Kansas Vs. Kansas State: A Rivalry With Family Ties

One of SB Nation’s Bring On The Cats bloggers relates his personal history with the Kansas-Kansas State game:

The week of the Big Game -- be it in football or basketball -- always brings with it thoughts of my dad. Some of my best memories of him are wrapped up in K-State games. I remember Jack Hartman (whom my dad idolized), and Lon Kruger (whose Silver Lake team was beaten my dad’s Lewis Spartans in the quarterfinals of the 1970 Kansas state basketball tournament). I remember the 1982 football season, and how it was a flicker of light down a long, dark hallway leading to 1990. Without Coach Jim Dickey, and his boy Darrell, my early Wildcat football memories would have contained naught but losing, from my first memories of listening to Cats’ games, in my dad’s farm truck, as a kindergartener back in 1979, all the way until Coach Snyder arrived on the scene in late 1988.
In fact, as a know-it-all 14-year-old, I was singularly unimpressed with the “old man” (that’s honestly what I called him, even back in 1988, when he was all of 49) who stepped to the podium that day. It was my dad who told me, “Give him some time, Kev. I think he might be different.” As in most things, my dad was right.