Kolpack: Chris Klieman says college football ‘a disaster’

Fargo

When Chris Klieman says college athletics is a disaster, well, it’s a disaster. Most of us who have been covering college football for years know a common-sense guy who can speak the reality of a situation.

That would be Klieman.

He was the guy who, after a season-opening 38-35 loss at the University of Montana in 2015, said it would probably take every non-conference game and a bye week for his defense to figure things out. In the last five games of that season including four FCS playoff games, the Bison gave up an average of 7.2 points a game.

That included a 37-6 win over the Grizzles in a second round game, in which Klieman declared afterward that championships aren’t won in August.

The Kansas State head coach is facing a different kind of battle these days, the conflict known as the House vs. NCAA settlement. As part of that, the Power 4 teams will be required (just exactly when isn’t certain) to cap their football rosters at 105 players.

“Off the field, I still think the industry of college athletics is a disaster,” Klieman said at his most recent K-State press conference.

Specifically, he was referring to removing “a lot of kids” from the program. Most of those most likely won’t be impact players, or even challenge for a two-deep chart status, but that’s not Klieman’s concern.

He’s a champion of the walkon who busts his guts for five years. He appreciates a player paying his own way through school. He’s a booster of the player who balances a life of high academics and sheer work ethic in a football uniform. Once the 105 roster limit hits, he’ll no longer get to coach nearly as many.

Klieman was the guy in 2017 who put Bison fifth-year senior Keenan Hodenfield, a North Dakota 9-man high school walkon, on scholarship, a player who in his fourth year of spring football dislocated his ankle so bad in practice that it made those who saw it queasy.

Hodenfield actually immediately adjusted his ankle back into place in a moment of super human strength. He rehabbed the heck out of it over the summer and was back practicing in August. At that point, Klieman rewarded the warrior mentality with a scholarship.

Those moments will get dwindled at K-State.

“It sucks to be honest, there are a lot of kids who want to be here, want to stay here that we can’t have in the program,” Klieman said. “Kids that have put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this place.”

He went on to say he’s frustrated why the number is 105? Why not 110? Or 115? The coaches who are on the front lines, like Klieman, feel like they have no say in the matter.

Currently, the judge handling the House vs. NCAA settlement has tabled a decision, and in doing so put out the possibility of grandfathering the current players into not being part of the 105.

That may help the Kliemans of the world this month, but eventually not so much.

“I’m frustrated because a lot of these decisions are made without our input,” he said.

All of the House settlement talk is on top of the transfer portal. Seems like a long way for a guy like Klieman from the Keenan Hodenfield days, when he actually coached football.

“Our best players are getting contacted every day right now,” he said. “Maybe not them in particular but it’s their agents. This month of April is going to be craziness.”

Jeff would like to dispel the notion he was around when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, but he is on his third decade of reporting with Forum Communications. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, and the brother of a reporter, Jeff has worked at the Jamestown Sun, Bismarck Tribune and since 1990 The Forum, where he’s covered North Dakota State athletics since 1995.
Jeff has covered all nine of NDSU’s Division I FCS national football titles and has written three books: “Horns Up,” “North Dakota Tough” and “Covid Kids.” He is the radio host of “The Golf Show with Jeff Kolpack” April through August.