Comparing Kansas State and Texas Tech during Kingsbury era

With all the belittling of the pitiful 4-6 Kansas State Wildcats this year, it’s easy to forget Bill Snyder’s team has thoroughly outperformed Kliff Kingsbury’s over the last five years.

Fortunately for Tech fans, that pattern appears to be coming to a halt, starting this year.

Kansas State has won half a season’s worth of games more than Texas Tech since Kingsbury took over, winning eight or more games in three out of the last four full seasons. Tech’s done that just once, during Kingsbury’s inaugural season.

Head-to-head, Snyder has defeated Kingsbury in four out of their five matchups.

But this year, there’s a feeling this is the turning point where Tech will pass up K-State for the foreseeable future in overall program standing and success. It’s not just about what happens tomorrow—which Vegas predicts will be a one-touchdown victory for Tech—but what will happen in the next two-three years that will thrust the Wildcats to the bottom of the conference indefinitely.

Fans have been ridiculing Kingsbury for his less-than-stellar recruiting classes in recent years, but the class Snyder and his staff put together for 2019 makes Tech look like Alabama. Three months into the college football season, Kansas State has picked up just eight commitments, seven of which were three-star prospects. The Wildcats have no four or five-star pledges.

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Texas Tech, on the other hand, has more than doubled the amount of commitments K-State boasts with 19. including 17 three-stars and one four-star. This, amid all the uncertainty of Kingsbury’s future at the university.

It’s one thing to not have a bunch of four-and-five star guys committing to your program. It’s another to not have anyone committing to your program. Combine that with the fact Snyder—the only coach capable of making Kansas State a respectable football school—will have to retire at some point in the very near future and you can pretty much bury the Wildcats for the next decade or two.

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So yes, K-State’s enjoyed a nice run of success during the Kingsbury era using fewer resources and less talent than Tech’s had, but tomorrow marks a changing of the guard for the Big 12’s most slightly-above-average team. It’s time to let it go, Kansas State. That spot belongs to Tech now.