The Most Interesting Man of K-State Football
Jun 30, 2023 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
One of the most interesting players in recent Kansas State football memory sits in our midst inside a study room on the second floor of the Vanier Family Football Complex. He might be one of the coolest — he has made red mullets hip for a few years now; one of the smartest — he is a four-time First Team Academic All-Big 12 recipient (in mechanical engineering!); one of the oneriest — who slides on an OU tuba after beating No. 6 Oklahoma in Norman; and one of the most skilled — there is not a more accurate long-snapper in the Football Bowl Subdivision entering 2023.
His name is Randen Plattner. He's a kind-hearted 23-year-old who yells at his teammates moments prior to 6 a.m. lifts inside the weight room because everyone needs to wake up. He's a 6-foot-3, 241-pound native of Parkville, Missouri, who walked-on at K-State in 2018, learning hard work and discipline under Hall-of-Famer Bill Snyder, and then learning post-COVID life and brotherhood under head coach Chris Klieman. Let it be known Plattner, a team leader, also hit send on one of college football's most hilarious tweets, announcing his return for sixth season in 2023.
But at the moment, he sits in a gray Nike compression T-shirt on a June afternoon, detailing those intricacies of long-snapping, how the football laces serve as one mighty hand on a clock — "You want the laces to be at 12 o'clock, never 6 o'clock," he says — and how during the most important snap in his life, he shot the football back to close friend and holder Jack Blumer, who held the ball for close friend and kicker Ty Zentner, who booted the game winning 31-yard field goal to lift the Wildcats to a 31-28 overtime victory against No. 3 TCU in the 2022 Big 12 Championship Game. Yes, half of a year has passed, yet he remembers like it was yesterday — how confetti shot across the field at AT&T Stadium. Plattner, who is always on point, always so collected, was thinking about the next play, but alas, there was no next play — the realization of the moment causing the young man with the mullet to crumble, to "bawl like a baby" at the magnitude of the feat. It was over. K-State was the Big 12 Champion.
Plattner stares ahead inside the study room at Vanier, as he describes the league title game, how it all unfolded — how the confidence inside of the K-State locker room carried onto the field, how Blumer, Zentner and he predicted the game's fate would rest on a final field goal, how the trio of specialists operated to perfection, and how Wildcat Victory blared and blared and blared across the stadium in Arlington, Texas. Plattner has seen the kick between 100 and 150 times. Heck, they sometimes play it inside the locker room. Each time that he views the play, he thinks to himself, "I wish the snap wasn't a quarter turn," because unbeknownst to the rest of us, the football hit Blumer's hands with laces at 10 o'clock — the laces just an inch or two to the left — which is inconsequential today (it was still a perfect snap), yet it still slightly tails Plattner, as he snaps footballs under an unrelenting sun in the middle of summer days at Bill Snyder Family Stadium. And yet Plattner basks in the final result: Perfect kick.
"Every time I see it — goosebumps," he says. "Crazy."
And what brings him back to this spot? Is it love? Yes, it is love. It's about waking at 5:15 a.m. and heading to the football complex for a 6 a.m. workout, changing clothes at 8 a.m. and driving 45 minutes for an internship at Great Plains Manufacturing in Abilene, then returning to K-State for position meetings at 2 p.m., team run at 3 p.m., captains' practice at 4 p.m., and dinner at 5 p.m. There will be a time when he fully puts his mechanical engineering degree to work (he also minored in leadership and is earning his MBA), yet he'll never get these gridiron days back, and so he savors the grind inside the weight room and on the football field, and the hours spent with his teammates and coaches, and he plans to snap every ball perfectly (perhaps catching the eyes of NFL scouts), and help the Wildcats take the next step in 2023.
And where might these Wildcats be headed?
"The National Championship," he says. "Being where we've been last year, which is something we're not going to talk about going forward because this is a new team and a new year, the only thing you can look back at and see is that we're there; we're not that far off at all.
"This summer we know as a team that we're going to take steps to close the gap. Goals should scare you. My motto since freshman year of high school has been, 'Work hard, dream big,' and the dream is big, I know that, but so is a Big 12 Championship. So what's the next step? Getting a Big 12 Championship again and then going to the National Championship. That's it. That's our dreams and goals."
