K-State’s Bill Snyder now under contract to coach until he’s 83

He won’t be retiring anytime soon.

Kansas State head coach Bill Snyder isn’t leaving the sidelines anytime soon — he’ll be coaching until he’s 83, folks (!). On Aug. 9, K-State announced Snyder has agreed to a new contract that extends him through 2022 in Manhattan. Snyder is college football’s oldest active head coach, turning 78 years old last October.

Shoutout to Grandpa Snyder, who I’m pretty sure will just coach forever at this point. The length of the new contract comes as a tiny bit of a surprise, given the reports last fall that Snyder was considering retirement, until he announced in Jan. 2018 he was returning as the Wildcats’ head coach this season. Snyder was diagnosed with throat cancer in February, but coached K-State during an eight-win season last year, capping it off with a Cactus Bowl victory over UCLA.

As Bill Connelly pointed out in his 2018 Kansas State preview, the more seemingly unpredictable Snyder’s future gets, the more he proves you wrong:

It becomes more difficult each year to find new things to write about Snyder. There are no new words left. Last year, I wrote that he wasn’t that far from becoming a double hall-of-fame coach. In 2016, I wrote that he was college football’s Bob Dylan. In 2015, I tried to read tea leaves regarding his eventual retirement; how naive of me.

I’m done speculating about such foolish things as when he’s going to retire and how long he can keep pulling off magic acts.

Sure, KSU appears to be trying to figure out its post-Snyder plan, and he’s not really helping.

And sure, there were some smoke and mirrors with last year’s late charge — KSU’s post-game win expectancy (which looks at key performance stats from a given game and says “You could have expected to win this game X percent of the time”) was below 50 percent for two of its five late wins.

Snyder is the oldest active head coach in college football heading into this season — he has Ohio’s Frank Solich beat by five years. Snyder coaching until age 83 would be pretty significant — there have been coaches who have continued in their 80s before. Amos Alonzo Stagg, coached his last season at 80 in 1943.

See you on the sidelines, Coach Snyder, and keep on keepin’ on.