WATCH: Chris Klieman's Sugar Bowl arrival press conference

COACH KLIEMAN: Great to be in New Orleans. Left some cold weather up in Manhattan, had some snow, and got everybody down here. We're excited for our first workout this afternoon and great hospitality that's already been given to us. And our kids are so thrilled for the opportunity to play in the Allstate Sugar Bowl.

As coaches, we couldn't be more thrilled to have the opportunity to play against a great team like Alabama. It's going to be a great matchup on Saturday. We got a lot of work to do. We've given the guys a few days off over Christmas. So we've got some work to do this week in preparations. But without a doubt, our guys are excited.

The way we finished this season with a Big 12 championship, we get an opportunity to play a great program like Alabama.

Q. Coach [Nick] Saban announcing that Bryce [Young] and Will [Anderson] are going to be playing in this game, that's huge obviously. What has that done for your team? Has that changed anything at all?

COACH KLIEMAN: No, it really doesn't. I think it's great. It's great for college football that the best players are going to play in this game. We have a handful of those guys as well that have elected to play in this game. And that's what it's about. It's playing with your brothers one last time for the guys that are going on to the next level. And I think that's really important for our game in general.

Q. You say this is a business trip. Do you guys have some time planned out to enjoy the city a little bit while y'all are here?

COACH KLIEMAN: Yeah. They've got a number of things planned for our players, a few things planned for our staff and our wives. But we have our work that we've got to get done in the morning and afternoon. And then the evenings, we'll get a chance to get away a little bit and see New Orleans.

Q. I don't think you've had any opt‑outs, and your losses in the transfer portal have been pretty minimal. What does that say? Do you feel like the success you've had this season, especially winning the championship, is a factor, or just is this something you've been building towards?

COACH KLIEMAN: Well, I think it's a couple things. One, it's the success for sure, and then it's the culture of our locker room. It's the leaders. You're going to visit with two of them in Cooper [Beebe] and Felix [Anudike‑Uzomah] that are leaders on our football team that ‑‑ these guys started this journey back in January when we got back from Houston and the Texas Bowl. This was part of that journey, is to have a chance to win a Big 12 championship and play in a New Year's Six game. And our guys have been able to do that. And what a thrill for our guys one last time to go out.

This team, the legacy of the 2022 K‑State football team, is something we're excited about, go one more time with this group.

Q. What was the impact of the Tulane game this year on your team?

COACH KLIEMAN: It's been so long ago, I think people maybe thought that we weren't a very good football team, maybe Tulane was pretty good. And the fact that both teams are playing in a New Year's Six game, it was probably a pretty good matchup in early September.

Q. I read you told the team, Don't let this game define your season.

COACH KLIEMAN: But that's ‑‑ I would say that about any game.

For us, it's about our conference. And for us to go 7‑2 in our conference and have a chance to play in the Big 12 championship game, our guys never wavered, never panicked, no matter what, even when we were down in games or lost a game against a really good TCU team or a Texas team. We bounced back.

And what these guys have done on the road is pretty remarkable. We win at Oklahoma, win at Baylor, win at West Virginia. We had ‑‑ win at Iowa State. We had some big‑time road wins. And in our league, winning on the road is really difficult.

Q. Coach [Nick] Saban always says they want to get their best shot with every team it plays. What does that means with you coming off a big win that you did against TCU? How does that help?

COACH KLIEMAN: We got to focus on us. That's something we've talked about all season long, is focusing on us. It's all about what Kansas State does. It's about our preparation. It's about us detailing our work. It's about us making sure that we're attacking the process on a daily basis to get to Saturday and play this game.

And so everything that we talk about is going to be in preparation to get to Saturday.

Q. You took this job four years ago. Do you feel like you're ahead of schedule, on schedule, from when you first got there?

COACH KLIEMAN: That's a great question. That's hard to answer simply because you never want to say, Boy, I'm going to build this thing. It's going to take eight years. Typically, you're not getting to get eight years. Not very many people took a job and thought a pandemic would shut us down for 18 months either.

And so when you throw in the fact that we went to a bowl game in my first season, and then the second season was the pandemic and we had so many guys out, like everybody else did, kind of ravaged the football team. But then reconvening back in January of 2021 with a group that we had that went 8‑5 and won a bowl game, and then this group to win the Big 12 championship.

I don't know if you'd say we're ahead of schedule, on schedule, behind schedule. I'm just excited that, in the three years that we had opportunities to play full football, we've been to a bowl game and each year's gotten better.

Q. The people in this part of the country know Alabama. They often are better than teams at the point of attack. How important do you think it is to be super, super physical in this game?

COACH KLIEMAN: Yeah, without a question, you can see that when you watch ‑‑ when you flip on the tape and watch Alabama. They dominate the front seven on defense, and then their offensive line is tremendous. Everybody talks about oftentimes the skill players.

But they beat people up front. And for us, it's going to be a big challenge on both sides of the line of scrimmage. We have a lot of veteran guys on both sides of the line of scrimmage that know the fistfight that it's going to be starting on Saturday at 11:00. And so that's going to a big, big challenge for us.

Q. I hate to keep coming back to the Tulane game, but what did you see in Tulane that day that ‑‑ yeah, this team beat us, and did you ‑‑

COACH KLIEMAN: I just thought it was a good football team. Coach [Willie] Fritz does a good job. It was a good football team. We've moved on from that. You want to keep bringing it up. We moved on from that one and found a way to win the Big 12.