Multi-Talented Sinnott Finds a Home with Football
Apr 25, 2023 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
"He's an All-American type player," Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman is saying, sitting behind a single microphone. Klieman is entering his fifth season in the Little Apple, and his tight end Ben Sinnott didn't see a single down of action in spring practice while recovering from a shoulder injury. Yet the 6-foot-4, 245-pound Sinnott, one of the biggest up-and-comers in Klieman's tenure, emphatically made his presence felt in the 2022 Big 12 Championship season.
After catching two passes and rushing three times – including one for a touchdown at KU – as a backup during his redshirt freshman in 2021, Sinnott thrived in the explosive new-look offense under first-year coordinator Collin Klein with 31 catches for 447 yards and four touchdowns, becoming the first K-State tight end to earn All-Big 12 First Team honors in a decade. Now, four months removed from a 10-4 season, the native of Waterloo, Iowa, causes everyone to buzz inside the Vanier Family Football Complex with anticipation for what's next.
"It's a great opportunity," Klieman says, "for Ben to have a special season."
Shortly after Klieman wraps up his post-spring news conference, Sinnott, the former walk-on, appears inside the team meeting room in his black 2021 Texas Bowl Championship ballcap — a favorite piece of his attire at such meetings. The ballcap covers a head of hair shaved with a 1-guard while a beard with a 4-guard covers the edges of his jawline. The 20-year-old sways and grins when asked about the future of the K-State offense ("I don't think there's any limitations; we could be pretty special," he says) and he smiles really wide when somebody asks him about best friend Will Howard ("He's put in a ton of work," he says). Then somebody says, "Coach Klieman says you have All-American potential."
Sinnott stops swaying.
"That," he says, "is really big."
• • •
Tom Sinnott is watching a video replay of Klieman's news conference while doing odds and ends inside his office at the family-owned insurance company in Waterloo on Saturday morning, and he hears for himself the praise from his son's head coach in Manhattan. Tom's cellphone rings.
"I had the press conference going in the background," Sinnott says. "Pretty high praise."
He adds: "I don't know what his ceiling is."
The ceiling measures 65 feet high inside K-State's new $32.5 million indoor practice facility, the 200-foot by 400-foot crown jewel encased in limestone to the east of Bill Snyder Family Stadium. It's where the football team went through its 15-practice spring regimen for the first time. Final practice included a scrimmage on Saturday, April 15, which was heavily attended by players' parents. Although they knew Sinnott wouldn't take any reps, Tom and Tina didn't mind the six-hour drive from Waterloo to Manhattan. They went to see the players and the parents, because the parents have become like their own special family. They dined with Kevin and Amy Swanson, whose son, Will Swanson, is also a tight end. They checked out the latest K-State threads at Rally House in Manhattan's popular business and entertainment district of Aggieville. They hit the grocery store and also helped clean the house that Ben shares with teammates Ty Bowman and Beau Palmer. Ben saw his mother at a mom's gathering in January. He hadn't seen his father in a few months.
"It was kind of nice to catch up," Tom says. "A good weekend."
There was a time when weekends seemed more hectic than a football team's game trip to Morgantown, as the Sinnotts shipped off to a volleyball or soccer tournament for Anna, who's two years older than Ben, while Ben played six sports — hockey, football, baseball, track, golf and tennis. The Sinnotts dotted the map season to season and made many friends along the way. While Tom is part owner of a family-owned insurance agency in town, Tina, who grew up 10 minutes outside of Waterloo as a four-sport athlete, worked part-time in the finance office of a car business. She stepped away for eight years to be with the children. She currently works as a part-time office manager for a painting company.
"Full transparency. She's where the kids' athletic ability comes from," says Tom, who grew up playing hockey and golf.
