Where I Come From: Becoming a K-State Fan

the same as that old school administrator, but you can put me in the same category. I’m not a KSU grad, although I do have some KSU hours and most of my family are KSU alums. I bleed purple, though.

Thanks, for agreeing to do the blog. It’s a great site and resource for all of us who haven’t “grown up” enough to forget about college sports.

My story is like many, I grew up in central Kansas with one side of my family being graduates of K-State. And the other side of the family line is thrilled with being Bethany Swedes and not-so-secretly harbors the wish they could have gone to that other school down the road. So I grew up with one side of the family cheering for any glory that came the way of K-State and the other side being the epitome of UK fans.

When it came time to choose colleges, my dad gave me free reign to choose but, offered the following words of wisdom, "You can go to any school you like, but I will pay for you to go to K-State." K-State it is!

My first year of school, K-State football games was more of a social outing, I hadn’t been fully bitten by the bug that is the K-State spirit. I would show up and cheer but, most of the time I didn’t know what I was cheering for. My Dad gave me tons of crap because he could always pick me out of the crowd of the K-State students, who were proudly clad in purple or white, and I wore my brown leather jacket instead.

School continued on and I was having a blast. But I believe I truly started becoming a K-State fan on January 1, 1997 when K-State played BYU in the Cotton Bowl. I traveled with my family to Dallas to join the more than 40,000 diehard fans helping shatter ticket sales records from one team. Sort of funny that a loss would help engrain in me the love of the Cats and what is Kansas State Football. But, what stands out in that game besides the passion of the fans was my Dad and his reaction to the hard hit given by Mario Smith. After many minutes of quiet and respect for the injured player, my Dad yelled, "Pull him off the field! And let’s play some football!!!" Harsh yes, but I loved it! Seeing that type of passion from my Dad, I learned it was ok to be a passionate crazy fan, that spoke their mind, and that violent aspect of football could be so much fun. Sick I know!

My love of K-State grew more at the start of 1998 when I was working a 7 month internship at Disney World as part of the college program and was horrible home sick. My name tag said I was from Kansas State University, and I was overwhelmed by the love that was shared with me whenever I interacted with a K-Stater who was vacationing at the happiest place in the world. In the final months at Disney, I learned that K-State was highly ranked in the pre-season football polls. I would read magazine and sports sections any opportunity I got just to feel a little closer to home.

I have so many stories surrounding football games and now even basketball games. I can proudly say I am a K-State grad; I am the sister of a K-State football player, the daughter of a K-State football player and the granddaughter of a K-State football player. So I was born to be a fan of K-State football and I am honored and proud to be a part of this family and the bigger Wildcat family that is some of the best fans around.

Each year since I graduated the love of K-State has grown. With the highs and the lows of each win and loss I am surrounded by my K-State family and family is always what matters most.

And BOTC is just another extension of that family. EMAW!

I grew up pretty much oblivious to Kansas State football and athletics which is strange considering how much football I played in my life. I remember my dad loving football and watching games on Tv but I was more concerned with my own pee-wee games at that point. In jr. high school my family relocated to a good ‘ole Kansas farm town and I was first introduced to a little love for the Purple. My friends were excited about KState but I was still unaware of what I was missing. In high school I got my first introduction to the incredible Kansas State University campus. I believe our girl’s basketball team had made the state tournament and so a group of us drove up to Manhattan, KS to check it out. I had never been to a college basketball game and so walking into Bramlage Coliseum for the first time was an incredible experience. I remember walking through the tunnel and the entire world of Bramlage opening up and staring down at the huge Powercat on the floor. That’s gotta be the moment my love for Kansas State got planted. That whole experience made me pay a little more attention to Kansas State athletics for the rest of high school and I remember vividly sitting at my Grandma’s for our family Christmas while watching the ’98 Big XII championship game against A&M unfold. After high school I was blessed to play some college football myself and playing my own games on Saturdays was my only college football for those seasons. In 2001 I transferred to KSU and attended the season home opener against New Mexico State. This was my first experience at what would become Bill Snyder Family Stadium and this is where my love for Kansas State was plowed deep inside. It was my first game and I could never have imagined the incredible atmosphere that was Kansas State football. The next two years was an amazing time of walking the campus for classes, going to all sorts of athletics, and bleeding purple. I will never forget watching the 2003 Championship with my brother and buds jumping around the living room and going insane as we steamrolled OU. The entire game day had an anxiety and anticipation to it and the ending was beyond incredible. I transferred out of Kansas State after 2 ½ years and only because they didn’t have my major field and moved to Southern California which only made my love for KState deepen. Being around USC "fans" will make any true follower go nuts. Now I’m a true diehard fan defending KState for the indefensible when necessary (Prince) and touting our victories loud and proud whenever I can! (KSU over USC basketball multiple times!!) If you make it out to LA be looking for the black jeep driving around decked out with KState tags, flags and oversized Powercat wheel cover showing that EMAW is everywhere.

