Oct 19, 2026 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
He snuck up from behind, him wearing his black sweater over a purple-and-white button-down, black jeans and white shoes, and a sly grin crept across his face, as he saw the back of the gray-suited gentleman, a tuft of white hair, standing and surveying the crowd inside the lobby of the Vanier Family Football Complex.
Terence Newman, the man of the hour, the one who'll be inducted into the 2026 National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame, couldn't help but pull a joke on the man who helped him reach this stage, like so many other stages, along a journey that has now spanned 29 years.
He politely nudged Bill Snyder, who never saw him coming.
"I snuck up, and the smile that he had when I grabbed his arm and gave him a hug — it meant everything to me," Newman says. "I missed being around him. I missed his face. I missed his charisma. I missed his energy."
Snyder smiled at Newman.
"Hey, young man," Snyder said.
Newman, now standing inside the sixth floor of the West Stadium Center while recalling his first face-to-face meeting with former college football head coach in more than four years, offers a smile.
"You know," he says, "it was Coach Snyder being Coach Snyder. It was so good to see him walking around being happy."
There's a timeworn photo of the pair, of course, taken during a Kansas State football game in 2002, when Newman earned Consensus All-America honors and helped the Wildcats to an 11-win season. In the photo, the legendary head coach is donned in a purple short-sleeved polo and gray slacks, and Nike Cortez, holding his black headset and yellow papers in his right hand and extending his left arm to grasp the right hand of Newman, who is in the midst of walking by him in his white Kansas State road jersey, the purple No. 4 unmistakable, as was Snyder's rare smile found on the gridiron.
Newman adoringly titled the photo as "Yoda and Young Jedi," as Snyder, the football genius, experienced so much joy in watching one of his favorite young jedis grow into a gridiron master.
Today, the 48-year-old Newman stands on the sixth floor of the press box at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, surrounded by reporters and cameras. It's halftime, and K-State holds an 18-17 lead over Kansas in the Sunflower Showdown, and the Wildcats will eventually claim their 18th-consecutive win over the Jayhawks with a 35-24 victory, a series record and the longest active winning streak by a team in a rivalry game.
Newman, a native of Salina, Kansas, remembers being a part of the series. From redshirting his true freshman season in 1998 to his final salvo in 2002, Newman was a part of K-State teams that beat Kansas by scores of 54-6, 50-9, 52-13, 40-6 and 64-0.
Asked to recall which of the victories over KU remained his favorite, Newman says, "All of them, since we won all of them. It was always good to get those wins and build something for the future."
And, yes, the future is here, in the form of the K-State facilities that Newman toured upon his arrival from his home in Los Angeles to the Little Apple. While a towering image of Newman in his K-State uniform adorns the student-athlete training table, so much more has also changed since Newman roamed the field at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
"I had the chance to go around and see all the additions, the highlights, the training centers, and it's pretty amazing what this transformation looks like," Newman says. "Seeing it in 1997 when I was getting recruited to now, a lot of coaches and players have passed through, and it's well deserved."
He pauses.
"By the way," he continues with comedic tenor, "these kids are spoiled today. Did you see the cold tubs over here? They have a cold pool that looks better than the pool I have in my house. These kids are different."
Yet so much remains the same at the place that Newman loves.
It all kind of comes down to one word, the word synonymous with K-State football for decades: Family.
Today, that has expanded to two words — Family Business — as K-State head coach, Collin Klein on December 4, 2025, ushered in the new phrase that, yes, the K-State family truly has business to take care of to go places that the Wildcats have never gone before.
"I had a very good talk with Collin yesterday, me and Dyshod Carter, and that was one of the words that came up the most with Collin," Newman says. "We never crossed paths, but obviously, you see what he means to this university, what he meant as a player, and what he means as a coach. When we started talking about family and what it meant to represent Kansas State, it was about that. We took ownership of the team. We had coaches who coached us, but when things went awry and when things didn't go how we wanted them to go, this was our team, and we had to step up to the plate, and address our family, and say, 'This is not good enough.'
