. They are 13-62 overall and 0-fer against the Wildcats with losses of 52, 38, 40, 21, 38 and 31 points.

This isn’t a Sunflower Showdown. This is a day when sunflowers across Kansas close up and wait for the all-clear.

There were many years when the Wildcats and Jayhawks were equally futile. Who can forget, for instance, the 1988 showdown between 0-8 Kansas and 0-8 K-State in Lawrence? KU won, 30-12, contributing to an 0-11 season for Stan Parrish and the Wildcats on the heels of 0-10-1 in 1987.

Parrish coached two more games at K-State before the Wildcats hit the lottery by hiring Snyder, an assistant to Hayden Fry at Iowa.

In 1995, a 7-0 Kansas team, ranked sixth, took on No. 14 K-State (6-1) in Manhattan. Nobody knew what to do, especially the state’s sunflowers. Do we close? Do we stay open? What the heck is going on here?

But the game didn’t match the hype. K-State won 41-7 and that game perhaps as much as any other signified the monumental boost Snyder had given the Wildcats, their football program and their fans.

Kansas is still searching for such a positive change. Instead, the Jayhawks have slammed it in reverse and are backing over trash cans the past six seasons.

KU is coming off a win over Texas, though. Spirits are relatively high for a team that has lost, now, only 18 of its past 19 Big 12 games.

In 1934, Pappy Waldorf’s Wildcats beat Kansas 13-0. He got out while the gettin’ was good, just before the gettin’ got bad and decades before K-State found its football savior.

This story was originally published November 22, 2016 at 4:26 PM with the headline "K-State’s Bill Snyder has withstood the Sunflower Showdown’s power of mediocrity."