Bill Snyder is one of the names that immediately comes to mind when great college football coaches are mentioned. What this man did and continues to do with next to nothing is nothing short of miraculous. In short, anyone who says that Bill Snyder isn't one of the greatest coaches of all time is a complete and total idiot.
This may be shocking to some of us, but before Bill Snyder, Kansas State was easily one of the worst programs of all time. They had one period of semi success in the late 1920's and early 1930's that culminated in their only Big 6 conference championship win in 1934. The decades after that were spectacularly dark. From 1935 to 1990, Kansas State experienced a measly four winning seasons. All of that changed when Bill Snyder took the helm.
When Coach Snyder started in 1989, Kansas State had the worst all-time record in college football, and had gone 27 consecutive games without a win. That's absolutely staggering. Snyder's first season wasn't too much better in terms of wins and losses. He went 1-10 in '89, but quickly turned the program around, posting the program's first winning season since 1935 in 1991. He's never posted an undefeated record, and has never won a national championship, but arguably none of that matters when you look at what he did with nothing.
K-State has never really blazed trails in recruiting. They've had several players that went on to have great NFL careers, like Darren Sproles, Jordy Nelson, and Terence Newman, but mainly Bill Snyder makes his money on turning 2-star recruits into superstars. A hallmark of his team is their mental toughness and tenacity. Snyder teams rarely give up and rarely make mistakes, making them a literal nightmare to prepare for.
Snyder is also a genuinely kind human being. Every single team in the Big XII can tell you a story about the time Bill Snyder sent their star player a hand-written note congratulating him on a well-played game, or extended a kind sentiment during a time of trial for their school. He is honestly a good man.
Snyder's reputation for winning games he arguably shouldn't precedes him. To many in the Big XII, he's known as the "Purple Wizard", "The Black Magician", or "What Happens When The Old Guy From Up Coaches Football". A couple of my buddies have laughed over the comparisons that can be made between Snyder and a galapagos turtle. I'm here to tell you in the most pedantic and unnecessary way possible that you're all wrong about Snyder and I'm right. He isn't a Wizard, a turtle, and he definitely isn't an animated man from the happiest sad movie of all time. He's a Necromancer.
Necromancy is defined as "a form of magic involving communication with the deceased, either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or use the bodily form in combat". First off, let's look at what Bill Snyder did with the rotting husk of the Kansas State program during his tenure. He's the only coach at K-State with a winning record. He restored a football team that was very literally roadkill into something that people fear and respect.
Snyder's game planning is often immaculate. He has a great ability to tell how his teams are going to be attacked, and how to attack other teams. How else is this possible unless he's communicating with the dead? No human should have gameplans that good unless they are communicating with the apparition of Hayden Fry himself (Snyder coached under Fry. Connect the dots people).
It's also not a coincidence that K-State players always look exactly the same. The day K-State doesn't have a running back that can be described as a "bruiser" or "hard-nosed", a quarterback who can be described as a "game-manager", and a defense that plays as a unit is the day that college football implodes upon itself. Their consistency can't be a coincidence. It's very obvious that Snyder is simply resurrecting players from the dead in the most complicated "Next Man Up" way ever.
You have the evidence right in front of you people. Let's unnecessarily right this wrong and give Bill Snyder the nickname that actually encapsulates him: The Purple Necromancer.