"When I think of family, I think of playing for the guy next to you, playing for the coaches who stuck their necks out to get you here. When I think about family, I think about a closeknit community and guys who you go to bat with every single day, because this is your family. When you go through something, you have to lean on them, you have to speak to these people, and they're your family. Your extended family here becomes your family. That's what I think of."
And Newman doesn't think — he knows that although thousands of miles separate him from Manhattan since his move to Los Angeles following his 15-year NFL career as a cornerback with the Dallas Cowboys, Cincinnati Bengals and Minnesota Vikings, he wants to be a part of what Klein and the Wildcats are building.
"I don't make it over as much as I want, but I'm going to try and make an effort to come back a couple times a year," Newman says. "I told Collin that this new transition as a head coach, as a former player, this truly means everything to him. Listening to Collin speak yesterday, I don't think I've heard that passion in a long time. I was shaking with goosebumps because it means that much to him. I want to give back as much as I can and support him. I loved hearing him and everything he had to say.
"It's pretty amazing. I just want to show my support."
The support was everywhere for Newman during a magical weekend in Manhattan, which began with a Hall of Fame ceremony in his honor on Friday evening at the Vanier Family Football Complex, and that carried on Saturday as Newman was the honorary alum to open up the K-State locker room doors inside the Vanier Family Football Complex, and progressed to his formal recognition as a Hall of Fame inductee in front of a sellout crowd of 51,961 that cheered with a deafening volume as Newman took it all in while standing inside the end zone and watching a montage of his personal highlights roll across the stadium video boards. Newman waved to K-State fans and so much went through his head.
He came to K-State as a two- or three-star prospect who measured 5-foot-4 and 110 pounds as a freshman at Salina Central High School, and developed into a 5-foot-11, 185-pound cornerback with 4.26 40 speed and a 41 ½-inch vertical leap during his time at K-State. His 10.22 mark in the 100-meter dash set a K-State record and qualified him for the 2001 Big 12 Outdoor Championship, where he earned the title of "Big 12's Fastest Man" by winning the event with a time of 10.29 — a title that he successfully defended in 2002.
Newman's body exuded confidence. He said, "Hey, I'm prepared to do this," while playing at cornerback, as a return specialist, and as a wide receiver. He hoped opposing quarterbacks threw the ball in his direction.
Newman's 54 tackles his senior season were more than Charles Woodson (44) posted his final year at Michigan in 1997, and Deion Sanders (37) had as a senior at Florida State in 1988. Newman's five interceptions and 16 pass breakups were also more than either player recorded during their final seasons. Newman's average of 28.5 yards on kickoff returns and 14.9 yards on punt returns also exceeded the marks by Tim Brown (19.8 and 11.7) during his 1987 Heisman Trophy season. Although Newman was named 2002 Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and the 2002 Jim Thorpe Award winner as the nation's top defensive back, he was also capable of quality performance on offense as a receiver and on special teams as a return man.
During an early-season game against Louisiana Monroe, Terence caught a 51-yard over-the-shoulder touchdown pass on the first play that he was inserted on offense for his first-career reception. He scored another touchdown on a 40-yard punt return. One week later against Eastern Illinois, he returned a kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. Against Missouri, he had a 71-yard punt-return touchdown. Newman always worked and was so invested in getting everything that he could out of every play, every practice, and every game.
"Actually, I had a reception for a touchdown, a return for a touchdown, and an interception I was supposed to bring in, but I fumbled it," Newman recalls while standing inside the press box at halftime of Saturday's game. "I had the trifecta and I messed it up. That was the one that got away. That's one I remember."
There's another play that accompanies Newman's lore forever. Just before halftime in a 27-20 win over No. 11 USC on September 21, 2002, Newman helped engineer a play that elicited perhaps the loudest cheers in Bill Snyder Family Stadium history. USC scored a touchdown to cut K-State's lead to 10-6, but K-State defensive end Henry Bryant blocked the extra-point attempt, Newman picked up the football and zig-zagged 90 yards behind some excellent blocking for a two-point blocked kick return with 32 seconds remaining until halftime. The crowd of 49,276 at the game will never forget the play or the ringing felt in the ears of those who witnessed K-State's first-ever home win against a ranked non-conference opponent and one of the coolest — and loudest — moments in school history.
