Kansas State

For most of their history, the Kansas State Wildcats were one of the worst -- if not the worst -- team in major college football.  Consider this:  from 1935 to 1990 -- a period of 56 years -- KSU had only four winning seasons.  In 1989, when Bill Snyder took over the program, Kansas State had the worst all-time record of any team in Division 1-A (299-500-41), and had gone winless in its last 27 games.  Snyder then did one of the all-time great coaching jobs.  Between 1989 and 2005, he went 136-68-1.  KSU went to bowl games in every year from 1993 to 2003.  They never seriously contended for the national title, but they did win the 2003 Big XII championship, and they had a stretch of six 11-win seasons in seven years.

After disappointing seasons in 2004 and 2005, Snyder retired, and KSU drifted back into mediocrity.  Snyder's replacement, Ron Prince, went 17-20 in three seasons from 2006 to 2008.  It appeared that KSU's years of competing with the big kids had come to an end.  But then the Wildcats rehired Bill Snyder, who returned to coach at a stadium that had now bore his name.  When I heard about this, I thought that sentimentality had triumphed over wisdom.  After all, Snyder was 69 years old, and had ben retired for three years.

But I was wrong.  In 2009, Snyder's Wildcats went 6-6.  In 2010, they went 7-6.  Last year, they went 10-3 and earned a trip to the Cotton Bowl.  And this year, they are undefeated with big wins at Oklahoma and West Virginia.

On the other hand, they have never won the Unofficial College Football Championship.  In fact, they have only appeared in six UCFC games, the last of which was a 26-56 loss to Nebraska on October 4, 1997.  Their all-time UCFC record is 0-6, but they have a chance to change that today.