Chris Klieman’s unusual rise from the FCS to Power 5 success

• College football reporter
• Joined ESPN.com in 2007
• Graduate of the University of Tennessee

Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor still has most of the emails, the ones essentially accusing him of hiring “his drinking buddy” when he named Chris Klieman the Wildcats’ head football coach on Dec. 10, 2018.

Taylor and Klieman had worked together at FCS powerhouse North Dakota State, which wins national championships at the rate most people pay taxes.

All Klieman did in his five seasons as North Dakota State’s head coach was win four FCS national titles. But that was hardly the narrative when he made the rare jump from the FCS ranks to being a Power 5 head coach.

It was more, “What the hell are you doing?” Taylor recalls with a laugh.

After all, not only did Klieman arrive in Manhattan, Kansas, with no FBS experience as a full-time assistant or head coach, but he was replacing a legend in Bill Snyder.

“It only takes one guy to believe in you and say, ‘He can get it done,’ whether you’re at North Dakota State, Kansas State or anywhere else,” Klieman said of Taylor, who had been hired a year and a half earlier as K-State’s AD. “Gene was that guy, and he was not worried about winning the press conference. So many people feel like they have to win the press conference. I guess that’s still a thing, and I don’t think I won the press conference. In fact, I know I didn’t win the press conference.”

But in his fourth season, Klieman did win the Big 12 championship, only the fourth conference title won by the Wildcats going back to 1934, when Pappy Waldorf and Kansas State won the Big 6 title.

“I know there were doubts, but I never doubted that our success at North Dakota State could translate to success at the Power 5 level,” said Klieman, whose Wildcats (10-3) will take on Alabama (10-2) in the Allstate Sugar Bowl on Dec. 31.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’ve learned a ton. It’s just been nuts for the last four years, but there was tremendous validation with the win over TCU and that what we are doing here is the right thing and that we’ve been doing it the right way.”

There were growing pains, particularly in 2020 during the pandemic. Klieman had to learn to delegate more with a larger support staff and analysts. He shifted his recruiting philosophy in terms of the way he evaluated prospects and making sure he was signing players who could match up with Oklahoma and Texas. Even his players’ diets were different as they ate at a performance-based training table as opposed to eating at the regular cafeteria with other students, as they did at North Dakota State.

“We made some adjustments,” Klieman said. “Shoot, we changed our defense. We changed our offense. But in the same respect, I’ll say what I’ve always said. Football is football, in my mind.”

And perhaps other Power 5 athletic directors will take notice. Good coaches are good coaches regardless of the level of football.

“I sure hope what we did this year opens the door for [current North Dakota State coach] Matt Entz and a lot of FCS coaches out there,” said Klieman, whose career coaching record is 102-32, including his first head job at Division III Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, in 2005.

This hiring cycle, two FCS coaches made the jump to Power 5 — Sacramento State’s Troy Taylor to Stanford and Jackson State’s Deion Sanders to Colorado.

At some point, Entz is likely to show up on somebody’s radar. He succeeded Klieman and has won two national titles; he has a chance for a third Jan. 8 when he leads the Bison against South Dakota State in the FCS championship game.

There are other worthy FCS coaches: Holy Cross’ Bob Chesney, Florida A&M’s Willie Simmons, Princeton’s Bob Surace, Samford’s Chris Hatcher, Montana State’s Brent Vigen and Idaho’s Jason Eck, to name a few. South Dakota State’s John Stiegelmeier probably should have gotten a shot a long time ago.

Klieman, 55, is especially unusual in that he got a Power 5 head-coaching job after spending virtually his entire career in the FCS or Division III ranks (with the lone exception being the 1997 season, when he was a Kansas graduate assistant). Even Jim Tressel, one of the most notable examples of a coach making the FCS-to-FBS move, was a longtime assistant at Ohio State before going to Youngstown State as head coach and then returning to Ohio State as head coach. Tressel, now the Youngstown State president, won national championships at both schools.