"I didn't hear the cheers," Newman says. "I picked up the football, snaked left and snaked back right and then snaked back left. It was a very long play, but what I remember most was when I turned around, my teammates were running the whole distance. Once I got to a certain point, nobody was catching me, but I had a calvary of teammates behind me, and that was the coolest thing. I know the stadium was crazy, but I blacked out, and just saw my teammates, and that was the coolest thing, my teammates running behind me, which was crazy."
Newman put a stamp on his senior season when he performed a backflip during Senior Day introductions, delighting the crowd of 52,221 before K-State rolled to a 49-13 win over the Huskers. Newman posted a career-high 10 tackles, but he remembers the backflip the most.
"What my teammates know is when we did offseason workouts, we'd go into the indoor facility and they had a foam mat off to the side," Newman says. "We'd go in there, me and Taco Wallace, and we'd try and do flips on this mat. I told myself I'd teach myself to do a backflip, and on Senior Day, I'd do a backflip when I came out and was introduced. So, every day in offseason workouts, I was on that mat trying to do a backflip. It took me the whole offseason to learn that. It was crazy that when I came out and did the backflip, walked out, turned around, and did the backflip, I remember the roar from the fans. That was crazy. Never expected that type of reaction."
Newman was rewarded for his body of hard work and success when he was selected by the Dallas Cowboys with the fifth selection overall in the 2003 NFL Draft. Newman was the highest drafted K-State player since Veryl Switzer was selected by the Green Bay Packers with the fourth pick in the 1954 NFL Draft.
"God gave me a gift," Newman says, "and I was able to hone those gifts to become a great football player. I want to let other kids who were like me, who were slight and didn't check the boxes, and had speed but might not pass the eye test — I just want to give those kids the feeling that they can put in some work and do what they want to do. When I did get elected to the College Football Hall of Fame, I was excited. You can imagine the excitement. But it wasn't something I set out to do. I'm being recognized for the work that I put in, and that's the greatest honor, I think."
Today, K-State players strive to uphold the standard of excellence. They had seen Newman's towering image inside the student-athlete training table, where they fuel their bodies each day. Now these current players have a voice to go along with the image, and the unmistakable voice echoed as Newman addressed the team inside the weight room on Friday.
Then Newman listened in as the final words were said inside the K-State locker room prior to the KU game on Saturday morning.
"Then I opened the locker room door, and all the guys were fired up," Newman says. "Man, that's a whole different walk out to the football field than what we had back in the day. Listening to what was going on in the locker room, I was ready to put on a helmet and shoulder pads and go out there to see if I had a couple plays left in me."
The playing days have long since passed, but the memories endure, and Newman, who always carried a soft spot for his college football head coach, approached Snyder from behind at Friday evening's ceremony.
"When you start playing this sport as a kid it's just for the love of the game," Newman says. "You don't worry about money or honors — you just love the sport. That's what I always tried to do as I played the sport. It just happened that you got paid a lot of money to do it. Hearing I was selected for the Hall of Fame, it was icing on the cake. I had a pretty great career here at K-State. Without the guys pushing me and Coach Snyder, I would never have reached this."
So, he pulled a joke on the man who helped him reach this stage, like so many other stages, along a journey that has now spanned 29 years.
He politely nudged Bill Snyder, who never saw him coming.
And they shared a smile, Yoda and the young Jedi.
And really, nobody saw this coming, not from a 5-foot-4, 110-pound freshman cornerback at Salina Central High School.
Now Newman, already inducted into the K-State Athletics Hall of Fame and the K-State Football Ring of Honor, is recognized as one of the best players in the history of college football.
"To be from Salina, Kansas — most people don't know where that is on a map — and go 45 minutes to play in Manhattan, Kansas, and be enshrined with some of the greatest college athletes the world has ever known," Newman says, "it's surreal."
And he basked in the feeling of accomplishment for a few moments on the football field Saturday as the sellout crowd cheered loud for their storied hero while he watched the team that he loves beat its in-state rival for an 18th-straight time.
Some things never change.
Except Newman.
This weekend, the National Football Foundation officially recognized him as a legend.
