The question came from the back, right portion of the room. Forty-eight Big 12 head coaches have come and gone since you became Kansas State's head coach. Does that make you feel old?
At 75, everything makes Bill Snyder feel old these days. He's only two years younger than Barry Switzer, after all. The same Barry Switzer who last coached in 1997.
Snyder's answer explained why he's stayed at Kansas State so long, when he assuredly could have moved on so many times in the two and a half decades since he first got the job.
"Probably the significant thing for me and I think I've learned this a long time ago when I was a young coach, started off in the high school level and moved to a lot of different places, and I was always one of those coaches that I wanted to be someplace else other than where I was," Snyder said. "In other words, I wanted to continue to climb. So when I was a high school assistant, I wanted to be a head coach. When I was a head coach, I wanted to be a college assistant. When I was a college assistant, I wanted to be a head coach. So that went on for a considerable period of time. And I was half in/half out, so to speak.
"And consequently I was not a very good football coach at all, probably not a very good person," he continued. "And I learned some time ago, probably 30 some odd years ago, that I needed to do it a little differently.
"And my decision was, simply put, that be where you are. And I chose to do that. And that allowed me, I think, to become better at things I was doing and never looked to move on. It wasn't significant to me. I valued where I was, where my family was and doing what we were doing, and that was kind of the approach that I've taken. And I think that's probably why I'm not one of those 48, I guess, that you're talking about."
Spoken like a guy who has seen four generations of coaches come and go.