2024 Kansas State Football: Rate Bowl vs. Rutgers

Welcome Wildcats fans, we have reached the end of the 2024 season. Congratulations, you survived once again.

After an 8-4 regular season that saw plenty of ups and downs, your Kansas State Wildcats were selected to face the Rugters in the 2024 Rate Bowl. This is K-State’s fifth appearance in this special bowl, starting with the 1993 Copper Bowl, which was the breakout celebration of Bill Snyder and the Cats on a national stage. K-State is 3-1 in this game, winning in 1993, 2013 (Buffalo Wild Wings) and 2017 (Cactus), while falling in the 2001 Insight.com Bowl.

K-State is looking for its second straight 9-win season and third straight with 9 or more wins, against the Scarlet Knights of Rutgerswhich was 7-5 this season and 4-5 in Big 10 play. K-State and Rutgers have only met on the football field once, with the Knights taking a 34-10 victory in the inaugural Texas Bowl back in 2006. The team, then a member of the Big East Conference, was also led by head coach Greg Schiano, though the main man in Piscataway left in 2011 for a brief, disastrous run in the NFL before bouncing around and eventually returning to the New Jersey school at the end of 2019.

Rutgers won its first four games this season, including a win at Virginia Tech and at home against Washington, but then went on a four-game slide with losses at Nebraska, vs Wisconsin and UCLA, and at USC before finally righting the ship with consecutive wins over Minnesota and at Maryland to become bowl eligible. They split their last two, a loss to Illinois and a win at Michigan State, to complete the season. Their best win was over 7-5 Minnesota, but two losses came at the hands of teams that finished 5-7 on the season. So not really a ton different than K-State.

These two teams are pretty evenly matched, although the oddsmakers give K-State the edge. Stats look eerily similar, with average QB play, a rusher over 1,000 yds (although both starters, DJ Giddens and Kyle Monangai, have declared for the NFL Draft), and the leading receiver at just over 700 yards receiving. Both have lost some backups to the transfer portal, but K-State has received hits from starters Jacob Parrish (NFL Draft) and Carver Willis (portal), and late contributor Tre Spivey (portal), who opted to leave K-State before the bowl- the fight.

So this is a toss up in a relatively meaningless game for both teams. Hopefully we get a good game (or a blowout win for the Cats) before we head into the long offseason without football.

We have a 4:30pm CT kickoff for today’s game from Chase Field in Phoenix, AZ, and you can catch the action on ESPN (or online via WatchESPN.com) with Wes Durham (Play-by-Play), Tom Luginbill (Analyst) and Dana Boyle (Sidelines) on the call.

If you don’t have ESPN or can’t access the stream, the game can be heard across 28-station K-State Sports Network with Wyatt Thompson (play-by-play), former K-State quarterback Stan Weber (analyst) and Matt Walters (sideline) calling the action. The game will also be on SiriusXM Satellite Radio Ch. 84, and available online at K-Statesports.comwith an ESPN Radio broadcast on SXM Ch. 80. Live stats are also available on k-statesports.com and social media updates (@KStateFB) will also be part of the coverage.

Go Cats!