Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder has offered a rambling, illogical attempt at a defense for his decision to block sophomore wide receiver Corey Sutton from transferring to another university. Days after claiming that he would “love for” Sutton to stay at Kansas State and was only blocking a transfer because of his personal interpretation of athletic “commitment,” Snyder has abruptly changed course—telling reporters that Sutton failed two drug tests, which he feels could have been reason to kick him off the team before he’d ever tried to transfer.
Snyder blocked all 35 of Sutton’s transfer requests, even those to D-II and FCS schools, without offering any remotely reasonable rationale. Sutton called Snyder a “slave master” in a series of since-deleted tweets this afternoon.
Snyder spends nearly two minutes trying to defend his decision in a clip captured by reporters. He begins by noting that, well, if any athlete can leave because he feels he’s not being treated with the respect he deserves, then every athlete will leave, and then where’s your team? (Makes you think...) He goes on to say that it’s clear who deserves respect here: “I’ve been around here for 28 years. That young man was in our program for less than two years.” He finally drops the drug test bomb—saying that he had never before kept a player on the team after two positive drug tests, but Sutton was allowed to stay because of “rules.”
Well, hey, here’s a thought in that vein—if all of the millionaire coaches who view unpaid athletes as assets to be controlled and manipulated just decided to transfer to fucking Mars, then where would we be?