One Saturday morning in April, a group of friends and dignitaries gathered inside Kansas State’s All Faiths Chapel. Arrangements of purple and white flowers lined the sanctuary. The pipe organist played a somber prelude and, one by one, speakers rose to remember Jon Wefald, the diminutive university president with a thick Norwegian accent who helped to put K-State on the national map.

Near the end of the service, a silver-haired man in a yellow tie made his way to the microphone and shared a story that has become etched in school lore. In 1988, Wefald sent athletic director Steve Miller on a mission to hire a coach who could resurrect the school’s moribund football program. Dubbed “Futility U” in a Sports Illustrated story that year, Kansas State had won zero games in 1987 and 1988 and had more winless seasons (seven) than winning seasons (four) since the end of World War II. Wefald, K-State’s newly hired president, believed the football program’s sad-sack reputation was symptomatic of a campus-wide malaise. If people were embarrassed by their football team, how were they supposed to have pride in their school?

Fixing the K-State football program would require the perfect coach. Wefald thought he’d found that coach in Bill Snyder, the offensive coordinator on Hayden Fry’s staff at Iowa. There was one problem: Snyder didn’t want the job. Undeterred, Wefald told Miller to keep trying. After being rebuffed several times over the phone, the athletic director traveled to Iowa City and knocked on Snyder’s door, sheepishly explaining that Wefald refused to take no for an answer.

Wefald hired Snyder not once, but twice – first in 1988, then again in 2008 after Snyder’s initial retirement sent the program back into a tailspin. When Wefald died last spring at 84, Snyder’s eulogy paid tribute to a president whose ambition for K-State football often exceeded what anyone thought possible.

“He realized when your athletic program excels, the notoriety for the university becomes greater,” Snyder told The Athletic. “That’s not necessarily something we all believe is right, but nevertheless, that’s the way it is. He loved sports. He loved athletics. He wanted to be part of it. He was not very good at sitting on the outside.”

Today, Chris Klieman can look out the window and see the fruits of that ambition. Klieman was a defensive back on the Northern Iowa team that came to Manhattan and beat the Wildcats 10-8 in Snyder’s second game as a head coach. That K-State program was a punchline, mired in a 16-game losing streak and a stretch of 50 losses in 55 games. This one has a renovated stadium, a new indoor practice facility on the way and a team capable of contending for a Big 12 championship.

“When Coach Snyder came in, it turned the culture around,” said Klieman, now in his fourth season at K-State. “I’m a beneficiary of that. All the things we have, all the facilities, are due to Coach Snyder and what his teams have done.”