Ben was four when he learned to ice skate. The first time he picked up a hockey stick, he was hooked — "You put a hockey stick into the hands of a four-year-old and you don't know what's going to happen," Tom says — and Tom taught Ben everything he knew until he handed off coaching duties to "smarter people." Ben got his attitude and toughness from his father. He always had an edge to him when it came to competition. Soon after Ben touched the ice, he became untouchable and the eventual star of his travel hockey team. As a forward, he scored 145 goals over a span of 128 games in the Midwest High School Hockey League. Prior to his high school senior season, he gained national interest in hockey circles, yet he opted to remain in Waterloo. He called hockey one of the best times of his life.
It wasn't until fourth grade that Ben began playing football. While all his friends played in flag-football leagues, he resisted.
"I don't want to play football," Ben said, "until I can hit people."
• • •
There was no ceiling. That's what Brad Schmit recalls. Schmit, a Columbus Catholic High School graduate who just finished his 10th season as Columbus Catholic varsity head coach, knew all of Sinnott's athletic exploits. His wife coached Sinnott's pee-wee tennis team in Waterloo. As a high school freshman, Sinnott was 5-foot-6 and 135 pounds, but he had that athleticism that could take him places — the only question was where?
"Obviously, you know about his hockey," Schmit says. "Everybody at this point knew how good he was at hockey, but he also ran track and was a power-hitting lefty who hit the baseball farther than probably anybody who ever went to Columbus."
Over four years, Sinnott grew nine inches and gained 70 pounds, and over four years, Sinnott had tough decisions to make, as he was the star hockey player, the No. 2-ranked first-baseman in Iowa — he hit left and threw right — and emerged as the all-state tight end, wide receiver and defensive end. Sinnott's gaudy all-state high school career exploits at Columbus Catholic — tight end: 61 catches, 958 yards, 22 TDs; running back: 24 carries, 194 yards, 5 TDs; defensive end: 109 tackles, 9 sacks, 27.5 tackles for loss, 4 INTs.
Schmit's favorite Sinnott story arrived against Iowa Falls/Alden High School on Friday, September 13, 2019. Sinnott was nursing a foot injury from a track competition, prompting Schmit to ask, "Is Ben good to go?" Columbus Catholic wore its black uniforms; Iowa Falls wore its whites. Residential houses were a Hail Mary from the football field. Their outside lights had just turned on. Ben lined up in stance as right defensive end. The Iowa Falls quarterback took a five-step drop, and his eyes shot to his left as he unfurled a soft pass in the direction of his running back, who had broken out of the flat and turned up field. Sinnott reached up with his left hand and made a one-handed interception and raced 70 yards down the sideline — "He outraced a 100-meter-dash qualifier," Schmit says — and into the end zone. Sinnott scored three touchdowns that game.
"That play right there, I was like, 'Wow, that ain't normal,'" Schmit says. "That's the play that sticks out in my mind. And he was playing defense."
• • •
Tom talks on the other end of the phone, and it's funny how things can turn out in life: One year you're the star and the next you're in the supporting cast. And, well, that's the prospective plight that Ben Sinnott faced when he made his hard decision.
"He was a very good hockey player in Iowa, but he'd go to Minnesota or some of the bigger markets and would've been a good role player and could've done well in hockey arenas, but what really made the decision for him was the fact he would've missed his senior year here," Tom says. "I said, 'You really want to go to Connecticut and play hockey when all your buddies are here for their senior year?' He realized he could play with those kids and wouldn't be the guy like he'd been the guy and he'd be away from his family and who knows where he'd end up. He was being recruited for baseball, too.
"Hockey went from his first love to probably his third option."
Sinnott went to a summer football camp at South Dakota and left with a scholarship offer. Iowa looked at Sinnott, but the Hawkeyes had five tight ends on their roster. Iowa State? Well, Tom Sinnott graduated from Iowa State and had football season tickets for 26 years, and he and Tina had their own little Iowa State tailgating family, but on Ben's visit to Ames "it didn't seem like he was really important to what they wanted to do."
"It was painful a little bit," Tom says. "Even if he would've gone to Iowa, if that's what he wanted to do, I would've been more at peace with that then just going to stand on the sidelines at Iowa State because dad went to school there."