Basically been a K-State fan as long as I can remember, but not exactly a diehard one. I was aware of our football dominance in the 90s and I even watched a few of the games, but I wish looking back that I had been as fanatic as I am now. I missed out on a lot of it, unfortunately. But I was in high school and although I bled purple, I despised high school athletics and that’s part of the reason I didn’t pay as much attention as I could have.

But that all changed in 2001 when I enrolled at K-State and joined the marching band.

From day one of band camp, it was clear that my fellow “band nerds” were among the most diehard K-State fans you’ll ever encounter, starting with Dr. Tracz and continuing on down. That was a weird season, what with 9/11 delaying the home opener almost a month.

But when it finally came, my first live football game at KSU Stadium got me hooked. It was everything tied together – the atmosphere of the game, the patriotism of Fort Riley Day, the debut of an electric little jitterbug named Darren Sproles, you name it.

Since then, I’ve been a fanatic. I even went to games and cheered passionately for nice guy Wooly. I was a huge women’s basketball fan those first few years when Wecker and Ohlde were here. I’ve never really caught on volleyball, and I didn’t even start to pay attention to baseball until after Brad Hill got here, but basketball and football have had my full attention since the day I stepped foot on the campus of “the place I know full well, ’tis not in forest nor yet in dell.”

I grew up in Oklahoma in an OU family. When I started playing football in 5th grade, my coach said he would take us to an OU football game some day. That never happened, so I didn’t fall in love with college football at that time. I’ll skip the story of how I decided to go to school at K-State other than to say that I did not know the school really existed until I was a senior in high school.

As a freshman, my roommate in the dorms (a sophomore) advised me to buy football tickets before they sold out. Of course, what they had left were seats near the opposing teams allotment for band and fans. I experienced the game from a very different point of view than I do now ( well, maybe not so much since the fans that really travel well end up filling the rest of the North End Zone on gamedays). I still considered myself a OU football fan, but I quickly fell in love with K-State football as well. I learned two things that first year: 1.) I don’t like Nebraska, 2.) I REALLY hate the OU band. After undergoing the equivalent of A Clockwork Orange’s behavioral conditioning via Boomer Sooner, I found myself wanting to physically vomit whenever I heard that song. So watching OU on TV became a muted affair.

It wasn’t until the 2nd year of Bob Stoops (2000?), when OU beat K-State in Manhattan that I quit being a Sooner fan. The loss wasn’t what upset me, though. My girlfriend at the time worked at the hotel the OU team stayed in. She was not a K-State fan, but she would tell me about how the teams behaved while they stayed there. I will say that I have no proof of what that team did there, nor were there any reports that I had seen, but I was embarrassed by what she told me. That ended it…the Big 12 Championship game loss to the Sooners later that year was just insult to injury. From that moment on I have been 100% Wildcat fan.

