SE: K-State Captains Honored to Represent Team at Big 12 Media Days
Jul 19, 2017 | Football, Sports Extra
FRISCO, TEXAS — As Trent Tanking walked through the doors of the Ford Center on Tuesday morning, he was overwhelmed with a sense of astonishment. Not only was he entering the Dallas Cowboys' state-of-the-art, 510,000-square-foot indoor facility, he was doing so as a representative for K-State football at Big 12 Media Days.
Tanking, a fifth-year senior, joined Jesse Ertz, Dalton Risner, Dayton Valentine and D.J. Reed as K-State's player reps for the annual event, an honor bestowed to Wildcat captains.
"I can't believe I'm here. After five years, starting as a walk-on and now coming to represent K-State at a place like this, it's surreal," said the senior linebacker, matching his fellow captains by wearing the team's black sport coat with a Powercat on the left breast. "It's a very proud moment."
Tanking was far from alone in his pride-filled characterization of what the day meant. Reed and Valentine, also first-year captains, shared similar sentiments.
"Obviously, I'm not used to this element. It's very big," said Reed, a junior cornerback. "It's just a blessing and really a dream come true. I'm blessed to be here."
"It means a whole lot that my teammates look highly enough on me to vote me to be in a position of leadership. I just want to prove them right, make them proud and be the best teammate, leader and person I can be," Valentine, a junior tight end, added. "It's really cool to come out here and just have fun with all of the captains. We're all great friends. To come down here and take a little trip in the middle of summer, it's cool to be in Dallas, meet new people and do these interviews."
Aside from the chartered flight down to Texas and its prestigious venue, what made Big 12 Media Days a memorable event for the players was answering questions that had little or nothing to do with football. It was a chance to reveal more of their personality and to have some fun in the process.
This year, players were asked a variety of off-the-cuff questions, such as how they would spend their extra hour from daylight saving time, to which Ertz answered playing video games and Reed said watching Netflix, specifically "The Vampire Diaries" or "Arrow."
Other non-football inquiries included players' favorite Thanksgiving food — pumpkin pie for Ertz, and a sibling's macaroni and cheese for Reed — and random personal tidbits football fans may not know. For the latter, Valentine used the fact that his first name was inspired by the Wright brothers' hometown in Ohio and that he is looking to follow his father's footsteps with a career in aviation. Ertz, K-State's senior quarterback, threw out the fact that he's a huge fan of the reality show "Survivor" and that he aspires to be casted on it in the future.
"Some of the media questions were pretty interesting," said Reed. "Getting questions like that were very cool because people don't tend to ask those questions. They just base everything off football."
Throughout the day, players bounced from room to room at the Ford Center with each stop bringing a different broadcast network. These stops ranged from ESPN to Fox Sports to CBS Sports and even the Longhorn Network, as each production team collected footage for the 2017 season, which K-State starts at home against Central Arkansas on September 2.
"The ESPN interview was cool," Tanking said. "Whether they use it or not, just the fact that you're getting interviewed by ESPN, it's something you dream of as a kid, watching SportsCenter, wondering if you'd ever get on something that big."
For Ertz and Risner, who both participated in Big 12 Media Days last year, they knew more or less what to expect.
"I really enjoy it. I love Big 12 Media Days," Risner, K-State's returning right tackle, said. "I love to be able to mix it up with the guys, see guys from other schools and be able to get in the spotlight for a little bit. As an offensive lineman, it's pretty cool to be able to have people interview you and get in front of the lights. I enjoy it a lot. It feels good to be back."
Even as a returner to the event, Ertz said the pride he felt representing his team on a national stage did not lessen.
"It's an honor to get to represent our team. It's an honor to be a captain," he said. "It's a privilege that they would choose us to come, so we're very happy to do it. There are a lot of other guys who could have done it just as well."
This year's event did offer the Wildcats a slightly different feel than in 2016. Not only did the venue change from the Omni Dallas Hotel to the Ford Center, so did the type of questions the Wildcats fielded about the team's expectations. A year after being picked eighth in the Big 12 preseason poll and finishing fourth, K-State was voted to place third in this year's preseason poll.
What Risner doesn't expect to change this year is K-State's ability to exceed outside expectations. The Wildcats have finished higher than the media's preseason placement in four of the last six seasons, not including the 2014 season when they matched their third-place predicted finish.
"Like Coach (Bill) Snyder says, it really doesn't matter where they rank us because we have work that we have to get done. It feels good to get some love, for sure, but I would expect that after the season that we had," he said, as the Wildcats look to build off a 9-4 season that included a Texas Bowl victory over Texas A&M. "We just have to stick together as a family. We're going to do big things if we do that."
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