SE: Overcome with Emotion During Program-Changing Win

By: Jaime Mendez as told to D. Scott Fritchen

I remember the night before the 1993 Copper Bowl, we had a pep rally at the team hotel. So many people showed up that we had to park the team bus blocks away and walk to our hotel. The pep rally didn't register with us. We were a bunch of 18- and 22-year-olds. Today, you see all the players walk into the stadium and lines of people congratulate them and wish them well and that's the norm. Well, the pep rally was the first time we ever experienced that. You could see the emotion in Coach Snyder and the coaches. They understood the impact much more than we did.

Me? I didn't pay that much attention to it. The enormity of it all hit me later when I saw a video of the pep rally. But the pep rally didn't fully hit me at the time because I had one focus: We had to win this game.

We were the underdogs to Wyoming, and why wouldn't we be? We were still the worst college football program in history, we'd been to one bowl in our history, and we'd never won a bowl game in our history. I would've picked us to be underdogs as well. But here's what I did know: The Big Eight Conference was what the SEC is today. We had Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado, and always had the best conference in the country.

I knew what we'd been through during the season. We'd been through the gauntlet. We had been a couple of plays away from being Big Eight Champions. No disrespect to any other conference, but there was no way a WAC team was going to beat us. I knew it'd be a blowout. We were going to demolish this team. We just never said that in public. We knew the players we had, what we'd been through during the season, and we knew they didn't have the schedule we had during the regular season.

We could play with anybody. Wyoming had no chance.

I knew how well we'd prepared. I knew before we even got to the field that we'd win. The hay was in the barn. We had prepared so well, and we were so ready. All we had to do was not take them for granted. If we did what we knew we could do, we weren't just going to win, but this wasn't even going to be close. And it wasn't.

At the same time, this was also the first time there was a lot of chatter about teams coming after Coach Snyder. After my sophomore year in 1991 there had been some chatter because we'd had a good year, but my senior year the talk was all over the place. There was concern. Us seniors didn't want to see the program go back to the way it was before Coach arrived in Manhattan. People were nervous.

On the field, we took care of business. Honestly, there was no defining moment in the game for me. Of course, the biggest play was Andre Coleman's 68-yard punt-return touchdown. I had an easy job on Andre's return. My job was to block the punter. I remember that because I laughed about it. "I have to block the punter?" I said. It was a done deal. I watched the whole return unfold. I ran up and touched my guy, the punter, and watched the whole thing. We knew it was going to happen. Bobby Stoops was in charge of punt returns and he said, "We're going to score on this. You guys know this, right? This is a done deal. Just do your jobs and Andre is going to score a touchdown." As the play unfolded, I was thinking, "Yep, just like Bobby said, here we go!"

And just like I knew we would do, we beat Wyoming 52-17 for the first bowl victory in school history. The losingest team in the history of college football had just won a bowl game. It's pretty incredible to think about.

There are things I'll never forget. Toward the end of the game, Bobby got me on the headset.

He said, "I'm going to take you guys out."

I said, "Give us one more, just one more series."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," I said. "I'm going to get all of the guys together. Just one more series. Even if it's just one more play."

Bobby said, "OK. I'll give you one more play."

We were four seniors on probably the best defensive secondary in the country. There was Thomas Randolph, Kenny McIntyre, Kitt Rawlings and me. It's funny, because when I was on the headset with Bobby, Kenny was already partying on the sideline. He had his pads loosened. Kenny was a jokester.

"Kenny," I said, "We're going out one more time. This will be our last time."

When I told Kenny that, it was like I had punched him in the face.

He said, "Holy crap. I don't get to go back on the field with you ever again."

I grabbed Kenny, then I grabbed Thomas and Kitt. We all looked at each other. All we saw were the tears on each other's faces. Someone said, "I love you." Someone else said, "This was the best thing ever." Someone else said, "I'm so glad we did this together."

Then, for whatever reason, all four of us grabbed hands, and we walked onto the field like team captains.

We walked on the field one last time, and we played our last play.

I don't think I moved. I remember thinking to myself, "Line up 15 yards deep instead of 12 yards deep." I couldn't even see. There were too many tears. I lined up and hoped that they'd just run the football and our front seven would take care of it. I couldn't see anything. They ran the ball. Our defense stopped them.

Then Thomas, Kenny, Kitt and I walked to the sideline.

And that was it.

I'd never talked about that before, but I'll never forget that. I was texting with Kitt a few weeks ago and he sent a picture of me from that game. He said, 'Thanks, brother.' He said, 'I'll never forget this.' It was like yesterday even though we're all 50 years old now. It was one of those moments I'll never forget — that last play. I remember walking off the field after that last play and thinking, 'I'll never get to do this with these guys ever again.' I was 22 years old. This could never be redone. I was about to leave my family forever.

When you've been through what we went through together as Coach Snyder's first recruiting class, and to see us go from the worst teams to one of the best in the country, the emotions smack you in the face at that last moment, and it's just crazy. It's indescribable.

Honestly, I didn't celebrate the win for a while. After the game, all the younger guys and some of the older guys were celebrated in the locker room. I just sat in my space and watched everybody. I had my helmet off. I wouldn't take off my uniform. I sat there and sat there and sat there and sat there and just kept watching. Bobby came up to me and gave me a big old hug.

"Are you OK?" he asked.

I said, "Honestly, I'm not. I'm really not. I didn't think this was going to hit me the way it's hit me. I really didn't expect this. I'm literally overwhelmed. I should be super excited right now and all I want to do is cry. I'm so caught up in all these emotions and don't know what to do with them."

I sat and sat and sat and sat.

Shorty Kleinau had been our equipment manager forever. Everybody loved Shorty. Shorty came up to me, finally, and said, "J, I love you, but I need you to get changed, buddy."

I said, "Shorty, I don't want to take it off."

He said, "I know. I know you don't."

And then he started crying.

Finally, I got undressed, showered, and got dressed. Coach Snyder looked at me. He just knew. He did one of those things where he squeezes your shoulder a little bit, he did that to me, as we headed out of the locker room door. Before we went to the news conference and before we saw our families, he did one of those squeezes on my shoulder.

"I love you. I'm proud of you," he said.

I said, "Coach, don't say anything else."

He said, "Why?"

"Because," I said, "I'm tired of crying."

Kansas State University Athletics

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