‘I can’t believe I’m sitting here today’: Kansas State Wildcats relish Big 12 title

No one is more qualified to speak about how much it means to this Kansas State football team to be immortalized as a group of Big 12 champions than Hayden Gillum.

The senior offensive lineman from Plainville grew up dreaming about playing for the Wildcats. So much so, that he fell asleep every night staring at a picture of Collin Klein holding up a trophy from the last time K-State won a conference title in 2012.

Gillum was barely recruited coming out of high school and joined the Wildcats as a walk-on. Contributing on special teams and making the travel roster as a blocking lineman on field goals felt like a dream come true when he was an underclassman. So you can imagine how good he felt when he rose up the depth chart and was named starting center this season. His journey culminated on Saturday when he helped his team beat TCU 31-28 in overtime at AT&T Stadium and he got to celebrate a Big 12 championship under raining confetti.

“I can’t believe I’m sitting here today,” Gillum said. “I’m living my dream. God has blessed me in so many ways. I could never have imagined that I would be here today. This has surpassed my expectations. I used to have a picture in my bedroom at home of Coach Klein and his Big 12 championship. I have to say it again: I’m living my dream. It’s a special feeling.”

Seemingly everyone inside the K-State locker room could relate in some way with Gillum.

This was a team of underdogs who fought and clawed their way back to an achievement few expected them to win. K-State was picked to finish fifth in the preseason Big 12 poll. The Wildcats were left for dead when they suffered a loss in nonconference play to Tulane. They were dropped in the top 25 when they fell short against TCU and Texas in their regular-season matchups.

A championship season felt impossible when starting quarterback Adrian Martinez was lost, not once but twice. And yet, here the Wildcats are behind a quarterback (Will Howard) who might be the most improved player in the country, a running back (Deuce Vaughn) who was deemed too small by many college recruiters and a defensive end (Felix Anudike-Uzomah) who only had one scholarship offer from a power-conference team coming out of high school.

Some even had their doubts about K-State’s coach when athletic director Gene Taylor hired him four years ago to replace legendary coach Bill Snyder. And yet, here Chris Klieman is with a Big 12 championship and a trip to the Sugar Bowl on his resume. Turns out, all those FCS championships he won at North Dakota State weren’t a fluke.

“I am fortunate to be here,” Klieman said. “Gene Taylor took a chance on a FCS coach when not a lot of people would. He believed in me and us. And then coming here, I look at these guys that believed in us as a coaching staff when there was a coaching change. They stuck with us.”

Vaughn, who was named Most Outstanding Player of the Big 12 championship game after rushing for 130 yards and a touchdown, believed in Klieman’s vision when Vaughn committed to the Wildcats out of Round Rock, Texas.

This might be Vaughn’s final season with the Wildcats, as he will be eligible for the 2023 NFL Draft after torching Big 12 defenses for the past three seasons. He hasn’t made up his mind on his future yet. But he went out with a bang if this was his penultimate game in a K-State uniform.

Moments like this are why he came to K-State.

“When I got recruited to come, Coach Klieman told me we were going to build a culture that could win championships,” Vaughn said. “It was going to be built on player leadership. We built that. Everyone in that locker room feels excited right now. We have battle through adversity, the good and the bad and everything that we have been through has brought us closer together. Man, this is my family.”

Senior linebacker Daniel Green could have left for the NFL after last season, but he decided to return because he thought this team had a shot at winning a championship.

“I didn’t want to miss out on this,” Green said.

He made sure the Wildcats won on Saturday by coming up with some key plays, including a ferocious hit against TCU quarterback Max Duggan in the second half and a goal-line tackle against Kendre Miller in overtime.

Julius Brents transferred to K-State after starting out his career at Iowa. He was ready for a change. But he wasn’t going to leave a successful program like that for just any place. He wanted to go somewhere where he could win a trophy. His decision was validated on Saturday, especially when he came up with a key interception in the end zone at the start of the fourth quarter.

“I knew I was walking into something that was very special,” Brents said. “I thought we had a team that could win the Big 12 championship last year. Obviously, that didn’t accomplish that, but I knew we had a real good shot coming back this year. Here we are now.”

The Wildcats have only been here twice before.

They won their first Big 12 championship in 2003 when they pulled the upset of all upsets against No. 1 Oklahoma and won going away 35-7. Klein, who is now the offensive coordinator at K-State, led the Wildcats to another title in 2012 with an 11-1 season that featured an 8-1 run through conference play. There was no league championship game that season, so the team celebrated at home on senior day following a win over Texas.

K-State also experienced heartbreak on this stage way back in 1998 when it lost in overtime against Texas A&M.

Conference championships haven’t been common in Manhattan. This team won one, and it will long be remembered for its accomplishment.

It won’t be long before kids living in small Kansas towns hang posters of this team up in their homes.

“This team has been special since the moment we came together,” Howard said. “We have got a really special group of guys, top to bottom, even the guys who never dressed. We all played a part in this. We are a resilient team. We knew it wasn’t going to be perfect. We were going to face some drawbacks and whatnot, and we knew today’s game was going to be a fight. It just shows the character of our team.”