But Tom knew this, too: A friend and Columbus Catholic classmate named Chris Klieman was setting up shop at K-State. They'd known each other since they were 10, falling out of touch when Klieman went to play safety at Northern Iowa and Sinnott went to Iowa State. Klieman, who won four FCS National Championships at North Dakota State, brought offensive coordinator Courtney Messingham, also a Waterloo native, to Manhattan prior to the 2019 season. One Saturday, Columbus Catholic head baseball coach Mark Gallagher sent Sinnott's hudl highlight video to Messingham. That following Monday, K-State recruiting director Taylor Braet invited the Sinnotts to a football game. They saw K-State beat No. 5 Oklahoma, 48-41 — a signature win for Klieman in his first campaign.
After a subsequent visit to the K-State campus, driving about 10 miles outside of Manhattan, Ben said, "This is where I want to go to school. I think I want to do this."
• • •
"How about those Waterloo guys?" Howard beams. He had just thrown a back-shoulder touchdown pass to Sinnott in a 31-3 win over Baylor on November 12, 2022 in Waco, Texas. With 1 minute, 56 seconds left in the third quarter and the Wildcats leading, 17-3, Sinnott lined up with his hand on the ground at the 19-yard line. When Hayden Gillum hiked the football, Sinnott peeled past the defensive end and turned up field, hitting a seam near the K-State sideline against man coverage by a Baylor senior safety Christian Morgan. As Sinnott reached the 5-yard line, he peeked inside. Morgan bodied him up as Howard tossed a pass, but Sinnott pulled away, leapt, turned and made an excellent back-shoulder grab, putting his left foot down at the 1 before falling backward into the end zone just past the front-corner pylon.
It remains the best game of Sinnott's career to this point: 7 catches, 89 yards, 2 TDs. His seven receptions were the most by a K-State tight end since 2006 and his two touchdowns marked the first multi-touchdown performance by a K-State tight end since 1996.
"I'm glad I could do it because my parents drove 14 hours to come to the game," Sinnott told reporters. "I'm glad I got to do it in front of them. We'd drawn up those plays all week. We knew we were going to have a chance, so when my time came, I took advantage of the opportunity."
One week earlier, Sinnott made ESPN's SportsCenter when he took a short pass from Adrian Martinez, chugged along the Texas sideline, and jumped over junior safety Jerrin Thompson, who had arrived as the 10th best safety in the country. "THIS IS THE TIGHT END BEN SINNOTT WITH THE HURDLE!" they said on TV.
A few weeks prior to that, Sinnott caught a pass eight minutes into the first quarter at No. 6 Oklahoma — "AND HE'S DRAGGING BASCIALLY HALF OF THE OKLAHOMA DEFENSE INTO SOONER TERRITORY!" they said on TV.
Klieman has big aspirations for Sinnott this fall.
"If he stays hungry and focused, which I believe he will, and not being content with what he did, as well as get his body back, he can do it," Klieman says. "He and Will Howard are really close and that's a great thing. They watch film a lot together and throw a lot together. A lot of people saw that they're on the same page an awful lot.
"The quarterback's best friend is typically a tight end when the heat is on."
• • •
At about the same time Gallagher sent Messingham Sinnott's highlights, Schmit received a phone call as well. It was Klieman.
"All of this is correlated," Schmit says. "Chris Klieman is my grandpa's godson, and I went to Chris' wedding at the Elks Club in Waterloo. My mom and her sisters babysat Chris. Bob and Mary Kay were best friends with my grandpa and grandma Paul and Mary. Chris' middle name is Paul, and I don't know if that's after my grandpa or not, but yeah, Klieman is a long, long-lasting name in our family."
So Klieman called and Schmit told him, "Ben is a guy."
Now Ben is the guy.
"It's always cool to see your kid excel," Tom Sinnott says. "Ben has done things that I never thought he was capable of at that level."