Dreams? Goals? It's probably best to go back to the start: Young Plattner, at Class 6A Park Hill High School, with a graduating class of 500, realized his niche his junior season when head coach Josh Hood told him that he could be a long snapper at the college level. Plattner, who first snapped a football his freshman season at Park Hill, hadn't thought about the possibility. Now it was firmly on his mind. He snapped hundreds of balls in the backyard of his parent's home four nights a week after dinner. He emerged as the 23rd-best long snapper in the nation according to Rubio Long Snapping. He attended specialist camps around the Midwest — K-State, Missouri, Iowa, Iowa State, TCU and SMU — yet he felt that indescribable feeling of home when he heard Welcome to K-State! as he and his folks, Rodney and Debi, pulled into the Bill Snyder Family Stadium parking lot. He had the best performance of his life and earned Most Accurate Long Snapper at the K-State camp. He returned to Parkville, maintained contact with K-State, and received that phone call that the Wildcats were offering him a preferred walk-on spot on the team roster — something that Missouri offered only later. Lyndi, his older sister, might be working on her third degree at Missouri, the college that Randen grew up loving and a destination that he believed that he would reach after a long journey, but the colors at the Plattner home have changed from black and gold to purple and white. The family RV has a Powercat emblazoned upon it, and his parents proudly drive the RV 123 miles west to Manhattan for every home football game.
Fast-forward to Monday, September 5, 2022, five days prior to a home game against Missouri (a 40-12 win), and Plattner stood in front of his K-State teammates and coaches and told the tale of his journey to Manhattan — and how he felt jilted by Mizzou — providing the last few drips of fuel to the Wildcats' competitive fire.
"Everybody has stories about their home-state teams," Plattner says. "The Mizzou game was very special to me because in a way it was me proving to myself that I made the right decision. It was a good speech. I think they got a good gist of my story."
Plattner's journey through college football, of course, reached legendary status, as last season rolled on and wins racked up, and his colorful personality, the one that he attributes to his father, shined through. It was under the bright lights at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium following a 41-34 win over No. 6 Oklahoma that Plattner became a rock star, when during the game's aftermath an Oklahoma tuba player asked Plattner for a photo. Plattner obliged under the condition that he could snap a photo with the tuba. Boom. Plattner's photo with the OU tuba became a social media sensation, also eliciting howls from his teammates as the team busses steered their way to an awaiting flight back to the Little Apple.
He laughs.
"Same thing happened at Iowa State, West Virginia and Baylor," he continues. "At some point, the band members of the opposing teams knew who I was and they walked up to me with their instruments and said, 'Here you go.' I was like, 'What is happening?' But it was cool. It was something that just fell into my lap."
Wanna know where Plattner went after the Wildcats' 47-27 thumping of Kansas that lifted them to the Big 12 title game? He sprinted to the K-State Marching Band section at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, climbed upon the conductor's podium, and directed the band as it played Wildcat Victory.
"Last year," he says, "there were a lot of fun moments."
A moment that Plattner will forever remember fondly arrived on December 25, 2020. The Plattners awoke, opened Christmas presents and had just reached grandma's driveway in Carrollton, Missouri, shortly after 9:30 a.m. when Randen's cellphone rang. It was Klieman.
"Hello? What's up Coach?"
"How's Christmas, Randen?"
"It's going great, Coach."
"I just wanted to let you know we're putting you on full scholarship."
"At that point, very similar to the Big 12 Championship, I lost it and started crying," Plattner recalls. "Everybody in the car was just staring at me."
"Thank you so much, Coach…I appreciate it very much..."
"I fumbled through my words and tried to say 'Thank you' as many times as I could," Plattner continues. "There's a big reason why Coach called me on Christmas Day. He knew I'd want to share the moment with my family. He's just an amazing person. It was awesome. That was without a doubt the best Christmas present I've ever received in my life."
On January 13, 2023, it was time for Plattner to share some news of his own with the K-State family. He announced via Twitter that he was returning for a sixth season. And it was an epic announcement with a graphic-design assist by Blumer that captured college football fans' attention.
"Wildcat Nation, what a special season to be a part of. I will cherish every part of the 2022 season and I am blessed to be a part of such a special group of guys. With that being said, 'Ya know a lot of people go to college for seven years.' I'm not gonna be a doctor but I'm having a great time. Let's do it again."
Plattner's announcement made newspaper headlines.
He chuckles at the memory.
"It's funny," he says, "because now people think that I've really been in college for seven years."
