Kansas State's season exceeds expectations

Kansas State's season ended in defeat at the Cotton Bowl on Friday night, but the result was far from a loss. In fact, the Wildcats' 10-3 record represents one of the greatest accomplishments in Bill Snyder's tenure. Years from now, record books will show that Arkansas beat Kansas State 29-16at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. They will show that the Razorbacks with superior talent recovered after the Wildcats scored 16 straight points to cut their deficit to three early in the third quarter. They will show that Kansas State lost its fourth consecutive bowl game and that Arkansas matched a school record with its 11th victory.And they will show that the Wildcats missed a chance to provethey were worthy of a Bowl Championship Series invite over Michigan or Virginia Tech after their best campaign since going 11-4 in 2003. But some things can't be recorded with numbers or words, and resilience will be the legacy of the third act of Snyder's comeback in Manhattan, Kan. The reason? In late July, the Wildcats were supposed to struggle just to make the postseason: They were picked eighth in the preseason Big 12 Conference media poll, beating out Iowa State and Kansas for the bottom slot. More than five months later, however, they not only made that prediction seem laughable, but they had also earned sole possession of second place in the conference and clinched a spot in the only non-BCS game that paired two teams that ranked in the top 15 of the Bowl Championship Series standings. At times, the Wildcats' run defied logic. They began the season by edging Eastern Kentucky by three points. After beating Miami (Fla.), they started a rally in Big 12 play that included surprise (a one-point victory over Baylor and eventual Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III) and suspense (a three-point quadruple-overtime victory over Texas A&M that included almost 900 yards of combined total offense). Only in losses to Oklahoma and Oklahoma State did Snyder's team fail make to make the nation scratch its head and wonder how the ol' gray fox was working his prairie magic again. The full answer as to why Kansas State returned as one of the nation's elite this fall might never be learned, and that is part of Snyder's mystery. The guarded 72-year-old leader took over a program that had decayed under former coach Ron Prince. Yet in three years after returning from a three-season break, he has reshaped it in his image without elite talent. Snyder is not without faults the demands he places on his assistant coaches, for one, are legendary but his methods produced results this year for a program that had not won more than seven games in each of the past seven seasons. With those demands, he took a sagging defense and made it respectable. He took sometimes-awkward junior quarterback Collin Klein and made him one of the Big 12's best rushers. He took a thought that Kansas State was past its prime that no, it's not possible in this era to produce a winner on the barren north-central Kansas plains and proved the perception false like he did in his first experience forging the "Manhattan Miracle." Consequently, the result at Cowboys Stadium on Friday did not detract from what Snyder and Kansas State accomplished this season. Yes, the outcome proved that the Razorbacks were more talented at key skill positions. Yes, Arkansas' speed and power were too much for the scrappy Wildcats to overcome, and the game had little drama after junior quarterback Tyler Wilson found junior wide receiver Cobi Hamilton for a 9-yard touchdown pass late in the third quarter to push the Razorbacks' lead to 26-16. But the sight of Snyder walking the sideline of a major bowl game a little more than six years after he was carried off the field into retirement gave reason to pause. Record books will show Kansas State lost Friday. But by kickoff, in many ways, the Wildcats had already won.