There's the dragging-half-the-Oklahoma-defense play, the hurdle-the-Longhorn play, and the back-shoulder-over-the-Baylor-defender play. Those plays first come to mind. There are more.
"Ben has always been super gifted or super athletic, just the things he can do from hitting a golf ball or dunking a basketball or hitting a baseball," Tom says. "He just always kind of had that knack. Growing up, he was always pretty lackadaisical about how good he really was. I mean, it was just kind of what he did."
The Sinnotts are often stopped at away games by opposing fans who see Tina wearing her son's No. 34 jersey. They likely don't know that Sinnott had four catches for 80 yards against the Sooners, or 44 receiving yards against the Longhorns, or 48 yards against No. 5 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
But they know he is the guy.
"His star has risen," Tom says. "Everybody is very complimentary and there's pride when you see your kid succeed."
What first comes to mind these days when Klieman thinks about Sinnott?
"It wasn't easy for Ben," Klieman replies in his post-spring news conference. "He and I had our (post-spring) meeting already. He was a walk-on who came here and earned an opportunity. He was undersized, 205, 207, 210 pounds, and he knew he needed to change everything he did in the weight room and everything with his eating habits to have a chance. He bought into everything to say, 'I want to play. I don't want to just be a part of a team. I want to be a difference maker.'"
Since his arrival, Sinnott has grown one inch and added 35 pounds while becoming a monster threat along the perimeter as well as across the middle. Starting at the ground level — a walk-on from Waterloo with a dream — he's a likely shoe-in to become K-State's first John Mackey Award preseason candidate since Dayton Valentine in 2017. He would become the third K-State candidate in history, joining Brian Casey in 2004 and Jeron Mastrud, a midseason candidate in 2009.
"I just think back to the little kid who dreamed about these opportunities and all these things that could come," Ben says. "I think back to those tough times when I thought to myself that I couldn't play here. I don't want to put a ceiling on myself."
What we know is abundantly clear: There is no ceiling.
"He's an All-American type player," Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman is saying, sitting behind a single microphone. Klieman is entering his fifth season in the Little Apple, and his tight end Ben Sinnott didn't see a single down of action in spring practice while recovering from a shoulder injury. Yet the 6-foot-4, 245-pound Sinnott, one of the biggest up-and-comers in Klieman's tenure, emphatically made his presence felt in the 2022 Big 12 Championship season.
After catching two passes and rushing three times – including one for a touchdown at KU – as a backup during his redshirt freshman in 2021, Sinnott thrived in the explosive new-look offense under first-year coordinator Collin Klein with 31 catches for 447 yards and four touchdowns, becoming the first K-State tight end to earn All-Big 12 First Team honors in a decade. Now, four months removed from a 10-4 season, the native of Waterloo, Iowa, causes everyone to buzz inside the Vanier Family Football Complex with anticipation for what's next.
"It's a great opportunity," Klieman says, "for Ben to have a special season."
Shortly after Klieman wraps up his post-spring news conference, Sinnott, the former walk-on, appears inside the team meeting room in his black 2021 Texas Bowl Championship ballcap — a favorite piece of his attire at such meetings. The ballcap covers a head of hair shaved with a 1-guard while a beard with a 4-guard covers the edges of his jawline. The 20-year-old sways and grins when asked about the future of the K-State offense ("I don't think there's any limitations; we could be pretty special," he says) and he smiles really wide when somebody asks him about best friend Will Howard ("He's put in a ton of work," he says). Then somebody says, "Coach Klieman says you have All-American potential."
Sinnott stops swaying.
"That," he says, "is really big."
• • •
Tom Sinnott is watching a video replay of Klieman's news conference while doing odds and ends inside his office at the family-owned insurance company in Waterloo on Saturday morning, and he hears for himself the praise from his son's head coach in Manhattan. Tom's cellphone rings.
"I had the press conference going in the background," Sinnott says. "Pretty high praise."
He adds: "I don't know what his ceiling is."
