Kansas football to hire Sean Snyder, son of K-State coaching legend Bill Snyder

Kansas football is hiring Illinois special teams coach Sean Snyder as special assistant to the head coach, the program announced on Friday.

Sean Snyder, of course, is the son of legendary Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder. Sean Snyder’s name is in the K-State Ring of Honor, and he is in the K-State Athletics Hall of Fame.

The elder Snyder, Bill, is a College Football Hall of Fame member and widely considered one of the best coaches in Big Eight/Big 12 history, if not college football history. He’s a former national coach of the year, multi-time Big Eight and Big 12 Coach of the Year and revived the Kansas State program in two different coaching stints.

Kansas State has since named its stadium — Bill Snyder Family Stadium — after the legendary coach. It is casually referred to as “The Bill,” similar to how Kansas’ home stadium — David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium — is called “The Booth.”

K-State has seven 11-win seasons in its history, all under Bill Snyder. He has coached 14 of the 15 KSU seasons that have finished with nine-or-more wins.

Sean Snyder will be joining the Jayhawks after one season with the Fighting Illini. He started his career at his alma mater, Kansas State, as a part-time assistant coach in 1994 and 1995. He then served as director of football operations from 1996-1998.

Snyder was assistant athletic director for football operations at K-State from 1999-2000. He spent one season as associate athletic director in 2001 and most of the next decade as a senior associate athletic director from 2002-10.

Before moving to USC in 2020, he returned to coaching as a special teams coordinator/associate head coach from 2011-18 and special teams analyst in 2019, all at K-State.

Snyder spent the 2020 and 2021 seasons as USC’s special teams coordinator. He led USC’s special teams to new heights in 2020 — the group was ranked No. 1 nationally by Football Outsiders and the Trojans were in the national top 25 in several related statistics, including 10th in kickoff return defense and 25th in net punting

Not only does Snyder bring an impressive resume to Lawrence, he has the hardware to back it up. Snyder was named the national Special Teams Coordinator of the Year in 2015 by both FootballScoop and Phil Steele. He again received the honor from Phil Steele in 2017.