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.<\/p>\n
Then he made a phone call.<\/p>\n
To Collin Klein.<\/p>\n
It was the K-State football coach handing the job to the next K-State football coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cCollin and I talk frequently, anyway, but I think it\u2019s pretty well known he was going to take another job,\u201d Klieman told The Mercury recently in an extended phone interview. \u201cI mean, he was up for a lot, and Collin was, in my mind, ready to take that next step. And I just thought, \u2018Wait a minute, if I\u2019m getting out, and I don\u2019t want him to take a job and then I get out, that wouldn\u2019t be very good. So, yeah, we had a good conversation. I\u2019m gonna keep that conversation between Collin and I, but we had a good conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
That, Klieman recalled as he drove toward a family vacation spot in Florida, where he\u2019s been taking a break, helped ease his mind as he stepped away from the job to which he\u2019d given seven years of his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt did help me rest easier for sure, knowing that the guy that I helped mentor\u2026 and gave him his first coordinator job, would be a really good fit back at K State,\u201d Klieman said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n
And basically, that comes down to one thing: the money.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have any guardrails and rules,\u201d he said. \u201cAnybody can do whatever the heck they want. And that for all of us coaches, not just myself at Kansas State, I\u2019ve talked to (many coaches) across the country, we\u2019re all kind of like, \u2018We need some guardrails so that somebody can\u2019t spend $45 million, while somebody else is spending 15.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was where I was kind of at my wits\u2019 end,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t blame any of these kids. It\u2019s not their fault, but you get done playing Colorado, and come Monday, man, there\u2019s 20 (players\u2019 agents) that want to know a number, or they\u2019re ready to go into the (transfer) portal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Klieman thought: \u201cThat\u2019s all I\u2019m 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\u2019re going to need, and that\u2019s all December and January. That\u2019s not recruiting. That\u2019s just finding ways to make deals\u2026 You\u2019re just putting compensation packages together. And once again, that\u2019s not me. That\u2019s the way college football is, and I\u2019m OK with that, but I don\u2019t have to be a part of it if that\u2019s the way it\u2019s going down. And that\u2019s why, rather than me just sitting there and milking it for whatever, seven more years on my contract, I was like, I can\u2019t do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Had he simply coasted through a crummy year in 2026 and gotten fired, he\u2019d 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. \u201cBut I\u2019d never been driven by money,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know, I\u2019m blessed that Gene (Taylor, the K-State athletics director) hired me so that I can set my family up for life.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so just coasting to collect a big check wasn\u2019t worth it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for 35 years, (but) I\u2019d die if I kept doing this job, I\u2019d die,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I kept doing this job, I was gonna have a heart attack, or I was gonna have a stroke.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy blood pressure was through the roof,\u201d he said. \u201cThe stress and anxiety, not of winning and losing \u2014 my legacy is going to be fine on winning and losing.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019t have to be limited.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so furious, because we did the right thing and then lost all these kids, and I thought, \u2018That\u2019s such BS.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 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\u2019m proud as hell of the kids not throwing it in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Klieman didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no way,\u201d he said.\u201d Everything that we have put out there to try to get it fixed gets shot down.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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: \u201cI don\u2019t see that happening in my lifetime,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t made any long-term decisions about where they\u2019ll live. That depends at least partly on their three grown offspring \u2014 two are in North Dakota, and one is in Kansas City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Klieman had decided he was done. It was the Monday after the last football game of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[11979,35135,610,75,84,83,9,24,12,63],"class_list":["post-98175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-football","tag-k_state_sports","tag-local","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}