1 April 2023
LAWRENCE (KSNT) – Sean Snyder, son of legendary K-State football coach Bill Snyder, is the new special assistant to the head coach at in-state rival Kansas.
Sean Snyder spent more than two decades coaching in Manhattan before spending 2019-2021 at USC and 2022 at Illinois.
The hiring sparked conversation online about rivalries and what Bill Snyder thought of his son leaving for a school an hour down the road.
In Sean Snyder’s first press conference as a Jayhawk on Saturday, he revealed Bill didn’t have a problem with Sean trading his purple windbreaker for crimson and blue.
“He and I talked about it,” Sean Snyder said. “He wants to see me coaching, doing what I want to do. He’s happy for me. He’s looking forward to whatever comes out of it.
“He’s been really supportive of everything I’ve done; from USC, to Illinois, to here.”
Sean Snyder left his K-State coaching position for the first time when head coach Chris Klieman took over in 2018.
“When everything changed over at K-State, and Coach Klieman had a path he wanted to go,” Sean Snyder said. “It’s all his right, and I wasn’t involved in that.”
Sean Snyder says that once he left town, no coaching positions were off the table.
“Once I left…any job, if it’s the right fit, is a good job,” Sean Snyder said. “For me, I was dead set on, I want to work for good people. I want to be in a place where everyone is marching on the same path in the same direction…that’s how it was for us when dad and I were back at K-State.
“I was blessed for 30 years to be in one place. So I wasn’t in the coaching carousel that all these coaches go through. Now, it’s my turn to do that.”