Kansas State Wildcats College Football Pregame Quote, 12/30/2022

COACH KLIEMAN: Welcome and good morning to everyone. What a fast week it has been. We arrived on Monday, and it’s hard to believe it’s Friday already. But I want to thank the Allstate Sugar Bowl. Our players, coaches, support staff have just had a fantastic time, and the hospitality has been second to none. We can’t thank you guys enough for all you’ve done for K-State.

I would like to thank the city of New Orleans for everything. It’s been a great, great time here. Been able to see the city a little bit. I know our guys have had a great time with the different activities that you put together.

And then I want to thank Kansas State fan base. Boy, I see purple everywhere I go. I went a little bit away from the hotel last night with a bunch of family members to a dinner, and it was decked in purple. So it was a lot of fun to see.

With regard to our football team, it’s pretty simple for us. It’s discipline, commitment, toughness and to be selfless. Our four core values are why we’re here, and that’s pretty much how I can state it.

We’ve got a great group of seniors, a great group of leaders that believe in the power of ownership, of player ownership and the power of belief.

Not many people expected Kansas State to be in this position this year. And I knew we were on the right trajectory as a football program, but to make the leap that we’ve made this year, it’s a credit to those kids, and it’s a credit to their belief in one another, their belief in us as coaches, and them taking ownership in the program.

We had a really good season that was capped off with a phenomenal win over a College Football Playoff team in TCU. I think we’re the only one that beat a CFP team in the Final Four with Kansas State. That’s a credit to those players. They have great resolve. They have great toughness. And excited for them to have this opportunity.

I keep telling the guys, and they truly believe it. We didn’t just fall into this. We’ve earned the right. We’ve earned the right as Big 12 Champions. We’ve earned the right to represent Kansas State, to represent our conference in the Sugar Bowl and excited.

We know the challenge at hand. We know we’re going to play a terrific Alabama football team that doesn’t really have any weaknesses. So we’ve got to play our best football. And I’m looking forward to our guys playing their best football come Saturday morning.

Coach Klieman, before this, I was in Fargo, North Dakota, and I covered NDSU (North Dakota State University). And I know you were there from ’14 to ’18. So how do you think that transition being there at NDSU prepared you for a position like Kansas State and the success you endured there?

COACH KLIEMAN: You play football in January, you don’t have a job there for starters. It’s about a culture of championships. It was there before I arrived there, and it’s continued since I left. And so it’s about playing football and your best football in December and getting an opportunity to play in January.

So that obviously prepared a number of us staff members to come down here to Kansas State. I’m a big believer in football is football, and winning cultures are winning cultures, and they take time to formulate and develop. But you’ve got to have patience. You’ve got to have great resolve, and you’ve got to have the right kind of guys in your locker room.

Obviously, we’ve had that up north, and we’ve started that down south. It’s always been a good culture here. Don’t get me wrong. Coach [Bill] Snyder has had the greatest turnaround in college football history. We just did it a little bit different way, but as we continued to build on his legacy in what we did here. So I’m excited about where we’re at and where we’re at in the trajectory.

Same kind of question, just about the shift in college football that we’re seeing with a lot of guys leaving programs and not as much commitment and loyalty. What does it say that both of these teams in this bowl game, even though outside of the College Football Playoff, have no opt-outs. And how important is that to you?

COACH KLIEMAN: I look at Kansas State. I don’t know what other programs are doing. I know it’s out there. But you try to take care of your house, and you do that with honesty. You do that with trust. You do that with belief in them. And you do that with surrounding them with each other, not wanting to let each other down.

I’m a big believer in playing for the guy next to you. We have a number of kids that are going to have opportunities to play at the next level, but we haven’t had a kid on our football team that’s had an opportunity to play in the Sugar Bowl, and to play in a New Year’s Six game.

That’s really special. And the kids that you all know, that I all know are the difference-maker guys for us. Never seen those kids more excited about playing a football game.

They weren’t going to let their teammates down, and it was never even a conversation that we even had to have. I never asked anybody, are you going to play in this game? You’re at Kansas State playing for your brother, and you’re going to play and they know that.

Coach, if there were a 12-team playoff, you would be in it. Are you a fan of the playoff? What do you think it will do for college football?

COACH KLIEMAN: I came from a playoff system. At North Dakota State, we played 15, 16 games every year and never had a break. You were round to round to round, and then you finally got a couple of weeks before you played the national championship.

So I think it will create unbelievable excitement for college football. I know from the revenue stream, that’s going to help out as well a lot of schools.

But I think 12 is a good number to start with. I bet it goes to 16. I don’t know if it will go in my lifetime, but it will probably continue just because of the excitement that it’s going to bring. I think it’s great for college football.

It’s been almost a month since you guys played in that Big 12 championship. How are you guys kind of managing staying focused with all the excitement around this game? And are you ready to stop talking about it and go play the game?

COACH KLIEMAN: Without a doubt. We want our kids to be where their feet are and enjoy this. I mean, when we came down here on Monday, there was a lot of activities. And those kids deserve this, to enjoy it and go to some great, great restaurants and eat phenomenal food and get around the city and be in the Caesars Superdome. I mean, all neat things. We talk all the time, be where your feet are. Enjoy this.

Once we got to practice yesterday, I think the kids could sense that we were about 48 hours away. Today is a really good day for us. We get a chance to just lock our own guys in, absolutely. We’re ready to get this thing started.

