Kansas State coach Bill Snyder managing cancer and questions about future
Which is why for the past few weeks, since finishing 33 treatments for throat cancer, part of Snyder’s daily routine has been handwriting thank-you notes to everyone who wrote him. Hundreds?
“Oh, more than that,” he says, adding with a trace of pride: “I finally caught up two days ago.”
Sitting, legs crossed, on a veranda overlooking a golf course, Snyder could for all the world be another retiree to the Arizona desert. Except he’s wearing a navy pinstripe suit (no tie). And if he’s relaxing now, a dining table just inside the villa is covered with files and paper, evidence of another offseason day’s work.
MORE COLLEGE FOOTBALL:
Already the oldest coach in college football, Snyder turns 78 in October. And after a difficult winter, he looks it. He appears to have lost weight. His silver hair has thinned. He speaks quietly — but then, he has always been soft-spoken.
“I feel fine,” Snyder says, and does not elaborate. But later in a 40-minute interview, he admits the aftereffects of the treatments — a debilitating fatigue — remain.
“They had warned me about that,” he says. “It can really knock you around a little bit.”
Somehow, he powered through the treatments, which for six weeks involved a schedule that regularly went something like this: Drive nearly two hours to Kansas City. Spend the night. Treatment in the morning, drive back, work in the office. Get up the next day and do it again.
“I was able to be in my office every day,” he says.
Even when Snyder was in Manhattan, his legendary hours were cut short. He worked from home more often but says the workload didn’t change much, just the location. During the Wildcats’ spring game last month, Snyder spent the second half watching from the coaches’ booth in the press box. Asked about it afterward, he told a reporter: “Don’t be curious.”
Comments
Post a Comment