FAB 4. “FAMILY,” “WILDCAT,” AND “DEFENSIVE 2-POINTS” ORIGINATED AT KSU
“Family” is the buzz-word around the Tampa Bay Buccaneers these days. Quarterback Jameis Winston has used that term as a rallying cry in the locker room and on the field, bringing the 2016 Bucs closer than ever and playing winning football for one another.

Over the last year or two, the term “family” has been widely used by college football teams across the country, especially on the recruiting trail to help lure in-state and out-of-state recruits to certain campuses that have adopted that as their slogan. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of a “family,” right?

Bill Snyder Family Stadium – Kansas State University

Well, Bill Snyder, the head coach of Kansas State, my alma mater, first made the phrase popular over a decade ago in 2005 when he first retired. Before the last K-State game of the season, the school wanted to rename the stadium in his honor, as Snyder is a living legend and the all-time leader in wins for the Wildcats program. Snyder rejected the name Bill Snyder Stadium, and said the only way he would accept his name on the stadium is if it had the term “family” on it.

Having worked for the K-State football team during my three-internship at the KSU Sports Information Department, I know Snyder is quite the family man. However, his definition of the term “family” not only applies to his family and the Wildcats football team, but also the Kansas State students, fans and alumni. At his instance, KSU Stadium was renamed Bill Snyder Family Stadium. It’s the only pro or major college stadium with the word “family” in the name.

Snyder, who was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame last year, and won his 200th game against rival Kansas three weeks ago while coaching in his 25th season in Manhattan, Kansas. The 77-year old Snyder been a part of innovating the football landscape in other notable ways. Have you ever heard of the “Wildcat” formation?

Did you know that the term came from Snyder’s Wildcats, who in 1997 reintroduced the single-wing formation to college football? K-State quarterback Michael Bishop was the “Wildcat” runner that year, taking direct shotgun snaps as a dual-threat QB and racing to a second-place finish in the Heisman Trophy balloting behind Texas running back Ricky Williams in 1998 while leading the Wildcats to the school’s first-ever No. 1 ranking.

By the way, K-State’s kicker during that time happened to be Martin Gramatica, who would be drafted in the third round in 1999 by Tampa Bay.

Kansas State football family – KSU

Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer went to visit Snyder in the 1990s to learn about his offense and borrowed some quarterback run-game concepts that he later implemented with Alex Smith at Utah and with Tim Tebow at Florida.

Aside from the term “family” and the “Wildcat” formation, what else did Snyder help pioneer in the realm of football? Well he didn’t invent the defensive extra point, but it first happened under Snyder’s watch and I happened to be there to witness it my sophomore year in college.

So was New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton.

The year was 1991 and K-State was coming off a 5-6 season in which Snyder actually won the Big 8 Coach of the Year award for engineering five wins in his second year in Manhattan. That was a monumental feat for a woebegone football program dubbed “Futility U” by Sports Illustrated in 1989, Snyder’s first season at K-State.

Just when it appeared the Wildcats were about to turn the corner as a football program, disaster nearly struck in the 1991 season opener against Indiana State, a Division I-AA school. Payton was the Sycamores running backs coach and was on the sidelines when Indiana State nearly pulled off the upset.

The Sycamores took a one-point lead on a 20-yard touchdown pass from Ray Allen to Charles Swann with 3:24 left in regulation. Swann scored twice in the second half, erasing K-State’s 24-13 lead late in the third quarter. Up by one, but wanting to push the lead to three points to force Kansas State to score a touchdown for the win or a field goal to tie, Indiana State elected to go for two.

In 1991, college football adopted a new rule that allowed the defense to score two points, or a “defensive extra,” by running back a blocked extra point, a fumble or an interception into the opposite end zone. Kansas State safety William T. Price became the first player in college football to record a defensive extra point, picking off Allen in the end zone and racing more than 100 yards for the game-winning score.

Kansas State head coach Bill Snyder – Photo by: Getty Images

K-State would prevail, 26-25. When discussing the impact of two-point conversions in the NFL this year, and noting how Kansas City beat Atlanta on a similar play last week in a one-point victory, and how Denver beat New Orleans on a blocked extra point returned for two points earlier in the year, Payton recalled Price’s defensive extra for K-State.

“Throughout your career, college and the NFL, you tend to remember certain games, maybe you won, you came back in the end, and other games that you lost in the closing minutes,” Payton said. “The very first year that college rule changed to where the defense could score on a two-point conversion, I believe was 1991. We had an Indiana State team take a two-day bus trip to Manhattan, Kansas, and we scored late in the game to go up by one and that’s going to be a huge upset. Much like the Atlanta game, we went for two with a pass-play that was intercepted in the end zone and went back 108 yards the other direction and it was the first year that rule had changed.

“I remember everyone, by the time that cornerback hit the 40-yard line or 50, realized what it was going to do to the score. So, jumping forward, obviously, I haven’t forgotten that. Jumping forward to this season, the Denver loss was certainly tough and gut-wrenching. Then, more compounded, the return coming from the back of the end zone ends up stepping on the sidelines, they don’t have a good angle and later. We see a good angle and it’s difficult. The way the Oakland game ended, I’ve said it before, it was a poor call on fourth-and-five, I think. With that being said, we’ve been in these close games and the team we just played for instance, Detroit’s done a good job of winning a lot of those close games. Tampa, you’re watching right now is winning a lot of them, here in the last month, month-and-a-half. So, you’ve got to find a way to make your own breaks and hopefully we can get that started this weekend.”

Saints head coach Sean Payton – Photo by: Getty Images

Not only was I in the stands to watch K-State make college football history that game, I was there when not only when Payton visited as an opposing coach, but also Bucs head coach Dirk Koetter, who was the offensive coordinator of the Missouri Tigers that year. Like Payton, Koetter would leave Manhattan on the losing end as Snyder’s Wildcats won, 32-0, and finished the season with a 7-4 record.

Snyder would go on to win his second consecutive Big 8 Coach of the Year award that season, and victories against Payton and Koetter’s teams in 1991 helped him achieve that distinction.

Koetter would go on to have a 3-2 record against Snyder with Missouri from 1989-93, and he would score a 12-7 upset win in the Aloha Bowl in 1994 as Boston College’s offensive coordinator. Snyder would extract some revenge against Koetter in 2002 when Kansas State beat Koetter’s Arizona State team, 34-27, in a wild Holiday Bowl. Darren Sproles and the Wildcats come back to beat the Sun Devils late in the fourth quarter, while Arizona State defensive end Terrell Suggs set a college football record with a pair of sacks against QB Ell Roberson to push his single-season mark to 24 sacks – a record that still stands today.