I grew up in Neodesha, Kansas but my family originated from Manhattan. My grandpa was there on the Dairy Foods team when Earl Woods was there, infact graduated from Manhattan High with him. So of course being the spawn of K-State parents and fanatics themselves, there was little choice I even had.
I spent most of my childhood in trouble, quite frequently I was fighting some kid for talking smack on K-State whether it be a Sooner or Jayhawk(We’re desperately outnumbered funnily enough by people who have no ties to either school). Luckily there was a few passionate K-State families in the area mostly being farmers so we had at least people to revel with when we won.
I was there in 98’ when my heart was crushed by Sirr Parker and a questionable call(I cried for a good 15 minutes refusing to leave, and actually vomited later back at my Aunts though that was more due to the massive amounts of popcorn I went through during the game), I was there at the 2001 Cotton Bowl vs Tennessee sitting by their band and still to this day will start humming Good ol’ Rocky Top, and countless other Volleyball games(moms a v-ball coach), some baseball games, football games, womens basketball, and curiously enough I’m prob one of the few who went to several basketball games over that dreadful period of the time and didn’t personally watch a game in person in which we lost until the KU game this year as a student.
Anyway during this period as I said I was outnumbered. So obviously being as stubborn as K-State fan is aim to be, I wore purple A LOT and my house was called the purple house b/c apparently a few garden decorations featuring powercats mean your house is purple. I argued with anyone who said I should cheer for KU because they cheer for us(yet funnily enough make fun of you when you lose) or cheered for KU basketball, and K-State football(traitors). Then there was the OU fans 99% of the army of crimson we got in Neodesha have never even been to Norman and of the few native Oklahomans we had somehow cheered for Ok State, KU, and OU which still makes no sense to me. The greatest night of my fandom had to be obviously the 2003 Big 12 Championship Game, I had made many bets leading up to the game desperate for a victory never stopped believing(which even to me till that game, seemed idiotic) and did we ever win. I wore purple for 2 weeks straight and shoved it in ever wannabe Sooners face.
Anyway in 2007 I graduated now at the time I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do and since my mom being a teacher I went to Coffeyville Community College and lived with a bunch of Poke loving Okies, I did meats judging in fact with them and when it came time to thing about my next 2 years I wavered. Between my friends and Oklahoma State(who I always had a soft spot for some odd reason) where I knew I would have a great time and be comfortable with people I loved to tear up the town with, and Kansas State the school of my dreams but seemed rather empty of anyone I knew well. Evauntally the decision was made for me when I didn’t qualify for out of state coverage due to not quite making a 3.5(come on seriously a 3.4). I was quite unsure of how it would turn out until a aquaintance from my freshman year at coffeyville asked if I wanted to be roommates.
Of course though I doubted it for some odd reason I easily made a slew of friends at K-State through meats judging here, through my roommates friends, and just random people I saw at football tailgates. It’s a family here and it’s one of the reasons I reaffirmed my love for k-state: from doing the Wabash drunk, to waiting in line for College Gameday at 2am in bitterly cold weather), to being crushed with sadness at our loss that night, to indoctinarting a friend who had no real love of college sports but now bleeds purple just as passionately as I do(actually almost cried a bit when he called me wanting to know what the hell happened in that Missouri football game). We do it together for better or for worse, if you want to hang with my crew all you need to do is wear purple. I still love going back home and seeing all the people I graduated with and they’re all going to Pitt State but have KU plates pretending they are superior because they root for KU. I just smile and remind of them fact that I went to the school of my dreams, while they couldn’t handle anything more than staying an hour away from home and hanging out with the same people they did in high school.

I grew up in Wichita and my family, minus Mom, all went to K-State. My Grandfather had worked for the State Extension office and was involved in the work KSU did with helping farmers and ranchers in the state succeed. Growing up a K-State kid in the 80’s was rough, especially with KU beating up on us. But I still remember watching the game in Lawrence when the goal posts came down. I wore purple to school every day for 2 weeks.

I went to KSU 99-03 and have great memories, the USC game, the game where we beat NU by 1 point in the snow, one of my favorite games was when they brought the Delorian out and did a Back to the Future skit with new Willie and old Willie.

I also remember being kicked out of a class in Throckmorton in 00 with Steve Washington because I let him borrow a scan-tron card and the Professor got upset. Steve wasn’t an awesome K-State player, but it was still pretty cool. The C I got in the class wasn’t.

I had never watched a full football game before. I loved it. I had the chance to come to Manhattan several times (Boy’s State, Kansas Regents Honors Academy) and I just knew this was the place for me.

Thanks for the website guys. This is a great blog, and I’m happy to contribute how ever I can.

But you’ll never see me wear those colors. You’ll never find a sticker on my car. I don’t have a degree from KSU (see the very first post above) but I’ll always be wearing purple.

After reading all of these posts, I really do feel like the Old Fart that didn’t grow up and forget about college athletics. I first became a real KSU fan at the old Big 8 BB tournament at KS City, watching Willie Murrell lead KSU. He was an absolute thrill to watch play. I was there with my high school BB team. Okay, all you youngsters. Check the record books and find just how old I really am.

Every Man a Wildcat, Rock-em, Sock-em.