Kansas State fans have not been happy with ESPN’s Paul Finebaum lately, and former K-State assistant football coach Jon Fabris called into The Paul Finebaum Show to set him straight.
ESPN’s Bill Connelly recently put out a list of the 100 best college football coaches of the last 50 years. Bill Snyder, who spent 27 years coaching the Kansas State Wildcats, was at number 8 on the list. That put him ahead of the likes of Jimmy Johnson, Bob Stoops, Mack Brown, Joe Paterno and other National Championship winning coaches despite never securing the hardware for his team. Paul Finebaum vehemently disagreed with a top ten spot and stated that Snyder may not even be a top-40 coach of the last 50 years.
Snyder lifted the K-State program from the ashes during two separate tenures from 1989-2005 and 2009-2018. The only head coaching job Snyder ever accepted at the college level was in Manhattan, Kansas.
“I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but Kansas State lost 500 games quicker than any other school in the history of college football,” Fabris began on Thursday, when he called into defend his former boss’s honor. “So most people would consider that the losingest program in the history of the game, at least before he got there.”
They were anything but losers during Snyder’s duel tenures. He won the AP Coach of the Year Award in 1998 and finished with 215 wins, more than five times the total victories amassed by any other K-State head coach. Snyder’s teams won the Big 12 in 2003 and 2012.
“The 43 years before Coach Snyder got to Kansas State,” Fabris continued. “They only had four winning seasons in 43 years. So again, I don’t think anyone can really conceive, unless you’ve been there, exactly how tough a job it was and still is.”
Snyder’s 333 games are almost four times as many as the next longest-tenured Wildcat coach. Ron Prince sandwiched his 17-20 record in between Snyder’s two runs as head coach. Now, Chris Klieman is trying to fill those big shoes, sporting a 12-11 record in two seasons.
“I had the highest regard for him,” Fabris told Finebaum in closing. “He was as consistent an individual as I ever worked for or ever worked with, and his word was his bond, and you knew what to expect every day. There were no surprises.”