Four Core Permeates Entire K-State Football Program
Apr 20, 2022 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
The Kansas State football program's four core values — "Discipline," "Commitment," "Toughness" and "Be Selfless" — are nicknamed the "Core Four," and they paper the innards of the Vanier Family Football Complex like organic wallpaper and beam across the videoboards at Bill Snyder Family Stadium in bold black-and-white letters. The Core Four rings across lobbies, hallways and offices, along with the athletic training room, equipment room, dining room, locker room, and weight room — a harmonic quartet that echoes throughout every crevice of the facility.
Born in January 2021 by K-State head coach Chris Klieman and the K-State football leadership council following virtual meetings with Eric Kapitulik, founder of The Program, the four core values bonded together a squad that finished at 8-5 with a dominant 42-20 win over LSU in the TaxAct Texas Bowl.
Klieman first mentioned the core values at 2021 Big 12 Football Media Day and revisited them publicly throughout the season. Klieman was particularly proud of the toughness that the Wildcats showed in playing seven games in a row following a bye week, injuries and all, and winning four-straight contests in the meat of the grinding Big 12 schedule.
"We have guys who have challenged each other on the field, and are disciplined to come to work every day, committed to their teammates, committed to their brothers, and committed to K-State football," Klieman says. "That's important."
And yet there was — and is — so much more to the program's pillars. There are aspects beneath the surface that aren't necessarily lauded on television each week — a loyal support staff dedicated toward helping mold young men; the pride derived from success in any and all endeavors, including academics and community service; and the weekly awards reaped by those select players who best demonstrate the core values, thus providing an exclamation point to the virtue of hard work.
"It's become kind of subconscious," K-State senior tight end Sammy Wheeler says. "We talk about them so much. We talk about them every day. They develop our whole lives."
This winter will mark the 34th anniversary of legendary Bill Snyder accepting the task of taking over the losingest program in the history of college football. Snyder devised a list of "Wildcat Goals For Success," which grew into the "16 Wildcat Goals for Success" — the doctrine by which he helped engineer one of the greatest turnarounds in sports history.
The Core Four shares a similar fabric.
"When we were looking at how we wanted to define K-State football, we took into account what K-State football has been," says former center Noah Johnson, a member of the 2021 football leadership council. "Coach Klieman talks a lot about honoring Coach Snyder's legacy and the program he built. K-State football is defined as tough and hard-working, and a lot of Coach Snyder's teams were defined by commitment, discipline, toughness and selflessness.
"The core values were designed with respect to the legacy of K-State football as a whole, but we also wanted them to reflect our team and the things that we found important. The core values are a mixture of those two things."
The core values seep into the Steel & Pipe Team Theatre and the Academic Learning Center. They quickly become an early-morning topic as Trumain Carroll, director of strength and conditioning, and members of his staff, greet players for workouts. The lift for the morning is squarely visible upon TVs along with an accompanying quote of the day that is in line with one of the Core Four. After each training session, the strength coaches will call upon a player, whether it be a team captain or a newcomer, to recite one core value and articulate how he engrains that value within his daily life.
"We talk about culture here at K-State and our culture is defined by those four core values," Carroll says. "They're not just words in the fall or things that we say, but it's about how we go about our business every single day."
Carroll elaborates on each core value.
"Discipline is doing what we say we're going to do," he says. "Discipline is not just what you do when people are watching you but it's what you do when people aren't watching or when you think they're not watching. Discipline is doing the right thing, regardless.
"In this world, we're as good as our name and our word, so when we put our name to something we're saying we're committed to that and we're going to see it all the way through," he says. "We're committed to things that are in line with what we believe and that not only add value to our lives but to the lives of people around us.
"Toughness breaks down into mental and physical toughness," he says. "You can't have one without the other. K-State is a brand that's been built off toughness for a long time. That has definitely stood the test of time.
"Being selfless, that's a value I appreciate probably more than any other," he says. "In this day in age and knowing the landscape of college football, it's easy to be selfish, but the culture here at K-State is about being selfless, and it's a value we really highlight. It's about the team's success and not individual success. What we've found is that when we focus on team success individual success can also be achieved in that process."