Jim Harbaugh went from the University of San Diego to Stanford in 2007. And before Tressel moved from Youngstown State to Ohio State in 2001, Hal Mumme went from Division II Valdosta State to Kentucky in 1999, and Frank Beamer from Murray State to Virginia Tech in 1987. There were a few others along the way, including Sparky Woods going from Appalachian State to South Carolina in 1989, Bobby Johnson from Furman to Vanderbilt in 2002, Paul Wulff from Eastern Washington to Washington State in 2008, and Mike London from Richmond to Virginia in 2010.

But spanning the past 35 years, the group of head coaches going straight from the FCS to a Power 5 school is quite small.

Even now, Klieman isn’t sure he would have gotten a shot at Kansas State had it not been for Taylor’s firsthand knowledge of his coaching abilities. The fact that Taylor had been at the FCS level as an athletic director before moving to Iowa as deputy AD and then to K-State also helped. Some athletic directors who have never worked at a lower level might be less likely to take a chance on a coach from a lower level.

“I’m fortunate and blessed because I had a guy that knew me. He saw me do this,” Klieman said. “It’s still about relationships with kids. It’s still about believing in kids. It’s still about motivating guys. It’s all of that wherever you’re coaching, and I think Gene said, ‘I want Chris in front of these kids because I think he and his staff can get the most out of them.'”

Never was that more apparent than this season. Kansas State suffered an early-season loss to Tulane at home and dropped a pair of close conference games to TCU and Texas. Needing to win out to make the Big 12 championship game, the Wildcats won their last three regular-season games, then beat TCU 31-28 in overtime to win the Big 12 title.

“The guys played their tails off and kept rising up when people doubted them,” Klieman said. “It was a fun season, and finishing it off with the Big 12 championship was huge. I’m glad TCU still got a chance to play in the playoff because I thought they were damn good.”

Taylor jokes that the Wildcats’ reward is getting to play Alabama at full strength with quarterback Bryce Young and outside linebacker Will Anderson Jr., two of the top prospects in the 2023 NFL draft who decided to play in the Sugar Bowl.

“And going up against a pissed-off Nick Saban because they didn’t make the playoff,” Taylor said laughing. “But our players want to play against the best, and that’s the way it should be. It’s the culture Chris has created and one that’s only going to grow.”

All Klieman knows is a winning culture. He took over for Craig Bohl at North Dakota State when Bohl left for Wyoming on the heels of an unbeaten season and the Bison’s third straight FCS national title.

Taylor remembers meeting in his basement with Klieman after the quarterfinal win that season until 3 o’clock in the morning to discuss the head-coaching position. Bohl had already announced that he was leaving.

Klieman’s presentation during the meeting was thorough and detailed, and he walked Taylor through the whole thing. The Bison were losing 25 seniors the following season, and Klieman asked what the expectations would be in Year 1. Taylor said his expectation was for Klieman to get North Dakota State back into the playoffs and make as deep a run as possible.

But there was a caveat.

“That’s my expectation. Now, the expectation here by the fans is that you get in the playoffs and win the whole thing,” Taylor told Klieman during that meeting. “That might not be fair, but that’s what is expected of you from the fan base.”

Klieman never flinched.

“He goes out his first year and wins a national championship,” Taylor said. “That’s who he is.”

And the only season Klieman didn’t claim the crown at North Dakota State, in 2016, the Bison beat No. 13 Iowa on the road and lost in the FCS semifinals to eventual national champion James Madison.

“It was miserable that whole offseason,” Klieman joked. “So even stepping up a level when I got to Kansas State, I knew all about pressure and knew I could do the job.”

Although he wasn’t part of the Power 5 coaching fraternity when he arrived at Kansas State, Klieman had been to several schools to speak at clinics, including Clemson, Georgia and Notre Dame. He said Dabo Swinney was especially supportive.

“We stayed in touch, and he was a huge help, just bouncing things off him,” Klieman said. “He’d text me after we won the national championship, and I’d text him when they won.”

One of the first people Klieman saw in Las Vegas earlier this month at the National Football Foundation awards dinner was Swinney.

“He gave me the biggest hug and told me how proud he was,” Klieman said. “He knew all about the journey I’d been on and what I had gone through to get where I am. It was neat to share that moment with him. He was genuinely happy for me, and I appreciate what all he’s done for me along my path.”

It’s a path Klieman hopes more of his FCS brethren get the opportunity to follow.

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