The ceiling measures 65 feet high inside K-State's new $32.5 million indoor practice facility, the 200-foot by 400-foot crown jewel encased in limestone to the east of Bill Snyder Family Stadium. It's where the football team went through its 15-practice spring regimen for the first time. Final practice included a scrimmage on Saturday, April 15, which was heavily attended by players' parents. Although they knew Sinnott wouldn't take any reps, Tom and Tina didn't mind the six-hour drive from Waterloo to Manhattan. They went to see the players and the parents, because the parents have become like their own special family. They dined with Kevin and Amy Swanson, whose son, Will Swanson, is also a tight end. They checked out the latest K-State threads at Rally House in Manhattan's popular business and entertainment district of Aggieville. They hit the grocery store and also helped clean the house that Ben shares with teammates Ty Bowman and Beau Palmer. Ben saw his mother at a mom's gathering in January. He hadn't seen his father in a few months.
"It was kind of nice to catch up," Tom says. "A good weekend."
There was a time when weekends seemed more hectic than a football team's game trip to Morgantown, as the Sinnotts shipped off to a volleyball or soccer tournament for Anna, who's two years older than Ben, while Ben played six sports — hockey, football, baseball, track, golf and tennis. The Sinnotts dotted the map season to season and made many friends along the way. While Tom is part owner of a family-owned insurance agency in town, Tina, who grew up 10 minutes outside of Waterloo as a four-sport athlete, worked part-time in the finance office of a car business. She stepped away for eight years to be with the children. She currently works as a part-time office manager for a painting company.
"Full transparency. She's where the kids' athletic ability comes from," says Tom, who grew up playing hockey and golf.
Ben was four when he learned to ice skate. The first time he picked up a hockey stick, he was hooked — "You put a hockey stick into the hands of a four-year-old and you don't know what's going to happen," Tom says — and Tom taught Ben everything he knew until he handed off coaching duties to "smarter people." Ben got his attitude and toughness from his father. He always had an edge to him when it came to competition. Soon after Ben touched the ice, he became untouchable and the eventual star of his travel hockey team. As a forward, he scored 145 goals over a span of 128 games in the Midwest High School Hockey League. Prior to his high school senior season, he gained national interest in hockey circles, yet he opted to remain in Waterloo. He called hockey one of the best times of his life.
It wasn't until fourth grade that Ben began playing football. While all his friends played in flag-football leagues, he resisted.
"I don't want to play football," Ben said, "until I can hit people."
• • •
There was no ceiling. That's what Brad Schmit recalls. Schmit, a Columbus Catholic High School graduate who just finished his 10th season as Columbus Catholic varsity head coach, knew all of Sinnott's athletic exploits. His wife coached Sinnott's pee-wee tennis team in Waterloo. As a high school freshman, Sinnott was 5-foot-6 and 135 pounds, but he had that athleticism that could take him places — the only question was where?
"Obviously, you know about his hockey," Schmit says. "Everybody at this point knew how good he was at hockey, but he also ran track and was a power-hitting lefty who hit the baseball farther than probably anybody who ever went to Columbus."
Over four years, Sinnott grew nine inches and gained 70 pounds, and over four years, Sinnott had tough decisions to make, as he was the star hockey player, the No. 2-ranked first-baseman in Iowa — he hit left and threw right — and emerged as the all-state tight end, wide receiver and defensive end. Sinnott's gaudy all-state high school career exploits at Columbus Catholic — tight end: 61 catches, 958 yards, 22 TDs; running back: 24 carries, 194 yards, 5 TDs; defensive end: 109 tackles, 9 sacks, 27.5 tackles for loss, 4 INTs.
Schmit's favorite Sinnott story arrived against Iowa Falls/Alden High School on Friday, September 13, 2019. Sinnott was nursing a foot injury from a track competition, prompting Schmit to ask, "Is Ben good to go?" Columbus Catholic wore its black uniforms; Iowa Falls wore its whites. Residential houses were a Hail Mary from the football field. Their outside lights had just turned on. Ben lined up in stance as right defensive end. The Iowa Falls quarterback took a five-step drop, and his eyes shot to his left as he unfurled a soft pass in the direction of his running back, who had broken out of the flat and turned up field. Sinnott reached up with his left hand and made a one-handed interception and raced 70 yards down the sideline — "He outraced a 100-meter-dash qualifier," Schmit says — and into the end zone. Sinnott scored three touchdowns that game.