The Core Four permeates all floors of the football facility. Staff personnel in every area of the program takes an active role in encouraging and reiterating the core values while also applying them to their own daily undertakings. It's a united front. Virtually every meeting and activity within the facility's walls and outside the walls involves at least one of the core values.
"Whenever you define something and give it life, it's always on the forefront of your mind," says Hank Jacobs, director of football administration. "We've been more locked into the details — from the players all the way up to all our staff. It gives you something to always lean back on. We put in the work every day."
Bill Banks, associate director of the Evans Student-Athlete Success Program, appreciates how the core values "aren't just a football thing or academic things, but they're life things."
"If you focus on these four core values, you learn how to do things the right way," Banks says. "When they put these core values all together it was an awesome idea. The team has really fed off it. You can tell a difference teamwide and academics have improved. Recognition goes a long way. Parents and fans see it and it's an opportunity for people to realize what players to within the walls."
For a third-straight season, K-State football produced its program high in Academic All-Big 12 honorees. A total of 34 players, including 27 first-team members, were named to the 310-member Academic All-Big 12 teams this past fall. K-State, which equaled its school record for first-team honorees, boasts a league-leading 234 total Academic All-Big 12 selections since 2014. That is 29 more selections than any other team in the Big 12 over that span.
K-State football recognizes a "Student Athlete of the Week" and distributes five other weekly awards through feedback from support staff. First, coaches and support staff select a player who best demonstrated one of the four core values during the week. Then they decide who'll be the touted "Prizefighter of the Week" — a title that goes to the player who most significantly stood out among his peers.
The Prizefighter of the Week honoree receives his own VIP parking stall for the week, a championship belt in his locker, a t-shirt, and a sewn-in prizefighter logo on his practice jersey. The prizefighter logo on the practice jersey is permanent — a positive reinforcement, a badge of honor, along with an inherent responsibility to maintain that prizefighter level every week, regardless of any future acclaim. The prizefighter can never be satisfied with his standing. Roughly 24 players have been honored as Prizefighter of the Week since the start of the weekly tradition.
Junior quarterback Will Howard became the latest recipient of the "Selfless" award after he helped spearhead the program's efforts to partner with Be The Match and the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation. Due in part to Howard's dedication, a total of 396 people registered for Be The Match on the K-State campus. Recently, players participated in a Big Brothers Big Sisters of Kansas event, and a Special Olympics Kansas event at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
"Spring ball is a grind, but we've had a great amount of community service opportunities, and we have guys who not only showed up but who blew it out of the park, and those are things that you continue to emphasize with the core value awards," Carroll says. "These young men aren't just working to become great at football, but they're working to become great people, and that's what this world needs at the end of the day."
K-State senior linebacker Will Honas transferred from Nebraska prior to spring practice. Standing inside the Steel & Pipe Team Theatre during a media opportunity, Honas recounts his journey to K-State and proudly revealed his latest accomplishment.
"I won the 'Tough' core value of the week, and my biggest thing in football is always being tough," Honas says. "The four core values really stand out to me as far as the culture of the team. Everybody buys into them and is ready to work."
He continues.
"When you're on a football team, being selfless is huge, and having 100 guys willing to put in the work knowing not all of them are going to be on the field, but who show up and keep pushing guys, is important," Honas says. "Toughness — everybody knows you must be tough to play football. Discipline — do the hard things that nobody wants to do. Nobody wants to be here at 6 a.m., but you do it to help the team and to help yourself get better as a person.
"Just playing football, you have things in your head about what makes a team successful and what makes a team click. Having the core values on the wall that you can think about when you come into the building is a big part of it."
Dropping off a child at the building for the first time is a big step for many parents. Chris Vaughn, father of Consensus All-American Deuce Vaughn, found comfort in knowing that Deuce, a native of Round Rock, Texas, entered the doors of a K-State program that carried beliefs that aligned with the qualities Chris and Marquette instilled into their son throughout his childhood.
"It's so important," says Chris Vaughn, who is a scout for the Dallas Cowboys after spending 18 years as a college assistant coach at Arkansas, Ole Miss, Memphis, and Texas. "You could argue a majority of your child's development as a person is between ages 0 to 18, but there's still a large part of development that takes place once they get to college. It's reassuring as a parent to know many of the same values will be reinforced once he's left the house. We think we gave K-State a very good young man. Our expectation is to get back a better man than what we dropped off. That's the hope of all parents.