"What makes me so good? Time," Plattner says. "God gave me the ability to snap the football, but it also came from God pushing me to do the work to get to where I wanted to go. I do it because my teammates are going to count on a punt or a field goal to win the Big 12 Championship. That's a big reason. What also makes me so good? Work. Yeah, I'd say work mostly. Now, after doing it for however long I've done it, I have a pretty good idea what makes a snap good, and the intricacies of what you do with your hands and legs and what to do when you release the ball.
"I'm at a point now where I can get more done with less reps versus needing a lot of reps to make progress. Now I'm just maintaining my form. I want every ball on the hip, and if I do that 20 times in a row, then I'm OK. That's a good day, and we can do it again tomorrow."
Today, there are plenty of tomorrows. It's 64 days until K-State opens its season against SEMO at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, 78 days until Plattner and the Wildcats visit Missouri, 85 days until the Wildcats face UCF in the Big 12 season opener, 148 days until Senior Day against Iowa State, and 155 days until the 2023 Big 12 Championship Game at AT&T Stadium.
But there will be a time when Plattner's career will officially end, which spurs a sense of urgency.
"Like I said, the more time you spend on something the better you're going to do," Plattner says. "That goes for everything. That's something we've been hitting on a lot the past two weeks with the football team in general. Everybody wants to be great but you have to put in the work. It's going to suck, but there's no way around it if you want to do what we want to do as a team, which is to win another Big 12 Championship and a National Championship.
"That's what it's going to take. You have to spend a lot of time on it."
As Plattner knows full well, from the pain of making the investment can arrive elation, as a game-winning kick screams through the uprights, and the marching band blares the fight song, and confetti dances in the air. It's a pleasant memory in a string of pleasant memories for the young man with the mullet, the rock star holding a tuba, and the Parkville product who enters his sixth season bursting with personality, perfection, and as one of the best long snappers in America.
One of the most interesting players in recent Kansas State football memory sits in our midst inside a study room on the second floor of the Vanier Family Football Complex. He might be one of the coolest — he has made red mullets hip for a few years now; one of the smartest — he is a four-time First Team Academic All-Big 12 recipient (in mechanical engineering!); one of the oneriest — who slides on an OU tuba after beating No. 6 Oklahoma in Norman; and one of the most skilled — there is not a more accurate long-snapper in the Football Bowl Subdivision entering 2023.
His name is Randen Plattner. He's a kind-hearted 23-year-old who yells at his teammates moments prior to 6 a.m. lifts inside the weight room because everyone needs to wake up. He's a 6-foot-3, 241-pound native of Parkville, Missouri, who walked-on at K-State in 2018, learning hard work and discipline under Hall-of-Famer Bill Snyder, and then learning post-COVID life and brotherhood under head coach Chris Klieman. Let it be known Plattner, a team leader, also hit send on one of college football's most hilarious tweets, announcing his return for sixth season in 2023.
But at the moment, he sits in a gray Nike compression T-shirt on a June afternoon, detailing those intricacies of long-snapping, how the football laces serve as one mighty hand on a clock — "You want the laces to be at 12 o'clock, never 6 o'clock," he says — and how during the most important snap in his life, he shot the football back to close friend and holder Jack Blumer, who held the ball for close friend and kicker Ty Zentner, who booted the game winning 31-yard field goal to lift the Wildcats to a 31-28 overtime victory against No. 3 TCU in the 2022 Big 12 Championship Game. Yes, half of a year has passed, yet he remembers like it was yesterday — how confetti shot across the field at AT&T Stadium. Plattner, who is always on point, always so collected, was thinking about the next play, but alas, there was no next play — the realization of the moment causing the young man with the mullet to crumble, to "bawl like a baby" at the magnitude of the feat. It was over. K-State was the Big 12 Champion.
Plattner stares ahead inside the study room at Vanier, as he describes the league title game, how it all unfolded — how the confidence inside of the K-State locker room carried onto the field, how Blumer, Zentner and he predicted the game's fate would rest on a final field goal, how the trio of specialists operated to perfection, and how Wildcat Victory blared and blared and blared across the stadium in Arlington, Texas. Plattner has seen the kick between 100 and 150 times. Heck, they sometimes play it inside the locker room. Each time that he views the play, he thinks to himself, "I wish the snap wasn't a quarter turn," because unbeknownst to the rest of us, the football hit Blumer's hands with laces at 10 o'clock — the laces just an inch or two to the left — which is inconsequential today (it was still a perfect snap), yet it still slightly tails Plattner, as he snaps footballs under an unrelenting sun in the middle of summer days at Bill Snyder Family Stadium. And yet Plattner basks in the final result: Perfect kick.
