1. Nope. Family will be in KC. Made plans six weeks ago, figuring this game wouldn’t mean anything. That’s the kind of season it’s been.

2. No. When the only comparison is Ron Prince, well, there’s not much to go on.

2b. Just a guess, but I’d say three years, max.

2c. I don’t see a successor in the mix. Some people think Vic Koenning, but I think he’s better as a DC. Some people think that Brent Venables may be in the mix now that Jon Wefald is no longer university president (there was apparently some bad blood between those two), but I’m not sure about that. As you mentioned, Gary Patterson is our No. 1 target at BOTC. From everything I’ve heard, in official as well as unofficial channels, that was a done deal last year, but someone screwed it up by leaking the word too early.

3. If he’s not, then surely Bill Callahan is.

4. Because you can’t hit what you can’t see. It’s the Darren Sproles principle.

…your just loft up softballs for them man…

1. My closest guess to reality for this team is probably the wins over Colorado, KU and Iowa State and the loss to Missouri. A team with a short, controlled spread passing game (MU) is probably going to beat us, because we haven’t shown we can stop that. We’re pretty effective against the run and teams that are impatient and try to stretch the field too much, but you can dink and dunk us to death.

2. Gotta slow down Suh, somehow. If he is a one-man wrecking crew, you could very well shut us out. While your offense looked better last week, I doubt they’re going to score 40 on us (although I wouldn’t rule it out, it’s the 2009 Big 12 North, after all). So it’s important that we have some offensive success and put a few points on the board.

3. It’s undoubtedly a good one. Missing out on a bowl game would certainly be tough to take, but the progress shown this year was tremendous. We established a competent running game, and our defense improved about 70 spots in the total defense standings. I’d kill for the extra practice time a bowl would provide, but we have some momentum going now.

4. I was at Arrowhead Stadium in 2003 when we annihilated Oklahoma to win the Big 12 championship. At that game, I was sitting next to a man who was probably about 65 years old, meaning he had seen everything K-State football had to offer. The dark old days when the team lost to I-AA teams in front of 30,000 empty seats. The hiring of Snyder and the turnaround. The heartbreak of 1998. This old guy was in awe the whole night. All those years, he had never really believed that K-State would ever win a conference championship, and that night he got to witness it firsthand.

sorry.