"Because of the way the K-State football program is set up and because of the values that are emphasized, you feel good that you're going to get a better investment with the young man you dropped off. That's a result of the culture and that starts at the top."
Former K-State quarterback Skylar Thompson finished his career as the first signal-caller in school history to record 6,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in a career. His 24 career wins and 40 starts were most by a K-State quarterback since at least 1990. He became the first K-State quarterback invited to the NFL Combine since Collin Klein in 2013.
Thompson, a four-time team captain, has seen the fruits of the core values go beyond the football field in Manhattan.
"Discipline is one of our core values at K-State and throughout the process (of preparing for the NFL Draft), I've transitioned from being with a team every day and having a coach tell me what to do every second of the day — K-State is very structured and put together," Thompson says. "This process for the NFL, I've had coaches with me every day and I've had a plan and a schedule, but there's been a lot of free time, and I've had to stay disciplined. This program really prepared me and helped me to build good habits so that I make the most of every moment. I truly invested into those things necessary to better me as a football player.
"Our core values at K-State — discipline, commitment, toughness and being selfless — being able to display those to these NFL teams and coaches I speak with, it's real."
Yes, the Core Four is real. It's alive. And it's ongoing. While some point to the early-morning workouts under Carroll's direction as the starting point for another daily journey of upholding the core values, Carroll deflects such praise and points to the upper floor.
"It all starts at the top with Coach Klieman," he says. "You look him up and he's one of the winningest college football coaches of all-time and when you meet him and shake his hand, you wouldn't know it, just because of how he lives out the core values and displays them every day. I have an easy living example. We are just the sounding boards for the core values."
They touch every crevice. And they continue to echo.
The Kansas State football program's four core values — "Discipline," "Commitment," "Toughness" and "Be Selfless" — are nicknamed the "Core Four," and they paper the innards of the Vanier Family Football Complex like organic wallpaper and beam across the videoboards at Bill Snyder Family Stadium in bold black-and-white letters. The Core Four rings across lobbies, hallways and offices, along with the athletic training room, equipment room, dining room, locker room, and weight room — a harmonic quartet that echoes throughout every crevice of the facility.
Born in January 2021 by K-State head coach Chris Klieman and the K-State football leadership council following virtual meetings with Eric Kapitulik, founder of The Program, the four core values bonded together a squad that finished at 8-5 with a dominant 42-20 win over LSU in the TaxAct Texas Bowl.
Klieman first mentioned the core values at 2021 Big 12 Football Media Day and revisited them publicly throughout the season. Klieman was particularly proud of the toughness that the Wildcats showed in playing seven games in a row following a bye week, injuries and all, and winning four-straight contests in the meat of the grinding Big 12 schedule.
"We have guys who have challenged each other on the field, and are disciplined to come to work every day, committed to their teammates, committed to their brothers, and committed to K-State football," Klieman says. "That's important."
And yet there was — and is — so much more to the program's pillars. There are aspects beneath the surface that aren't necessarily lauded on television each week — a loyal support staff dedicated toward helping mold young men; the pride derived from success in any and all endeavors, including academics and community service; and the weekly awards reaped by those select players who best demonstrate the core values, thus providing an exclamation point to the virtue of hard work.
"It's become kind of subconscious," K-State senior tight end Sammy Wheeler says. "We talk about them so much. We talk about them every day. They develop our whole lives."
This winter will mark the 34th anniversary of legendary Bill Snyder accepting the task of taking over the losingest program in the history of college football. Snyder devised a list of "Wildcat Goals For Success," which grew into the "16 Wildcat Goals for Success" — the doctrine by which he helped engineer one of the greatest turnarounds in sports history.
The Core Four shares a similar fabric.
"When we were looking at how we wanted to define K-State football, we took into account what K-State football has been," says former center Noah Johnson, a member of the 2021 football leadership council. "Coach Klieman talks a lot about honoring Coach Snyder's legacy and the program he built. K-State football is defined as tough and hard-working, and a lot of Coach Snyder's teams were defined by commitment, discipline, toughness and selflessness.
