Snyder feature recalls 10-year-old ‘SI’ story

A recent Kansas City Star feature on Bill Snyder‘s returning to coach football at Kansas State opens with a scene of a house in St. Joseph. The house was chosen because it contains an apartment where Marionetta Snyder, a frail but determined single mother, raised the boy who would one day rescue the K-State program.

“It’s where a mother once took her son when it turned out the world was not an easy place to live,” Bill Reiter writes in the December 14 story. “It’s where the son learned from his mother what it means to be a man.”

After listing of some of Snyder’s achievements in Manhattan, Reiter purports to tell an untold story about the coach: “What we don’t know about Snyder begins in this house.” Reiter goes on to establish that Synder’s famous work ethic comes from his not wanting to his disappoint his beloved mother.

“What we’re about to learn is new…” Reiter writes at the close of his introduction. But that statement is not entirely true. A 1998 profile of Snyder in Sports Illustrated began outside the very same St. Joe apartment.