He snuck up from behind, him wearing his black sweater over a purple-and-white button-down, black jeans and white shoes, and a sly grin crept across his face, as he saw the back of the gray-suited gentleman, a tuft of white hair, standing and surveying the crowd inside the lobby of the Vanier Family Football Complex.
Terence Newman, the man of the hour, the one who'll be inducted into the 2026 National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame, couldn't help but pull a joke on the man who helped him reach this stage, like so many other stages, along a journey that has now spanned 29 years.
He politely nudged Bill Snyder, who never saw him coming.
"I snuck up, and the smile that he had when I grabbed his arm and gave him a hug — it meant everything to me," Newman says. "I missed being around him. I missed his face. I missed his charisma. I missed his energy."
Snyder smiled at Newman.
"Hey, young man," Snyder said.
Newman, now standing inside the sixth floor of the West Stadium Center while recalling his first face-to-face meeting with former college football head coach in more than four years, offers a smile.
"You know," he says, "it was Coach Snyder being Coach Snyder. It was so good to see him walking around being happy."
There's a timeworn photo of the pair, of course, taken during a Kansas State football game in 2002, when Newman earned Consensus All-America honors and helped the Wildcats to an 11-win season. In the photo, the legendary head coach is donned in a purple short-sleeved polo and gray slacks, and Nike Cortez, holding his black headset and yellow papers in his right hand and extending his left arm to grasp the right hand of Newman, who is in the midst of walking by him in his white Kansas State road jersey, the purple No. 4 unmistakable, as was Snyder's rare smile found on the gridiron.
Newman adoringly titled the photo as "Yoda and Young Jedi," as Snyder, the football genius, experienced so much joy in watching one of his favorite young jedis grow into a gridiron master.
Today, the 48-year-old Newman stands on the sixth floor of the press box at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, surrounded by reporters and cameras. It's halftime, and K-State holds an 18-17 lead over Kansas in the Sunflower Showdown, and the Wildcats will eventually claim their 18th-consecutive win over the Jayhawks with a 35-24 victory, a series record and the longest active winning streak by a team in a rivalry game.
Newman, a native of Salina, Kansas, remembers being a part of the series. From redshirting his true freshman season in 1998 to his final salvo in 2002, Newman was a part of K-State teams that beat Kansas by scores of 54-6, 50-9, 52-13, 40-6 and 64-0.
Asked to recall which of the victories over KU remained his favorite, Newman says, "All of them, since we won all of them. It was always good to get those wins and build something for the future."
And, yes, the future is here, in the form of the K-State facilities that Newman toured upon his arrival from his home in Los Angeles to the Little Apple. While a towering image of Newman in his K-State uniform adorns the student-athlete training table, so much more has also changed since Newman roamed the field at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
"I had the chance to go around and see all the additions, the highlights, the training centers, and it's pretty amazing what this transformation looks like," Newman says. "Seeing it in 1997 when I was getting recruited to now, a lot of coaches and players have passed through, and it's well deserved."
He pauses.
"By the way," he continues with comedic tenor, "these kids are spoiled today. Did you see the cold tubs over here? They have a cold pool that looks better than the pool I have in my house. These kids are different."
Yet so much remains the same at the place that Newman loves.
It all kind of comes down to one word, the word synonymous with K-State football for decades: Family.
Today, that has expanded to two words — Family Business — as K-State head coach, Collin Klein on December 4, 2025, ushered in the new phrase that, yes, the K-State family truly has business to take care of to go places that the Wildcats have never gone before.
"I had a very good talk with Collin yesterday, me and Dyshod Carter, and that was one of the words that came up the most with Collin," Newman says. "We never crossed paths, but obviously, you see what he means to this university, what he meant as a player, and what he means as a coach. When we started talking about family and what it meant to represent Kansas State, it was about that. We took ownership of the team. We had coaches who coached us, but when things went awry and when things didn't go how we wanted them to go, this was our team, and we had to step up to the plate, and address our family, and say, 'This is not good enough.'
"When I think of family, I think of playing for the guy next to you, playing for the coaches who stuck their necks out to get you here. When I think about family, I think about a closeknit community and guys who you go to bat with every single day, because this is your family. When you go through something, you have to lean on them, you have to speak to these people, and they're your family. Your extended family here becomes your family. That's what I think of."