"Every time I see it — goosebumps," he says. "Crazy."
And what brings him back to this spot? Is it love? Yes, it is love. It's about waking at 5:15 a.m. and heading to the football complex for a 6 a.m. workout, changing clothes at 8 a.m. and driving 45 minutes for an internship at Great Plains Manufacturing in Abilene, then returning to K-State for position meetings at 2 p.m., team run at 3 p.m., captains' practice at 4 p.m., and dinner at 5 p.m. There will be a time when he fully puts his mechanical engineering degree to work (he also minored in leadership and is earning his MBA), yet he'll never get these gridiron days back, and so he savors the grind inside the weight room and on the football field, and the hours spent with his teammates and coaches, and he plans to snap every ball perfectly (perhaps catching the eyes of NFL scouts), and help the Wildcats take the next step in 2023.
And where might these Wildcats be headed?
"The National Championship," he says. "Being where we've been last year, which is something we're not going to talk about going forward because this is a new team and a new year, the only thing you can look back at and see is that we're there; we're not that far off at all.
"This summer we know as a team that we're going to take steps to close the gap. Goals should scare you. My motto since freshman year of high school has been, 'Work hard, dream big,' and the dream is big, I know that, but so is a Big 12 Championship. So what's the next step? Getting a Big 12 Championship again and then going to the National Championship. That's it. That's our dreams and goals."
Dreams? Goals? It's probably best to go back to the start: Young Plattner, at Class 6A Park Hill High School, with a graduating class of 500, realized his niche his junior season when head coach Josh Hood told him that he could be a long snapper at the college level. Plattner, who first snapped a football his freshman season at Park Hill, hadn't thought about the possibility. Now it was firmly on his mind. He snapped hundreds of balls in the backyard of his parent's home four nights a week after dinner. He emerged as the 23rd-best long snapper in the nation according to Rubio Long Snapping. He attended specialist camps around the Midwest — K-State, Missouri, Iowa, Iowa State, TCU and SMU — yet he felt that indescribable feeling of home when he heard Welcome to K-State! as he and his folks, Rodney and Debi, pulled into the Bill Snyder Family Stadium parking lot. He had the best performance of his life and earned Most Accurate Long Snapper at the K-State camp. He returned to Parkville, maintained contact with K-State, and received that phone call that the Wildcats were offering him a preferred walk-on spot on the team roster — something that Missouri offered only later. Lyndi, his older sister, might be working on her third degree at Missouri, the college that Randen grew up loving and a destination that he believed that he would reach after a long journey, but the colors at the Plattner home have changed from black and gold to purple and white. The family RV has a Powercat emblazoned upon it, and his parents proudly drive the RV 123 miles west to Manhattan for every home football game.
Fast-forward to Monday, September 5, 2022, five days prior to a home game against Missouri (a 40-12 win), and Plattner stood in front of his K-State teammates and coaches and told the tale of his journey to Manhattan — and how he felt jilted by Mizzou — providing the last few drips of fuel to the Wildcats' competitive fire.
"Everybody has stories about their home-state teams," Plattner says. "The Mizzou game was very special to me because in a way it was me proving to myself that I made the right decision. It was a good speech. I think they got a good gist of my story."
Plattner's journey through college football, of course, reached legendary status, as last season rolled on and wins racked up, and his colorful personality, the one that he attributes to his father, shined through. It was under the bright lights at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium following a 41-34 win over No. 6 Oklahoma that Plattner became a rock star, when during the game's aftermath an Oklahoma tuba player asked Plattner for a photo. Plattner obliged under the condition that he could snap a photo with the tuba. Boom. Plattner's photo with the OU tuba became a social media sensation, also eliciting howls from his teammates as the team busses steered their way to an awaiting flight back to the Little Apple.
"Everybody on the bus ride from the stadium to the airport was like, 'Randen, is this real? How'd you get a tuba?' I said, 'Dude, I don't know. I asked him and he said yes.'"Undefeated in Gaylord Memorial #CATS pic.twitter.com/oeAO8bitPp
— Randen Plattner (@randen_plattner) September 25, 2022
He laughs.
"Same thing happened at Iowa State, West Virginia and Baylor," he continues. "At some point, the band members of the opposing teams knew who I was and they walked up to me with their instruments and said, 'Here you go.' I was like, 'What is happening?' But it was cool. It was something that just fell into my lap."
