K-State Q&A: Why don’t Chris Klieman and the Wildcats host a spring football game?

Why doesn’t the Kansas State football team host a spring game anymore?

This is a question that I have been asked just about every year since Chris Klieman took over as head coach with the Wildcats in 2019. He has never held a spring game in Manhattan, and that seems unlikely to change. But fans still want to know why he decided to take the spring game off the schedule ... and if it will ever come back.

I got this question enough times this spring that I decided to use it as the lone topic for this week’s mailbag. A friend of mine who has only lived in the Little Apple for about two years asked me the other day when the Wildcats were going to have their spring game and was aghast when I told him there wasn’t going to be one.

What? How can that be? Everybody has a spring game!

Well, that’s not entirely true anymore.

Yes, some teams in the Big Ten and the SEC still make a big deal about their spring games. Mississippi recently invited students and professional eater Joey Chestnut to tailgate inside its stadium while the team held its spring game. Ohio State played its spring game on national TV. But plenty of other programs have switched to more of a laid back “showcase” format than a game. And others, like K-State, have opted to not to have a spring game at all.

Klieman tried to please everyone by having a spring “showcase” during his first years on the job. But spring practices have been closed to the public for the past three years.

Why?

To put it simply, Klieman doesn’t like spring games.

He never had them when he was the head coach at North Dakota State. He doesn’t want to start having them now that he is at K-State. As mentioned above, Klieman played along during his first few seasons in Manhattan and held a spring “showcase.” At those event, fans were allowed to watch portions of practice and see a scrimmage. They were OK. But Klieman really hated doing that. So after those trials K-State didn’t have a spring football event of any kind that was open to the public. The Wildcats haven’t hosted one since.

Klieman looks at spring football mostly as an opportunity to develop young players. This isn’t the time to push everyone on the roster to their limits. He wants to save that for summer practices.

Klieman believes in this approach so much that proven veterans get practices off in the spring. He also doesn’t want to risk his players getting injured. That’s why Klieman likes to say, “K-State isn’t on the schedule.”

“Nobody wants to put their best players out there on April 18 in a big-time scrimmage,” Klieman said last year.

Even with the coaching staff taking a “load management” approach with players, star running back DJ Giddens suffered a shoulder injury that required surgery this spring. Rest easy, K-State fans. Giddens is expected to make a full recovery before summer arrives. Kieman says he won’t miss any games next season, or any meaningful practices leading up to it. But his arm is currently in a sling.

The possibility of more severe injuries rises when an actual game or scrimmage is played in front of the public.

Reporters have been allowed to watch a few hours of practice this spring, and on certain days it has felt like half the roster was watching rather than participating. Going from that kind of atmosphere to a game simply isn’t something that Klieman is interested in doing.

Personally, I don’t miss the K-State spring game. But I understand why some fans want to get a look at the team this time of year. There is probably some sort of happy medium that could be reached.

Klieman has said that he might consider a spring game in the future if there is a year when the vast majority of the roster is healthy. If the Wildcats have something like 100 players and 90% of them were healthy, then maybe it would make sense to do something bigger in the spring. But that is unlikely to happen with the rise of transfers and the need for offseason surgeries.

Now, K-State did still host a spring football event last week. The Wildcats asked their young and/or healthy players to compete against each other in a closed scrimmage. Officials were there to blow whistles and call fouls like it was a real game. Parents, recruits, former players and other VIPs watched from inside the team’s new practice facility. The only thing missing was a full roster and fans.

In a way, I guess you could say K-State does still have a spring game. But it isn’t anything like it once was under Bill Snyder, when the Wildcats played a full four quarters in front of fans every April.