"The core values were designed with respect to the legacy of K-State football as a whole, but we also wanted them to reflect our team and the things that we found important. The core values are a mixture of those two things."
The core values seep into the Steel & Pipe Team Theatre and the Academic Learning Center. They quickly become an early-morning topic as Trumain Carroll, director of strength and conditioning, and members of his staff, greet players for workouts. The lift for the morning is squarely visible upon TVs along with an accompanying quote of the day that is in line with one of the Core Four. After each training session, the strength coaches will call upon a player, whether it be a team captain or a newcomer, to recite one core value and articulate how he engrains that value within his daily life.
"We talk about culture here at K-State and our culture is defined by those four core values," Carroll says. "They're not just words in the fall or things that we say, but it's about how we go about our business every single day."
Carroll elaborates on each core value.
"Discipline is doing what we say we're going to do," he says. "Discipline is not just what you do when people are watching you but it's what you do when people aren't watching or when you think they're not watching. Discipline is doing the right thing, regardless.
"In this world, we're as good as our name and our word, so when we put our name to something we're saying we're committed to that and we're going to see it all the way through," he says. "We're committed to things that are in line with what we believe and that not only add value to our lives but to the lives of people around us.
"Toughness breaks down into mental and physical toughness," he says. "You can't have one without the other. K-State is a brand that's been built off toughness for a long time. That has definitely stood the test of time.
"Being selfless, that's a value I appreciate probably more than any other," he says. "In this day in age and knowing the landscape of college football, it's easy to be selfish, but the culture here at K-State is about being selfless, and it's a value we really highlight. It's about the team's success and not individual success. What we've found is that when we focus on team success individual success can also be achieved in that process."
The Core Four permeates all floors of the football facility. Staff personnel in every area of the program takes an active role in encouraging and reiterating the core values while also applying them to their own daily undertakings. It's a united front. Virtually every meeting and activity within the facility's walls and outside the walls involves at least one of the core values.
"Whenever you define something and give it life, it's always on the forefront of your mind," says Hank Jacobs, director of football administration. "We've been more locked into the details — from the players all the way up to all our staff. It gives you something to always lean back on. We put in the work every day."
Bill Banks, associate director of the Evans Student-Athlete Success Program, appreciates how the core values "aren't just a football thing or academic things, but they're life things."
"If you focus on these four core values, you learn how to do things the right way," Banks says. "When they put these core values all together it was an awesome idea. The team has really fed off it. You can tell a difference teamwide and academics have improved. Recognition goes a long way. Parents and fans see it and it's an opportunity for people to realize what players to within the walls."
For a third-straight season, K-State football produced its program high in Academic All-Big 12 honorees. A total of 34 players, including 27 first-team members, were named to the 310-member Academic All-Big 12 teams this past fall. K-State, which equaled its school record for first-team honorees, boasts a league-leading 234 total Academic All-Big 12 selections since 2014. That is 29 more selections than any other team in the Big 12 over that span.
K-State football recognizes a "Student Athlete of the Week" and distributes five other weekly awards through feedback from support staff. First, coaches and support staff select a player who best demonstrated one of the four core values during the week. Then they decide who'll be the touted "Prizefighter of the Week" — a title that goes to the player who most significantly stood out among his peers.
The Prizefighter of the Week honoree receives his own VIP parking stall for the week, a championship belt in his locker, a t-shirt, and a sewn-in prizefighter logo on his practice jersey. The prizefighter logo on the practice jersey is permanent — a positive reinforcement, a badge of honor, along with an inherent responsibility to maintain that prizefighter level every week, regardless of any future acclaim. The prizefighter can never be satisfied with his standing. Roughly 24 players have been honored as Prizefighter of the Week since the start of the weekly tradition.
