Head Coach Bill Snyder opened up the session with these remarks:
Obviously we lost to an extremely fine football team. We made mistakes early in the ballgame that, you know, were very costly. As I said to our football team, no one gave up. I appreciated their effort. We didn’t play as well as we’re capable of playing.
But that takes absolutely nothing away from the University of Oregon. They’re a very, very talented team. We were beaten by a better team. We just didn’t play that way tonight, just made too many mistakes.
Senior Quarterback Collin Klein had these words to say about playing in his final game for Kansas State:
I mean, I’m just so blessed that God’s given me the opportunity to be here at K State, be part of this family, play with all of our guys, play for coach.
I mean, it’s hard. It’s not the way any of us wanted to go out. You know, that’s the way it goes.
Klein went on to say this about his year at KSU:
Well, I mean, that’s one of our team goals. That’s what coach tells us all the time. It’s what he said at the first meeting to all of us when he first got in, just trying to be the best we can be, improve from where we were the day before.
Again, I’m just so proud to be a part of a team that did that and didn’t allow anyone to tell us how good or bad we were going to be, not to let ourselves tell ourselves how good or bad we could be.
It’s overshadowed right now, but that is something to hang our hat on. I’m proud to have been a part of it.
Coach Snyder had these words to say about Klein’s career with the program:
Well, I think what I’ve shared so often, so many times. We have a lot of young people like that.
Collin is a wonderful young person. He is genuine. I appreciate that. If I had to say in one word, there’s a lot of things that describe Collin, but he wears it on his sleeve. He wears his faith on his sleeve. He wears his enthusiasm for the game on his sleeve. He wears his leadership on his sleeve. He wears the quality of person that he is on his sleeve. He’s not embarrassed by it by any stretch of the imagination.
To me, that just makes him so real and so genuine, and I appreciate that about him. There’s a lot of things you appreciate. He’s a wonderful family man. He’s a great teammate with his players. He’s a quality student. Obviously a quality athlete, as well.
But he makes the best out of everything that he has. He believes in those things that all of us ? I’ve overdone this I know ? but he strongly believes in all those things, those values that we talk about so often, that you and I want to teach our children.
Wide Receiver Chris Harper had this to say about his performance in tonight’s game:
We took an L. That’s the only thing that matters. The stats don’t matter. I could care less if I had a catch or not. We took an L. It’s the last game of our careers at K State, so I could care less what my numbers was.
He went on to say this about his transfer from Oregon and whether he caught up with his former teammates:
Not really. Different schedule. We really weren’t doing much throughout the week. No, I didn’t really get to talk to them a lot. I seen like one or two of them. It wasn’t like sit down and have lunch. I’m trying to beat these dudes. It’s not like trying to be friendly. I didn’t get to talk to them.