K-State football team glad to return to Manhattan after two road games

Over the past two weeks, the K-State football team has been one of the most traveled teams in college football.

Due to contractual rights and scheduling layovers from last season, the Wildcats were pitted against Louisiana-Lafayette in Lafayette, La., and UCLA in Pasadena, Calif., taking chartered flights out of Manhattan for each trip. Each time, the team departed Manhattan on Friday and returned the following Sunday.

To put that in perspective, that's more than 4,500 miles in a span of six days.

Though many travelers find long trips such as these mentally exhausting, redshirt-junior offensive lineman Wade Weibert said the Wildcats worked through the grueling travel schedules in order to prepare for their games against the Rajin' Cajuns and Bruins.

"Coach [Snyder] tells us they give us enough time that, if we go home and get it bed and get off our feet, there's plenty of time to recover," Weibert said. "It's like he told us when we actually got to California; he said there was a big time change, but we're young and resilient so we can take it."

Many members of the team were nearly overwhelmed when they took the field Saturday to see thousands of purple-clad fans throughout the Rose Bowl bleachers.

"We came out of that tunnel and it was almost completely packed," said sophomore safety Tysyn Hartman. "I don't know how we did it, but our fans definitely found a way to drive thousands of miles or fly thousands of miles to come out and support us."

Head coach Bill Snyder has often expressed his preference to play within the friendly confines of Snyder Family Stadium, particularly during the Wildcats' non-conference schedule. Playing back-to-back road games against non-Big 12 Conference teams was literally unheard of during Snyder's first head coaching stint.

In fact, the last time the Wildcats had consecutive games against non-conference opponents on the road was in 1972 – several years before any current player was born – when they traveled to Bringham Young and Arizona State.

Regardless of whether travel wore the team out or not, K-State appears happy to play a game on its own turf for the first time in three weeks.

"I think [Saturday's game] will be a good opportunity for us, coming back home," said junior quarterback Carson Coffman. "Tennessee Tech is no one to look past. They're going to be a good opponent for us to play in a home atmosphere."

Perhaps returning to Manhattan will result in a change of fortune for the Wildcats, who have dropped 10 of their last 11 away contests dating back to the 2007 campaign.

Weibert, who didn't travel with the team during his redshirt season in 2008, said he's appreciated the fans' effort to go support the team away from home. He also added that he loves playing in front of his home crowd and often becomes emotional when entering the atmosphere.

"I remember the UMass game, I went out and it kind of got me into tears," he said. "It's so powerful, so electric when you run out there. Knowing that I'm from this state and I'm going out there to represent my state and all these people are out here just to watch us perform our craft, you just well up with pride. It gives you that much more motivation to just be as perfect as you can."