The Power Of Positive Thinking

We've made football larger than life. The hold of football on the American mind is nothing short of monumental. It should be simply a diversion for students to take their minds off studies. That's all it should be. After all, we are trying to produce people who can change the world, think critically, solve problems. But increasingly, the football tail wags the academic dog, and it's almost unconscionable."
—JON WEFALD
President, Kansas State

So, is what we have here yet another high-minded, ivory-tower, head-in-the-clouds academician who doesn't know a safety blitz from a safety latch? Well, yes. But Jon Wefald also is a realist, which is why he is clutching football to his chest, not out of passion but out of necessity.

"When I came here in 1986," says Wefald, "this university was in free-fall. It had gone from 19,500 students in 1980 to 17,500." What Wefald discovered sometime during his first 15 minutes on the job as president is that Kansas State's football record—which at the time was 296-468-41 over 90 years, by far the alltime worst among the 106 Division I-A football teams—was contributing to the institution's decline in enrollment. Indeed, says provost James Coffman, "the perception that football was in disarray created the assumption that the university was in disarray."

What was happening was that ineptitude on the gridiron was clouding the future of a major university. Now, only six autumns later, a miracle is occurring in Manhattan. This football program has—long drum roll, please—gotten downright acceptable. Last season the Wildcats were 7-4, and this year they may well get invited to a bowl.

The renaissance began with the hiring in November 1989 of a little-known Iowa assistant, Bill Snyder, as the coach. Snyder got the job mostly because nobody of stature would even consider taking it. Snyder inherited a streak in which the Wildcats had gone 0-26-1. The first thing he did was meet with the 25 players who had used up their final year of college eligibility. "They were so tamped down by losing," says Snyder. "I was very concerned that if we didn't do something quickly, all the players would leave here damaged. They had been humiliated so much for such an extended period of their lives that they had become reclusive."

The year before Snyder took over, the Wildcats finished 0-11, which focused attention on how truly untalented they were and, generally speaking, always had been (SI, Sept. 4, 1989). In their first season under Snyder they went 1-10. But in '90 Kansas State wound up 5-6, and last year's astonishing record was the best for a Wildcat team in 37 years. This is the most impressive reversal of fortune for any football team in the land.

Says tight end Russ Campbell, who graduated in May, "When I came here, it was an impossible situation and a terrible tradition. There was low attendance and no facilities and nobody cared. But I came here because I wanted to be a part of the biggest turnaround in college football history. Wasn't that an outrageous thing to think? What happened is Coach Snyder walked by faith and not by sight."

Before Missouri was to play Kansas State last fall, Tiger coach Bob Stull, a little sick of all the hype surrounding the Wildcats, said, "We'll find out how much improvement they've made when we play them." Kansas State won 32-0.

And as the football team has improved, so has the rest of the university. It is a symbiotic relationship. Enrollment last spring was 19,775. Since Wefald became president, five Kansas State students have been awarded Rhodes scholarships. Rival Kansas, which has about 5,000 more students, has had none over the same span. Indeed, only five schools in the country have produced more Rhodes Scholars since '86. In addition, Kansas State was one of only three schools to have four finalists (including one winner) for the prestigious Truman scholarships last year and ranks first in the nation since '86 in producing winners, with 10. Kansas State has had 11 Goldwater scholars, second best in the country among public universities. The debate team won the national championship last year, beating UCLA for the title. Says Rich McCollum, a member of the debate team, "We want to be at a place that's fun. Winning football games makes things fun." All this success has spirits soaring.

How the football program has been turned around is a study in the harsh realities of big-time college sports. For openers, football usually doesn't get turned around if the president doesn't care. Wefald is the first Kansas State president since Milton Eisenhower, who was in charge from 1943 to '50, to care about football—or, to be more precise, to understand the enormous role that the sport plays in the public perception of a university. Invariably when the boss turns his attention to something, the trickle-down is similarly positive. Peter Nichols, dean of the college of arts and sciences, says that alumni "have a great love for this institution. Some of it is academic; a great deal is athletics. Everything seems easier when the football team has won the game."