"That play right there, I was like, 'Wow, that ain't normal,'" Schmit says. "That's the play that sticks out in my mind. And he was playing defense."
• • •
Tom talks on the other end of the phone, and it's funny how things can turn out in life: One year you're the star and the next you're in the supporting cast. And, well, that's the prospective plight that Ben Sinnott faced when he made his hard decision.
"He was a very good hockey player in Iowa, but he'd go to Minnesota or some of the bigger markets and would've been a good role player and could've done well in hockey arenas, but what really made the decision for him was the fact he would've missed his senior year here," Tom says. "I said, 'You really want to go to Connecticut and play hockey when all your buddies are here for their senior year?' He realized he could play with those kids and wouldn't be the guy like he'd been the guy and he'd be away from his family and who knows where he'd end up. He was being recruited for baseball, too.
"Hockey went from his first love to probably his third option."
Sinnott went to a summer football camp at South Dakota and left with a scholarship offer. Iowa looked at Sinnott, but the Hawkeyes had five tight ends on their roster. Iowa State? Well, Tom Sinnott graduated from Iowa State and had football season tickets for 26 years, and he and Tina had their own little Iowa State tailgating family, but on Ben's visit to Ames "it didn't seem like he was really important to what they wanted to do."
"It was painful a little bit," Tom says. "Even if he would've gone to Iowa, if that's what he wanted to do, I would've been more at peace with that then just going to stand on the sidelines at Iowa State because dad went to school there."
But Tom knew this, too: A friend and Columbus Catholic classmate named Chris Klieman was setting up shop at K-State. They'd known each other since they were 10, falling out of touch when Klieman went to play safety at Northern Iowa and Sinnott went to Iowa State. Klieman, who won four FCS National Championships at North Dakota State, brought offensive coordinator Courtney Messingham, also a Waterloo native, to Manhattan prior to the 2019 season. One Saturday, Columbus Catholic head baseball coach Mark Gallagher sent Sinnott's hudl highlight video to Messingham. That following Monday, K-State recruiting director Taylor Braet invited the Sinnotts to a football game. They saw K-State beat No. 5 Oklahoma, 48-41 — a signature win for Klieman in his first campaign.
After a subsequent visit to the K-State campus, driving about 10 miles outside of Manhattan, Ben said, "This is where I want to go to school. I think I want to do this."
• • •
"How about those Waterloo guys?" Howard beams. He had just thrown a back-shoulder touchdown pass to Sinnott in a 31-3 win over Baylor on November 12, 2022 in Waco, Texas. With 1 minute, 56 seconds left in the third quarter and the Wildcats leading, 17-3, Sinnott lined up with his hand on the ground at the 19-yard line. When Hayden Gillum hiked the football, Sinnott peeled past the defensive end and turned up field, hitting a seam near the K-State sideline against man coverage by a Baylor senior safety Christian Morgan. As Sinnott reached the 5-yard line, he peeked inside. Morgan bodied him up as Howard tossed a pass, but Sinnott pulled away, leapt, turned and made an excellent back-shoulder grab, putting his left foot down at the 1 before falling backward into the end zone just past the front-corner pylon.
"I think sometimes he doesn't know how good he is," Klieman said afterward. "I'm so happy for Ben. He attacks the football."Have a day, @ben_sinnott 🔥🔥
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 13, 2022
2nd TD of the night for the TE 😤😈 pic.twitter.com/FyVdHOnx2e
It remains the best game of Sinnott's career to this point: 7 catches, 89 yards, 2 TDs. His seven receptions were the most by a K-State tight end since 2006 and his two touchdowns marked the first multi-touchdown performance by a K-State tight end since 1996.
