Chris Klieman had decided he was done. It was the Monday after the last football game of the season, and after talking to his family over the weekend, he had told his boss he just wanted a couple of days to make sure.

Then he made a phone call.

To Collin Klein.

It was the K-State football coach handing the job to the next K-State football coach.

“Collin and I talk frequently, anyway, but I think it’s pretty well known he was going to take another job,” Klieman told The Mercury recently in an extended phone interview. “I mean, he was up for a lot, and Collin was, in my mind, ready to take that next step. And I just thought, ‘Wait a minute, if I’m getting out, and I don’t want him to take a job and then I get out, that wouldn’t be very good. So, yeah, we had a good conversation. I’m gonna keep that conversation between Collin and I, but we had a good conversation.”

There were formalities, but over the course of the next couple of days, that was it. Klieman officially announced his retirement that Wednesday, and Klein flew in for his formal introduction on Friday.

That, Klieman recalled as he drove toward a family vacation spot in Florida, where he’s been taking a break, helped ease his mind as he stepped away from the job to which he’d given seven years of his life.

“It did help me rest easier for sure, knowing that the guy that I helped mentor… and gave him his first coordinator job, would be a really good fit back at K State,” Klieman said. “And I know that would galvanize the fan base and hopefully continue to help raise some money by getting somebody like Collin back to help the program.”

When he announced his retirement, Klieman made a brief statement at a press conference and then walked away without taking questions. He went to North Dakota State to watch his oldest son coach a game and made a few comments to a local reporter there, but has basically remained quiet. He’d been back in Manhattan to attend graduations, a retirement event for Frank Tracz, and to help talk with some K-State players about their futures, including trying to keep them here. But his half-hour long discussion with The Mercury was the first to go into depth on the nuts and bolts of the ending, and the factors that drove his decision.

And basically, that comes down to one thing: the money.

“We don’t have any guardrails and rules,” he said. “Anybody can do whatever the heck they want. And that for all of us coaches, not just myself at Kansas State, I’ve talked to (many coaches) across the country, we’re all kind of like, ‘We need some guardrails so that somebody can’t spend $45 million, while somebody else is spending 15.”

Klieman, 58, spent his entire career coaching in the world of amateur college football. But what emerged over the last couple of years is a wild-west reality in which nearly all players have agents, the agents try to leverage schools against each other to get their players the best payment package, and transfer rules allow anybody to transfer anywhere at any time.

“That was where I was kind of at my wits’ end,” he said. “I don’t blame any of these kids. It’s not their fault, but you get done playing Colorado, and come Monday, man, there’s 20 (players’ agents) that want to know a number, or they’re ready to go into the (transfer) portal.”

Klieman thought: “That’s all I’m going to do the whole month of December and January, is work with whatever 80 of our kids to see if we can keep them, and if not, go work with 580 kids to fill the 30 spots we’re going to need, and that’s all December and January. That’s not recruiting. That’s just finding ways to make deals… You’re just putting compensation packages together. And once again, that’s not me. That’s the way college football is, and I’m OK with that, but I don’t have to be a part of it if that’s the way it’s going down. And that’s why, rather than me just sitting there and milking it for whatever, seven more years on my contract, I was like, I can’t do this.”

Had he simply coasted through a crummy year in 2026 and gotten fired, he’d be paid $22 million. Had he coached at his previous level of success, he was probably in line for closer to $30 million, he pointed out. “But I’d never been driven by money,” he said. “You know, I’m blessed that Gene (Taylor, the K-State athletics director) hired me so that I can set my family up for life.”

And so just coasting to collect a big check wasn’t worth it.

“I’ve been doing this for 35 years, (but) I’d die if I kept doing this job, I’d die,” he said. “If I kept doing this job, I was gonna have a heart attack, or I was gonna have a stroke.

“My blood pressure was through the roof,” he said. “The stress and anxiety, not of winning and losing — my legacy is going to be fine on winning and losing.”

He said the worst day of his coaching career occurred this past April, when he cut 20 players because the settlement of a class-action lawsuit appeared to mandate roster limits of 105 players. So all those walk-on types that had been a staple of K-State football for decades had to go, or so Klieman thought. He cut them so that they would have a chance to enter the transfer portal and play somewhere else. But then, in June, came a reversal, saying the roster didn’t have to be limited.

“I was so furious, because we did the right thing and then lost all these kids, and I thought, ‘That’s such BS.’”

He’s proud of the success, including a Big 12 conference title, a consistently winning record in the conference, and bowl eligibility six of his seven years. He said this past season, which ended at 6-6, also made him proud of the way the team battled back from a 2-4 start and continued a 17-year winning streak against KU.

“I’m just telling you, it was a minor miracle that we got this thing back to 6-6 after we were 2-4, and (the roster was depleted because of the cuts in April) and then lost many of our best players. And I’m proud as hell of the kids not throwing it in.”

Klieman didn’t rule out returning to coaching, if and when the rules get fixed in a way he can stomach. He did rule out trying to get further involved in the fixing.

“No, no way,” he said.” Everything that we have put out there to try to get it fixed gets shot down.”

He said the issue needs unified action by university presidents, Congress, and ultimately, a commissioner of college football who could impose and enforce limits and guardrails. But he doesn’t currently see a real path to any of those things, because it will be very difficult to get universal agreement, since those who have the most money have no incentive to sign on: “I don’t see that happening in my lifetime,” he said.

For now, anyway, he and his wife plan to spend some more time decompressing in Florida. They still have their home in Manhattan and haven’t made any long-term decisions about where they’ll live. That depends at least partly on their three grown offspring — two are in North Dakota, and one is in Kansas City.