And Newman doesn't think — he knows that although thousands of miles separate him from Manhattan since his move to Los Angeles following his 15-year NFL career as a cornerback with the Dallas Cowboys, Cincinnati Bengals and Minnesota Vikings, he wants to be a part of what Klein and the Wildcats are building.
"I don't make it over as much as I want, but I'm going to try and make an effort to come back a couple times a year," Newman says. "I told Collin that this new transition as a head coach, as a former player, this truly means everything to him. Listening to Collin speak yesterday, I don't think I've heard that passion in a long time. I was shaking with goosebumps because it means that much to him. I want to give back as much as I can and support him. I loved hearing him and everything he had to say.
"It's pretty amazing. I just want to show my support."
The support was everywhere for Newman during a magical weekend in Manhattan, which began with a Hall of Fame ceremony in his honor on Friday evening at the Vanier Family Football Complex, and that carried on Saturday as Newman was the honorary alum to open up the K-State locker room doors inside the Vanier Family Football Complex, and progressed to his formal recognition as a Hall of Fame inductee in front of a sellout crowd of 51,961 that cheered with a deafening volume as Newman took it all in while standing inside the end zone and watching a montage of his personal highlights roll across the stadium video boards. Newman waved to K-State fans and so much went through his head.
He came to K-State as a two- or three-star prospect who measured 5-foot-4 and 110 pounds as a freshman at Salina Central High School, and developed into a 5-foot-11, 185-pound cornerback with 4.26 40 speed and a 41 ½-inch vertical leap during his time at K-State. His 10.22 mark in the 100-meter dash set a K-State record and qualified him for the 2001 Big 12 Outdoor Championship, where he earned the title of "Big 12's Fastest Man" by winning the event with a time of 10.29 — a title that he successfully defended in 2002.
Newman's body exuded confidence. He said, "Hey, I'm prepared to do this," while playing at cornerback, as a return specialist, and as a wide receiver. He hoped opposing quarterbacks threw the ball in his direction.
Newman's 54 tackles his senior season were more than Charles Woodson (44) posted his final year at Michigan in 1997, and Deion Sanders (37) had as a senior at Florida State in 1988. Newman's five interceptions and 16 pass breakups were also more than either player recorded during their final seasons. Newman's average of 28.5 yards on kickoff returns and 14.9 yards on punt returns also exceeded the marks by Tim Brown (19.8 and 11.7) during his 1987 Heisman Trophy season. Although Newman was named 2002 Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and the 2002 Jim Thorpe Award winner as the nation's top defensive back, he was also capable of quality performance on offense as a receiver and on special teams as a return man.
During an early-season game against Louisiana Monroe, Terence caught a 51-yard over-the-shoulder touchdown pass on the first play that he was inserted on offense for his first-career reception. He scored another touchdown on a 40-yard punt return. One week later against Eastern Illinois, he returned a kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. Against Missouri, he had a 71-yard punt-return touchdown. Newman always worked and was so invested in getting everything that he could out of every play, every practice, and every game.
"Actually, I had a reception for a touchdown, a return for a touchdown, and an interception I was supposed to bring in, but I fumbled it," Newman recalls while standing inside the press box at halftime of Saturday's game. "I had the trifecta and I messed it up. That was the one that got away. That's one I remember."
There's another play that accompanies Newman's lore forever. Just before halftime in a 27-20 win over No. 11 USC on September 21, 2002, Newman helped engineer a play that elicited perhaps the loudest cheers in Bill Snyder Family Stadium history. USC scored a touchdown to cut K-State's lead to 10-6, but K-State defensive end Henry Bryant blocked the extra-point attempt, Newman picked up the football and zig-zagged 90 yards behind some excellent blocking for a two-point blocked kick return with 32 seconds remaining until halftime. The crowd of 49,276 at the game will never forget the play or the ringing felt in the ears of those who witnessed K-State's first-ever home win against a ranked non-conference opponent and one of the coolest — and loudest — moments in school history.
