I’ve been thinking a little about Scott Drew and his basketball team at Baylor. Earlier this week, they clobbered Gonzaga to win the national championship. It was a very impressive display, leaving no doubt.
From there, the talking heads on television and some online commentators made the case that Mr. Drew had engineered the greatest turnaround in college basketball history. Some even made the argument that it was the greatest turnaround in major college sports of any kind.
It’s a strong case.
When he took the head coach’s job, Mr. Drew took over a disaster. The previous coach had been fired after revelations that he had paid players, and he tried to cover up the murder of one player by another. Scholarship restrictions and other NCAA sanctions meant the program would be hampered for the better part of a decade. Mr. Drew had to resort to asking tall guys on campus if they wanted to try out.
Seventeen years later, Baylor simply demolished everybody in sight, winning a national championship. The fact that they could do so, starting from where they started, at a Baptist school in a nondescript town in a football state dominated by much more prominent universities, is a great testament to Mr. Drew and the people around him.
I’m not a big fan, but I have to tip my cap. Clearly one of the all-time great turnarounds. That was probably true prior to this week, but winning a national title makes it abundantly clear.
But, sitting here in our little 50,000-person town in northeast Kansas, I am obliged to argue. While Bill Snyder never won a national title, his turnaround job has to be considered the greatest.
Baylor basketball had won five conference championships prior to Drew’s arrival. It had been to the NCAA tournament four times, and the Final Four twice. It even made the title game in 1948.
K-State football? It remains difficult to convey to contemporary readers just how bad it was before Snyder’s arrival. K-State had the worst all-time record in Division 1 football. The. Worst.
From 1983 to 1988, the team won a total of seven games. They didn’t win any in the two years prior to Snyder’s arrival. They had one tie and 26 losses in the 27 games leading up to his hiring.
In the 50 years — half a century! — K-State won 24 percent of its conference games, by far the worst in the country. KU? 44 percent. In the conference, K-State was 58-265 in that half-century. The only time they won the conference? 1931.
I remember watching Oklahoma starters in the 1980s, lounging around on the sideline, pads off, in the second half, as the backups kept running up and down the field at KSU Stadium.
It was a complete joke. So bad that Sports Illustrated ran big features on how bad it was. One of those stories quoted players saying their workout routine involved eating as much as possible and then lying around.
People around town just joked about this stuff: “Leave two tickets on your windshield in the Dillons parking lot, and when you come out, there’ll be six.”
I could go on. My point is that, while there was no murder scandal and no NCAA sanctions at that very moment, the long-term structural state of the K-State football program was far worse than Baylor basketball in 2003. From there, Snyder got K-State to the top of the polls in 1998 and 2012, won bowl games and conference championships, and made a couple of runs at national championships.
Scott Drew has one thing Bill Snyder doesn’t, and that’s the big title. I actually wonder if there had been a football playoff in 1998, or for that matter in 2002 and 2003, if the Cats would have beaten everybody. In basketball, it’s all settled on the floor. In football, there are pollsters and computers in the middle of it.
But that’s all just me yammering on, and Mr. Drew has the trophy.
All credit to him, and to his players, and the people in that program.
It is an inspiring tale, one that we can certainly relate to. One reason we can relate to it? We’ve been witnesses to the best one of all time.
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April 09, 2021 at 11:05PM
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FROM THE PUBLISHER | Murder, lying around, and miraculous turnarounds - Manhattan Mercury
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