Wanna know where Plattner went after the Wildcats' 47-27 thumping of Kansas that lifted them to the Big 12 title game? He sprinted to the K-State Marching Band section at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, climbed upon the conductor's podium, and directed the band as it played Wildcat Victory.
"Last year," he says, "there were a lot of fun moments."
A moment that Plattner will forever remember fondly arrived on December 25, 2020. The Plattners awoke, opened Christmas presents and had just reached grandma's driveway in Carrollton, Missouri, shortly after 9:30 a.m. when Randen's cellphone rang. It was Klieman.
"Hello? What's up Coach?"
"How's Christmas, Randen?"
"It's going great, Coach."
"I just wanted to let you know we're putting you on full scholarship."
"At that point, very similar to the Big 12 Championship, I lost it and started crying," Plattner recalls. "Everybody in the car was just staring at me."
"Thank you so much, Coach…I appreciate it very much..."
"I fumbled through my words and tried to say 'Thank you' as many times as I could," Plattner continues. "There's a big reason why Coach called me on Christmas Day. He knew I'd want to share the moment with my family. He's just an amazing person. It was awesome. That was without a doubt the best Christmas present I've ever received in my life."
On January 13, 2023, it was time for Plattner to share some news of his own with the K-State family. He announced via Twitter that he was returning for a sixth season. And it was an epic announcement with a graphic-design assist by Blumer that captured college football fans' attention.
"Wildcat Nation, what a special season to be a part of. I will cherish every part of the 2022 season and I am blessed to be a part of such a special group of guys. With that being said, 'Ya know a lot of people go to college for seven years.' I'm not gonna be a doctor but I'm having a great time. Let's do it again."
Plattner's announcement made newspaper headlines.
He chuckles at the memory.
"It's funny," he says, "because now people think that I've really been in college for seven years."
However, this is no joke: Plattner was true on all 59 punt snaps and 81 field goal/extra point snaps in 2022. He earned Honorable Mention All-America accolades by Phil Steele and was named a semifinalist for the Patrick Mannelly Long Snapper of the Year award. Platter was true on all 103 snap attempts in 2021, on all 47 snap attempts in 2020, and on all 67 snaps in 2019. As a true freshman in 2018, Plattner snapped the football 200 times in each practice, patiently waiting for his career to unfold.💜💜💜 pic.twitter.com/zBX4PiI6st
— Randen Plattner (@randen_plattner) January 13, 2023
"What makes me so good? Time," Plattner says. "God gave me the ability to snap the football, but it also came from God pushing me to do the work to get to where I wanted to go. I do it because my teammates are going to count on a punt or a field goal to win the Big 12 Championship. That's a big reason. What also makes me so good? Work. Yeah, I'd say work mostly. Now, after doing it for however long I've done it, I have a pretty good idea what makes a snap good, and the intricacies of what you do with your hands and legs and what to do when you release the ball.
"I'm at a point now where I can get more done with less reps versus needing a lot of reps to make progress. Now I'm just maintaining my form. I want every ball on the hip, and if I do that 20 times in a row, then I'm OK. That's a good day, and we can do it again tomorrow."
Today, there are plenty of tomorrows. It's 64 days until K-State opens its season against SEMO at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, 78 days until Plattner and the Wildcats visit Missouri, 85 days until the Wildcats face UCF in the Big 12 season opener, 148 days until Senior Day against Iowa State, and 155 days until the 2023 Big 12 Championship Game at AT&T Stadium.
But there will be a time when Plattner's career will officially end, which spurs a sense of urgency.
"Like I said, the more time you spend on something the better you're going to do," Plattner says. "That goes for everything. That's something we've been hitting on a lot the past two weeks with the football team in general. Everybody wants to be great but you have to put in the work. It's going to suck, but there's no way around it if you want to do what we want to do as a team, which is to win another Big 12 Championship and a National Championship.
"That's what it's going to take. You have to spend a lot of time on it."
As Plattner knows full well, from the pain of making the investment can arrive elation, as a game-winning kick screams through the uprights, and the marching band blares the fight song, and confetti dances in the air. It's a pleasant memory in a string of pleasant memories for the young man with the mullet, the rock star holding a tuba, and the Parkville product who enters his sixth season bursting with personality, perfection, and as one of the best long snappers in America.
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