And he did do it his way, giving the most minute detail total scrutiny. The type of butter for pregame meals, to the side of the plane he wanted when his team traveled to Japan, to — yes — the scheduling of games.
He modernized the school logo and changed the Wildcats' uniforms; he set Vanier Complex rules of no caps and no earrings; he ruled the media, and was the rule of Kansas State University ... and sometimes even the state of Kansas.
Today, his 135 coaching victories is 96 more than his nearest KSU rival — Mike Ahearn from 1905-10; of the school's 12 all-time bowl games, 11 have come under his tenure.
That's a football-life that's full.
Regrets, I've had a few; but then again, too few to mention; I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption; I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway; And more, much more than this, I did it my way.
Simply put, Bill Snyder did the impossible.
Taking a job at least three others turned down before him, from football ashes, Snyder constructed, and orchestrated, a program from "Futility U." to the "Greatest Turn-around In College Football."
While others planned a day by hours, Snyder did so by minutes. Minutes that would total over 100 hours by week's end. To him, each minute calculated, each minute meaningful to the Wildcat cause.
For 17 seasons, he has coached with the philosophy: Little things are trifles; Trifles make perfection; Perfection's no trifle.
Day by day, week by week, year by year, Snyder's goal was only the betterment of Kansas State football. And one by one, each league team — Tigers, Jayhawks, Sooners, Cyclones ... and eventually even the Cornhuskers — fell to his philosophy.
Snyder took a team in 1989 that had lost 13 games in a row, and not won in 27 Saturdays of football; in the six years before Snyder, K-State had won nine games and lost 55, in his first six years, the Wildcats had won 36 times; K-State had gone to one bowl game in its history, with Snyder there was a run of 11 in a row from 1993-2003.
2003 ... the year Kansas State claimed only its second league championship. The first was the 1934 title by the leather-helmeted men of Lynn "Pappy" Waldorf; the second was the Big 12 championship against an unbeaten Oklahoma Sooner team some were calling the best to ever play the game.
So, regrets?
Sure some, but very few.
I've loved, I've laughed and cried; I've had my fill, my share of losing; And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing; To think I did all that; and may I say, not in a shy way; Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way.
In 17 years as the Messiah of Wildcatland, Snyder did love, and was adored; he laughed ... well, at least chuckled ... and had reason to cry.
Not tears of defeat, but standing as the pillar of the University in deaths of assistant coach Bob Cope; Nancy Bennett, the wife of assistant Phil Bennett; his 101-year-old grandfather, George Owens; and the car accident that nearly claimed the life of his own daughter, Meredith.
For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught; To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels; The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!
No one in Kansas State history has stood his turf ... so tall, so strong, so sure ... as Bill Snyder.
He was himself from that hiring day on Nov. 30, 1988, to this resigning day on Nov. 15, 2005.
He said things he truly felt, and he took some blows. But without question, Bill Snyder, from his chancy hiring to the unanticipated resignation, leaves Kansas State with these words.
Yes, it was my way.
