The Start of the Journey

By: D. Scott Fritchen

Here we are, blue skies and 67-degree temperatures and there are purple uniforms and white uniforms and black uniforms and green uniforms plowing along on the practice field underneath the shadow of Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland. No. 17 Kansas State has just wrapped up its final practice — a build up from winter workouts to spring football to captains' practices to training camp to now, 3:16 p.m. (IST) to be exact — 50 hours before the Wildcats open the 2025 college football season against No. 22 Iowa State and showcase to the world the team and its stars and its beginning down a path perhaps destined for the Big 12 Championship and a first-ever appearance in the College Football Playoff.

"I want to beat Iowa State," Preseason All-Big 12 tight end Will Swanson says. "For the season we want and for what we want to accomplish, it's mandatory."

Seventh-year K-State head coach Chris Klieman has played in big games before and led North Dakota State to many FCS National Championships, but he has yet to experience anything quite like this. And here it is, K-State and Iowa State, two land-grant universities, coming together to stage the 109^th edition – one of the longest-standing rivalries in college football – in the first-ever Big 12 matchup in Ireland — the 2025 Aer Lingus College Football Classic, which will kick off at 11:00 a.m. CT on Saturday.

It's Week 0. It's the only college football game being played in the world. And that's special.

So, Klieman speaks to his huddled players after their final practice together prior to the 2025 season, and so many thoughts must be whizzing through the heads of the head coach and his assistant coaches and players, but perhaps on top of Klieman's list is the gratitude for his school, his team, and this opportunity.

"I was thinking about this being the fact that it's year seven for me and to think of how far we've come," Klieman recalls after practice. "It's just the opportunity. This is a game that everybody's eyes are going to be on. That's something our kids are really relishing and are excited about.

"Not only are we a part of it, but we were chosen. Kansas State was chosen."

This marks the 10^th college football game all-time played in Ireland and the K-State/Iowa State matchups was formally announced 486 days ago. It will mark the perfect chance for K-State to redeem itself from suffering back-to-back losses to Iowa State after a 42-35 loss in six inches of snow in Manhattan in 2023, and a 29-21 loss in 20-degree temperatures last November in the final game of the 2024 regular season.

"This means a little more," K-State quarterback Avery Johnson says. "Iowa State is a great team, a disciplined team, talented. They played in the Big 12 Championship last year. We're ready go get out there with them. Being Iowa State and them beating us the last two years, we're really excited to get our revenge.

"It's a big motivator for everybody. Guys are hungrier. We still have a bad taste in our mouth not just from last year but from the year before."

This will mark the first time in history that K-State and Iowa State will play each other in a season opener, the second time in history K-State and Iowa State will play each other when both are ranked in the AP Top 25 Poll, and the second time this century that the FBS season will feature a ranked matchup on opening day. The first occurred in 2009 when No. 14 Boise State played No. 16 Oregon.

"We're really fortunate here that we have been able to get our program to a place where we can play really meaningful rivalry games," Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell says. "What K-State has done in this conference, the type of opponent they are, the success that they've had, when you get the opportunity to measure yourself as a football program those are powerful things."

K-State under Klieman, 48-28 in his seventh year, finished last season 9-4 after a 44-41 win over Rutgers in the Rate Bowl. K-State is one of 10 Power 4 schools to have won at least nine games in each of the last three seasons, joining Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, LSU, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State and Tennessee. Among those teams, only K-State, Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and Oregon have accomplished that feat in addition to winning a conference championship during that timeframe.

Iowa State posted its first-ever double-digit win season with an 11-3 mark and reached its second Big 12 title game before beating No. 15 Miami 42-41 in the Pop-Tarts Bowl under Campbell, who is 64-51 in his 10^th season.

"We're hungry," Iowa State junior defensive lineman and Preseason All-Big 12 selection Domonique Orange says. "We want it bad. We understand what it takes to get to the Big 12 Championship. We want to get to the national championship. We're really hungry. We understand the goal and what we need to do to get back onto the big stage."

Ah yes, the stage. And how big might that stage be? It assuredly won't be big enough to accommodate both K-State and Iowa State on Saturday.

Johnson, 10-4 as a starter, enters his junior season after throwing for 2,712 yards and a school-record 25 touchdowns in 2024. He was one of three Power 4 quarterbacks with 2,700 passing yards and 600 rushing yards last season. He was also one of nine with at least 25 passing touchdowns and seven rushing touchdowns.

He'll have a mature offensive line featuring left guard Taylor Poitier (31 games), center Sam Hecht (30 games) and right guard Andrew Leingang (27 games), while junior John Pastore is back healthy at left tackle, and transfers JB Nelson and Terrence Enos Jr. could be a handful. Johnson also has arguably the top collection of tight ends in the FBS, one of the nation's most dynamic running backs in junior Dylan Edwards, and sure-handed junior wide receiver Jayce Brown while emerging stars Jaron Tibbs and Jerand Bradley prepare for their K-State debuts.

"Avery is a quarterback who can throw and run," Orange says. "I mean, he has 4.3 speed. Having a guy in the backfield who can not only run out of the gym but throw it 60 yards downfield, he's a dangerous quarterback. We have to keep him contained in the pocket and make him play quarterback. It's a challenge, and I can't wait for it."

Waiting for Johnson and the Wildcats will be an Iowa State defense that boasts a pair of Preseason All-Big 12 defensive backs in cornerback Jontez Williams and safety Jeremiah Cooper. Iowa State picked off 15 passes last season and are one of just six teams to post 15-plus interceptions in each of the last two seasons.

"It's their toughness, discipline, and the fact they're never out of position," K-State offensive coordinator Matt Wells says. "They're good. They're very, very tough, they tackle well, they're never out of position. Probably the mantra of that program."