All honorees for weekly awards are recognized on social media and on video screens inside the Vanier Family Football Complex, which allows parents, recruits and visiting community dignitaries to acknowledge accomplishments within the program.Prizefighter of the Week ➡️ Josh Hayes
— K-State Football (@KStateFB) April 15, 2022
Disciplined - @BrenenHawkins
Committed - @RJGARCIA_1_
Tough - @JoshHayes08
Selfless - @whoward_
Student Athlete of the Week - @BrenenHawkins#KStateFB pic.twitter.com/QV8pKLzdIw
Junior quarterback Will Howard became the latest recipient of the "Selfless" award after he helped spearhead the program's efforts to partner with Be The Match and the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation. Due in part to Howard's dedication, a total of 396 people registered for Be The Match on the K-State campus. Recently, players participated in a Big Brothers Big Sisters of Kansas event, and a Special Olympics Kansas event at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
"Spring ball is a grind, but we've had a great amount of community service opportunities, and we have guys who not only showed up but who blew it out of the park, and those are things that you continue to emphasize with the core value awards," Carroll says. "These young men aren't just working to become great at football, but they're working to become great people, and that's what this world needs at the end of the day."
K-State senior linebacker Will Honas transferred from Nebraska prior to spring practice. Standing inside the Steel & Pipe Team Theatre during a media opportunity, Honas recounts his journey to K-State and proudly revealed his latest accomplishment.
"I won the 'Tough' core value of the week, and my biggest thing in football is always being tough," Honas says. "The four core values really stand out to me as far as the culture of the team. Everybody buys into them and is ready to work."
He continues.
"When you're on a football team, being selfless is huge, and having 100 guys willing to put in the work knowing not all of them are going to be on the field, but who show up and keep pushing guys, is important," Honas says. "Toughness — everybody knows you must be tough to play football. Discipline — do the hard things that nobody wants to do. Nobody wants to be here at 6 a.m., but you do it to help the team and to help yourself get better as a person.
"Just playing football, you have things in your head about what makes a team successful and what makes a team click. Having the core values on the wall that you can think about when you come into the building is a big part of it."
Dropping off a child at the building for the first time is a big step for many parents. Chris Vaughn, father of Consensus All-American Deuce Vaughn, found comfort in knowing that Deuce, a native of Round Rock, Texas, entered the doors of a K-State program that carried beliefs that aligned with the qualities Chris and Marquette instilled into their son throughout his childhood.
"It's so important," says Chris Vaughn, who is a scout for the Dallas Cowboys after spending 18 years as a college assistant coach at Arkansas, Ole Miss, Memphis, and Texas. "You could argue a majority of your child's development as a person is between ages 0 to 18, but there's still a large part of development that takes place once they get to college. It's reassuring as a parent to know many of the same values will be reinforced once he's left the house. We think we gave K-State a very good young man. Our expectation is to get back a better man than what we dropped off. That's the hope of all parents.
"Because of the way the K-State football program is set up and because of the values that are emphasized, you feel good that you're going to get a better investment with the young man you dropped off. That's a result of the culture and that starts at the top."
Former K-State quarterback Skylar Thompson finished his career as the first signal-caller in school history to record 6,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in a career. His 24 career wins and 40 starts were most by a K-State quarterback since at least 1990. He became the first K-State quarterback invited to the NFL Combine since Collin Klein in 2013.
Thompson, a four-time team captain, has seen the fruits of the core values go beyond the football field in Manhattan.
"Discipline is one of our core values at K-State and throughout the process (of preparing for the NFL Draft), I've transitioned from being with a team every day and having a coach tell me what to do every second of the day — K-State is very structured and put together," Thompson says. "This process for the NFL, I've had coaches with me every day and I've had a plan and a schedule, but there's been a lot of free time, and I've had to stay disciplined. This program really prepared me and helped me to build good habits so that I make the most of every moment. I truly invested into those things necessary to better me as a football player.
"Our core values at K-State — discipline, commitment, toughness and being selfless — being able to display those to these NFL teams and coaches I speak with, it's real."
Yes, the Core Four is real. It's alive. And it's ongoing. While some point to the early-morning workouts under Carroll's direction as the starting point for another daily journey of upholding the core values, Carroll deflects such praise and points to the upper floor.
"It all starts at the top with Coach Klieman," he says. "You look him up and he's one of the winningest college football coaches of all-time and when you meet him and shake his hand, you wouldn't know it, just because of how he lives out the core values and displays them every day. I have an easy living example. We are just the sounding boards for the core values."
They touch every crevice. And they continue to echo.
Players Mentioned
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/ Football
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/ Football
QB
/ Football
OL
/ Football
QB
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RB
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