Two years that you got here, both on and off the field, how impactful has Kade Warner been for this program?

COACH KLIEMAN: Kade is as good a leader as I’ve been around in this game for a long, long time. Kade makes everybody around him better, and that’s the thing I’m most excited about when I think of Kade Warner as a terrific football player.

But he holds people accountable to the standard that we all expect, and he holds himself accountable to that standard. And he’s a guy that’s going to do it and show everybody, and then bring them along.

And that’s a sign of what we call a servant leader. You make everyone around you better. And we’re a better football team. We’re a better football program in the last couple of years because of Kade Warner.

Talk about the preparations week of how you’ve actually been preparing your team going forward with that big matchup on Saturday.

COACH KLIEMAN: We gave our guys Christmas off. Our last practice was Wednesday, then gave them four days off to get around, be home with family, then we reconvened on Monday. It was good. It was a normal week with a game on Saturday.

So for us, it’s been our normal preparation, as far as what we would do on Monday to our padded days on Tuesday and Wednesday, back to more of a scripting day on Thursday.

So routine is really big for college football kids, and I think our guys appreciated the fact that we had a normal routine this week.

K-State has never played Alabama in football. How excited is your team to play the Crimson Tide and possibly beat one of the best teams in college football in the last decade?

COACH KLIEMAN: Our guys know all about the tradition of excellence that Alabama football is. And they know the task at hand. They’re excited that we get to play one of the best programs in the history of the game. And over the last few decades that Coach [Nick] Saban has been there, they’ve been the gold standard for college football.

So our guys know that. There’s a lot of things you don’t need to talk about, whether it was who we play in our conference on a week-to-week basis and the rivalries we have there, to what we’re going to face here in the Sugar Bowl. And I know our kids are really excited about that.

And we’ve got to take care of K-State. I know that Alabama is going to be ready to play and have a good football team, good players. But it’s more about us and making sure that we don’t have silly errors and play a clean game.

With this being some veteran players’ last game, how does it feel that they’ve been able to now reach the point to where they’re finishing their college career playing in the Sugar Bowl?

COACH KLIEMAN: I think it’s the pinnacle for most of our players that are leaving. Whether or not they’re going to go on and play at the next level, we have a lot of guys that are going to have that opportunity. Even some of the guys that I know are maybe going and continuing on with their master’s degree, have a job, whatever it may be.

The journey that these kids have been on with us and our staff over the last four years, this is pretty rewarding. And we had a good season in ’19, my first year here, as we started to implement some things. And then we got ravaged, like everybody else did, in the COVID year. We had to reset some things in January of 2021.

We had a phenomenal senior class in 2021 that were able to kickstart this thing going in the right direction. And then it just kind of continued on.

Once we won the bowl game last year, the [TaxAct] Texas Bowl in early January, our guys have been working a whole year for this. And those guys that knew this was their last go-around, so excited that they were able to, for starters, cap it off with a Big 12 championship.

That’s our ultimate goal every year is to win the Big 12 championship. A lot of people doubted that those kids could do that, and they did that. So they’re going to reap the rewards of playing in the Allstate Sugar Bowl.

We had a chance to talk to Josh Hayes a little bit earlier this week, and he obviously has played in the national championship. You’ve coached the national championships. And he said that the preparation for this week almost feels a little bit bigger than that. Does it feel that big to you? What has that been like throughout the locker room?

COACH KLIEMAN: Well, it’s great to have guys like Josh that have championship pedigree. And it’s come full circle for me with Josh in the fact that I sat in his home in Lake Gibson, Florida, and recruited that kid to go to North Dakota State. The kid started as a true freshman in the national championship game, played really well.

And then five years later, I’m sitting in his home last January, visiting with the same kid, same parents, about coming to Kansas State and how he could have an impact here. So there’s a guy that really appreciates being where your feet are, getting your opportunity to play in a game like this.

I’m excited for Josh, as well as everybody else, to have that great opportunity on Saturday.

Coach, in your opening statement, you talked about how Alabama has no glaring weaknesses. One of their biggest strengths is obviously Bryce Young. When you watch him on film, what areas of his game are the most impressive to you?

COACH KLIEMAN: Their front seven on defense and their offensive line on offense. That’s where the game is won. Everybody’s got skill kids. We’ve got good skill kids. They’ve got good skill kids. Schematics and stuff are good.

But the game is won in the trenches. The game is won up front on both sides of the line of scrimmage. And their front seven is really, really talented. And their offensive line comes off the football physical.

I hope that’s a strength for us as well. We believe it is. You win the Big 12, you better be good up front on both sides of the line of scrimmage. We’ve been exceptional up front. So it will be a big challenge for guys on the offensive and defensive lines.

Will Howard strikes me as a guy who’s maybe gone through more extreme lows and highs than most Kansas State players have during their careers. Now that you look back on his arc, how mentally do you think he handled his journey?

COACH KLIEMAN: Phenomenal. And Will Howard is ready for this stage. I can’t wait to watch him cut it loose tomorrow. And one of the best things that happened to Will Howard was Adrian Martinez. Adrian’s journey was difficult as well, and he ended up coming to K-State.

And both of those two quarterbacks have helped us win that championship, and they leaned on each other quite a bit. They’ve become really, really good friends, and excited to see both of those guys on this big stage.