100 Questions: Has K-State 'maxed out?'
***Yesterday's Question HERE***
In an attempt to pass the time this off-season we're fortunate to have secured the help of scottwildcat from Boscoe's Boys. Scott is going to provide 100 questions about the past, present, future (and who-knows-what) involving Kansas State sports, and I'll do my very best to answer them.
Let's dive in to the 100 Questions.
Question No. 84: Has K-State maxed out what it can be as an athletic department? Facts are facts; K-State has one of the smallest fan bases of public schools inside a Power Five conference. There isn't as deep or as strong of a donor class when compared to any Big 12 school and non-conference regional schools.
My short answer is "no," but I don't think it's a ridiculous question by any stretch.
I think it's one, also, that gives a chance to step back and understand what has been accomplished at Kansas State in the last quarter century or so.
Despite striving to be unbiased in covering K-State, it's no secret I have an affinity for the school I graduated from. And, of course, probably 95 percent of the people reading this story love Kansas State sports.
All that said, I think it's okay to acknowledge where K-State fits from a fan base/financial perspective within the Power Five conferences in football (plus Notre Dame), as well as the majors in college basketball.
The Wildcats are not at the very bottom of either of those metrics (size of fan base and money/donor base), but - if we're being real - K-State is probably in the bottom 25 percent of those metrics pretty easily.
When you're talking hypothetically about being "maxed out," it's easy to argue K-State has far, far surpassed its peers (from a financial/fan base perspective) on the court and football field.
Earlier in this series (Question No. 26) I put about two days of research into determining the most successful football/basketball programs since the advent of the Big 12 in 1996, and K-State came in at best third and at worst fourth place.
That's not bad.
I'd say for the past 25 years K-State has been a Top 25 football program on average, obviously with a number of years finishing in the Top 10/Big 12 title/national title/11-win conversation.
For roughly the past 10 years or so the Wildcats have also been a Top 20-ish basketball program, winning a pair of Big 12 titles, going to two Elite 8s and going to eight tournaments in the last 10 years.
I think it's impossible to argue K-State has underachieved in the two major sports - especially when taking things like location, money, size of fan base and tradition into account - even though a lot of Wildcat fans may feel that way about their programs.
Now, though, is K-State "maxed out?"
No, I can't think so.
I say this because at least twice in the last 20 years K-State has been within a game of playing for a National Championship in football. I say at least twice, because nobody asks what would have happened in, say, 1997 or 1999 had the Wildcats been able to stun Nebraska. Or if Bob Stoops wasn't in Norman in 2000.
There are a lot of seasons that have taken place where, hypothetically, it's not hard to envision the Wildcats playing for a title if everything fell their way.
You can do similar things for basketball, but all within the last decade. Twice the Wildcats fell one game short of the Final Four. Once after a grueling overtime battle with Xavier left them unable to overcome Butler, the second finally falling in the tournament playing without their best player (Dean Wade) two years ago against Loyola.
Shoot, what would K-State have done in the tournament this year if Wade were healthy? The Wildcats, for whatever its worth, were absolutely Texas Tech's equals throughout Big 12 play.
Since K-State has been so, so close to accomplishing much more I can't bring myself to say the Wildcats are maxed out. Exceeding expectations? I would absolutely say so, yes. Doing enough that the fan base should (mostly) be happy? In my opinion, yes.
But has the ceiling been hit?
I don't think so, at least not yet.