Iowa State junior quarterback Rocco Becht has led the Cyclones to 18 wins the last two seasons, the best two-year stretch in school history. One of just 12 active FBS players to throw for at least 3,000 yards in back-to-back seasons, Becht is the FBS active leader with a touchdown pass in 18-straight games.

"He's a very smart and poised football player," K-State defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman says. "He's sneaky in the way that he can extend plays. He's got an innate ability to find scramble lanes and causes a lot of problems that way. It makes you a little bit weary with some of the things you're doing coverage-wise with him. He's probably not going to win a beauty contest or a 40-yard dash against some of the quarterbacks in the league, but he's probably as capable of a scrambler as anybody. I have much respect for him."

Last season, Becht threw for 3,505 yards and 25 touchdowns. Both running backs — Carson Hansen and Abu Sama — return after combining for 1,339 rushing yards and 15 touchdowns last season. The big question? How well will the Cyclones replace star wide receivers Jayden Higgins and Jaylin Noel? They were taken in the 2025 NFL Draft after combining for 2,377 receiving yards and 17 touchdowns last season. Some expect 6-foot-7, 250-pound tight end Benjamin Brahmer to be a spark for the offense.

"They're going to have a lot of experience back," Klanderman says. "They're going to be one of the more physical fronts in our league. Always are. They're very well coached. They have a lot of really good players at tight end, and as such, they try to get those guys on the field, so you're going to get a plethora of personnel groups. You're going to be in three tight ends and two tight ends and sometimes one. Those guys are going to be a part of the plan. You could have three tight ends on the field and be in some formation that typically you wouldn't do out of three tight ends. We didn't see a couple of their tight ends a year ago because they were injured, so it'll be interesting to see how they use those guys.

"We think we have a decent idea how they'll use those guys. There's a lot of complexity. They probably don't do a ton from a schematic standpoint. They do what they believe in. But they have guys who are going to make it look 100 different ways and that's the mission. They can come at you a lot of different ways. It's hard to do all that stuff if you don't have a quarterback who can handle it, and they obviously do."

K-State returns 13 starters from last season, which is tied for 10^th in the nation. That includes 6-foot-2, 245-pound junior linebacker Austin Romaine, who is the first K-State linebacker to be on the Bronko Nagurski Trophy watch list since Arthur Brown in 2012, and whose 96 tackles a year ago were the most by a K-State player since 2017.

"This is a huge game for us, but I don't think we need to make it as big as what we think it is," Romaine says. "It's the first game and we're going to have a lot of nerves going into it, but we just need to go out there and play our ball, and I think we'll be fine. I don't like to get caught up with 'how big is this game' because it can hurt us thinking that way."

Perhaps senior defensive tackle Damian Ilalio best sums it up.

"I'm totally focused on Iowa State," he says. "I want to beat them."

K-State will feature a basically rebuilt defensive secondary led by veteran senior strong safety VJ Payne. The Wildcats brought in junior transfer free safety Qua Moss at free safety, and they have a pair of sophomores at cornerback in Zashon Rich and Donovan McIntosh, who spent last season learning under eventual Tampa Bay Buccaneer draftee Jacob Parrish along with Keenan Garber, who signed a free agent contract with the Minnesota Vikings.

"We're confident in VJ, who's played a lot of football for us," Klieman says. "We lose the two really good corners that we had, but we're going to play a handful of guys, Donnie Mac and Zashon and Justice Clemons have maybe taken the most snaps, but Jayden Rowe will help us a little bit back there and Amarion Fortenberry will help us at corner. In our three-safety defense, we've been really impressed with Qua Moss at field safety, the ones you've seen Marques Sigle and Josh Hayes play. Qua has done a really nice job and Daniel Cobbs has done a nice job. They'll kind of replace where Sigle was."

But there's simply no replacing this feeling here. The streets of Dublin buzz with electricity. Irish Pubs have hung K-State and Iowa State flags above the entrance to their bars. There's purple and lavender, and red and yellow gatherers walking and waiting for kickoff and that first chance to erupt. K-State will hold a pep rally on Friday, which might better put into focus the magnitude of passion that Wildcat Nation has brought 4,140 miles from the Little Apple.

And at some point, on Saturday prior to the 5:00 p.m. kickoff (Ireland time), Klieman and the Wildcats will take the field at the 47,000-capacity Aviva Stadium. And for a moment, Klieman will look up and he will see the K-State fans who were able to make the journey, and he'll see the K-State marching band and it might all come flooding back — the build up from winter workouts to spring football to captains' practices to training camp to now, this start of the 2025 college football season.

"To see that stadium, it's going to be really neat," Klieman says. "I got to realize it's a game once it gets started just like I need to keep preaching to our players, but wherever we're playing once we kick that thing off it's a football game. We've got to be where our feet are and be ready to execute and adjust. But you're crazy if you don't pinch yourself and say, 'Wow. What a moment we're in right now.' The band is a huge part of that, and our fan base is a huge part of that. The amount of people, that's a credit to K-State Nation, our fan base, and how important our football team is to our fan base."

Here we are, and this 2025 K-State football journey is just getting started.

And it could be special.

Kansas State University Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Jerand Bradley

Jayce Brown

Justice Clemons

Daniel Cobbs

Terrence Enos Jr.

Amarion Fortenberry

Keenan Garber

Sam Hecht

Damian Ilalio

Avery Johnson

Andrew Leingang

Donovan McIntosh

Qua Moss

JB Nelson

Jacob Parrish

John Pastore

VJ Payne

Taylor Poitier

Zashon Rich

Austin Romaine

Jayden Rowe

Marques Sigle

Will Swanson

Jaron Tibbs

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