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It's FREE TALK FRIDAY - Building Culture - Q&A with Bill Snyder

Today’s Coach Excellence Series highlights legendary college football coach Bill Snyder. Coach spent over 50 years roaming the sideline in some capacity, but is most notable for his time as the Head Coach at Kansas State where he had two different tenures spanning thirty years. 

During his time at Kansas State, Coach won Big Eight Conference Coach of the year 3 times and Big 12 Coach of the Year 4 times. Additionally, he boasted an overall record of 215-117-1 and won 9 bowl games. Coach was inducted into the Kansas State Hall of Fame in 2008 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 2015. 

It didn’t start that way at K-State. Snyder recalls the first meeting. Not a single player was wearing a letter jacket. One of the players informed Snyder that they were embarrassed to. They also informed him that they were embarrassed to show their faces around campus and would avoid populare student gathering spots.

Snyder dug deep and found out that every single player in the program had a GPA that had deteriorated. The culture had impacted every aspect of their lives negatively.   

Snyder had to send a message quickly about their new philosophy. He took the team to the stadium and had the scoreboard turned on. 

Snyder said to, 

“I am not going to assess you based on what its says on that scoreboard. I will assess you based on your capacity to be committed to improvement every single day that we are together. Improvement in all areas of your life.”

That was the essence of what Snyder wanted to establish. It was all based on daily improvement and becoming a little bit better everyday.

It’s something the assistants took ownership in as well. The coaches helped the players understand what their goals were.  They would have team meetings before they ever got started with football, identifying with each individual what is important to them and what they desired to achieve.

For everyone in the program, the question became: How can you become better today? 

Snyder was persistent, and the players became invested.

As they moved into the season, on the technical side they would do this as well in their position meetings. After practice the assistants would ask each player what he decided to get better on that day, as well as whether he did and what he needed to do if he didn’t?

Snyder explains how they did it in this video:

It was all about consistent improvement. They only won one game their first year, but it was the first after two no-win seasons.

Then they won 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 11, 11...

The focus on gradual improvement instead of overnight success paid off for Snyder and his team.

Snyder shares his insight on a number of topics in this FREE Course:

• Evaluating an assistant coach for your program
• Developing coaches
• Important stats
• Developing an offense
• Special teams success
• Dealing with disgruntled players
• Creating work-life balance
• ...more

Add this to your library “Building Culture - Q&A with Bill Snyder.” 

It’s one you can sit down and watch this weekend and fill up a notebook full of takeaways.

Always be growing!

Coach Grabowski