"I didn't hear the cheers," Newman says. "I picked up the football, snaked left and snaked back right and then snaked back left. It was a very long play, but what I remember most was when I turned around, my teammates were running the whole distance. Once I got to a certain point, nobody was catching me, but I had a calvary of teammates behind me, and that was the coolest thing. I know the stadium was crazy, but I blacked out, and just saw my teammates, and that was the coolest thing, my teammates running behind me, which was crazy."
Newman put a stamp on his senior season when he performed a backflip during Senior Day introductions, delighting the crowd of 52,221 before K-State rolled to a 49-13 win over the Huskers. Newman posted a career-high 10 tackles, but he remembers the backflip the most.
"What my teammates know is when we did offseason workouts, we'd go into the indoor facility and they had a foam mat off to the side," Newman says. "We'd go in there, me and Taco Wallace, and we'd try and do flips on this mat. I told myself I'd teach myself to do a backflip, and on Senior Day, I'd do a backflip when I came out and was introduced. So, every day in offseason workouts, I was on that mat trying to do a backflip. It took me the whole offseason to learn that. It was crazy that when I came out and did the backflip, walked out, turned around, and did the backflip, I remember the roar from the fans. That was crazy. Never expected that type of reaction."
Newman was rewarded for his body of hard work and success when he was selected by the Dallas Cowboys with the fifth selection overall in the 2003 NFL Draft. Newman was the highest drafted K-State player since Veryl Switzer was selected by the Green Bay Packers with the fourth pick in the 1954 NFL Draft.
"God gave me a gift," Newman says, "and I was able to hone those gifts to become a great football player. I want to let other kids who were like me, who were slight and didn't check the boxes, and had speed but might not pass the eye test — I just want to give those kids the feeling that they can put in some work and do what they want to do. When I did get elected to the College Football Hall of Fame, I was excited. You can imagine the excitement. But it wasn't something I set out to do. I'm being recognized for the work that I put in, and that's the greatest honor, I think."
Today, K-State players strive to uphold the standard of excellence. They had seen Newman's towering image inside the student-athlete training table, where they fuel their bodies each day. Now these current players have a voice to go along with the image, and the unmistakable voice echoed as Newman addressed the team inside the weight room on Friday.
Then Newman listened in as the final words were said inside the K-State locker room prior to the KU game on Saturday morning.
"Then I opened the locker room door, and all the guys were fired up," Newman says. "Man, that's a whole different walk out to the football field than what we had back in the day. Listening to what was going on in the locker room, I was ready to put on a helmet and shoulder pads and go out there to see if I had a couple plays left in me."
The playing days have long since passed, but the memories endure, and Newman, who always carried a soft spot for his college football head coach, approached Snyder from behind at Friday evening's ceremony.
"When you start playing this sport as a kid it's just for the love of the game," Newman says. "You don't worry about money or honors — you just love the sport. That's what I always tried to do as I played the sport. It just happened that you got paid a lot of money to do it. Hearing I was selected for the Hall of Fame, it was icing on the cake. I had a pretty great career here at K-State. Without the guys pushing me and Coach Snyder, I would never have reached this."
So, he pulled a joke on the man who helped him reach this stage, like so many other stages, along a journey that has now spanned 29 years.
He politely nudged Bill Snyder, who never saw him coming.
And they shared a smile, Yoda and the young Jedi.
And really, nobody saw this coming, not from a 5-foot-4, 110-pound freshman cornerback at Salina Central High School.
Now Newman, already inducted into the K-State Athletics Hall of Fame and the K-State Football Ring of Honor, is recognized as one of the best players in the history of college football.
"To be from Salina, Kansas — most people don't know where that is on a map — and go 45 minutes to play in Manhattan, Kansas, and be enshrined with some of the greatest college athletes the world has ever known," Newman says, "it's surreal."
And he basked in the feeling of accomplishment for a few moments on the football field Saturday as the sellout crowd cheered loud for their storied hero while he watched the team that he loves beat its in-state rival for an 18th-straight time.
Some things never change.
Except Newman.
This weekend, the National Football Foundation officially recognized him as a legend.
Thursday, October 22
Wednesday, October 21
Wednesday, October 21
Wednesday, October 21
