As he excitedly jumps from his chair following a news conference at Vanier Family Football Complex, 38-year-old Kansas State defensive coordinator Jordan Peterson, wearing an old-school purple sweatshirt with a white "K-STATE" along with a toothy smile, shouts as he heads out the door, "I may or may not have pulled a hamstring during the spring!"
Grant Robbins has more than 20 years of experience building and leading programs, and in his 12 years as Kansas State head men's golf coach has helped produce 46 team top-five finishes with nine team championships, 10 individual championships, three team appearances in the NCAA Regionals and seven individual regional appearances.
The story officially gets underway on March 6, 2021. That's when Kansas State football head coach Chris Klieman, and Collin Klein, the quarterbacks coach-turned-offensive coordinator, ask Avery Johnson, a native of Maize, Kansas, and the top dual-threat quarterback in the Class of 2023, to drive two hours northeast and become a Wildcat.
Two days. That's all that remains for Kansas State's first spring football practice season of the Collin Klein era. It's been a mini-marathon, 15-workout season that officially began on March 26 and will conclude on Saturday. There's still so much to do — "We have a long way to go to be the football team we want to be this fall," Klein says — before the season opener against Nicholls on September 5 at a sold-out Bill Snyder Family Stadium, but each meeting at the Vanier Family Football Complex and each practice script and each block and each tackle inside the Shamrock Indoor Practice Facility screams consistency and improvement along with a brand of energy that although impressive still needs improvement in the eyes of Klein, the 36-year-old first-year head coach, who once wore blood on both elbows like a badge of honor for the Wildcats, and who now labors, directs and manages in a polo shirt and sun visor, watching the players go to work on the football field.
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