"I'm glad I could do it because my parents drove 14 hours to come to the game," Sinnott told reporters. "I'm glad I got to do it in front of them. We'd drawn up those plays all week. We knew we were going to have a chance, so when my time came, I took advantage of the opportunity."
One week earlier, Sinnott made ESPN's SportsCenter when he took a short pass from Adrian Martinez, chugged along the Texas sideline, and jumped over junior safety Jerrin Thompson, who had arrived as the 10th best safety in the country. "THIS IS THE TIGHT END BEN SINNOTT WITH THE HURDLE!" they said on TV.
A few weeks prior to that, Sinnott caught a pass eight minutes into the first quarter at No. 6 Oklahoma — "AND HE'S DRAGGING BASCIALLY HALF OF THE OKLAHOMA DEFENSE INTO SOONER TERRITORY!" they said on TV.
Klieman has big aspirations for Sinnott this fall.
"If he stays hungry and focused, which I believe he will, and not being content with what he did, as well as get his body back, he can do it," Klieman says. "He and Will Howard are really close and that's a great thing. They watch film a lot together and throw a lot together. A lot of people saw that they're on the same page an awful lot.
"The quarterback's best friend is typically a tight end when the heat is on."
• • •
At about the same time Gallagher sent Messingham Sinnott's highlights, Schmit received a phone call as well. It was Klieman.
"All of this is correlated," Schmit says. "Chris Klieman is my grandpa's godson, and I went to Chris' wedding at the Elks Club in Waterloo. My mom and her sisters babysat Chris. Bob and Mary Kay were best friends with my grandpa and grandma Paul and Mary. Chris' middle name is Paul, and I don't know if that's after my grandpa or not, but yeah, Klieman is a long, long-lasting name in our family."
So Klieman called and Schmit told him, "Ben is a guy."
Now Ben is the guy.
"It's always cool to see your kid excel," Tom Sinnott says. "Ben has done things that I never thought he was capable of at that level."
There's the dragging-half-the-Oklahoma-defense play, the hurdle-the-Longhorn play, and the back-shoulder-over-the-Baylor-defender play. Those plays first come to mind. There are more.
"Ben has always been super gifted or super athletic, just the things he can do from hitting a golf ball or dunking a basketball or hitting a baseball," Tom says. "He just always kind of had that knack. Growing up, he was always pretty lackadaisical about how good he really was. I mean, it was just kind of what he did."
The Sinnotts are often stopped at away games by opposing fans who see Tina wearing her son's No. 34 jersey. They likely don't know that Sinnott had four catches for 80 yards against the Sooners, or 44 receiving yards against the Longhorns, or 48 yards against No. 5 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
But they know he is the guy.
"His star has risen," Tom says. "Everybody is very complimentary and there's pride when you see your kid succeed."
What first comes to mind these days when Klieman thinks about Sinnott?
"It wasn't easy for Ben," Klieman replies in his post-spring news conference. "He and I had our (post-spring) meeting already. He was a walk-on who came here and earned an opportunity. He was undersized, 205, 207, 210 pounds, and he knew he needed to change everything he did in the weight room and everything with his eating habits to have a chance. He bought into everything to say, 'I want to play. I don't want to just be a part of a team. I want to be a difference maker.'"
Since his arrival, Sinnott has grown one inch and added 35 pounds while becoming a monster threat along the perimeter as well as across the middle. Starting at the ground level — a walk-on from Waterloo with a dream — he's a likely shoe-in to become K-State's first John Mackey Award preseason candidate since Dayton Valentine in 2017. He would become the third K-State candidate in history, joining Brian Casey in 2004 and Jeron Mastrud, a midseason candidate in 2009.
"I just think back to the little kid who dreamed about these opportunities and all these things that could come," Ben says. "I think back to those tough times when I thought to myself that I couldn't play here. I don't want to put a ceiling on myself."
What we know is abundantly clear: There is no ceiling.
Players Mentioned
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