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

After an 8-4 regular season with many ups and downs, your Kansas State Wildcats have been selected to face the Rugters in the 2024 Rate Bowl. This is K-State’s fifth appearance in this special bowl, beginning with the 1993 Copper Bowl, which marked Bill Snyder and the Cats’ breakthrough onto the national stage. K-State is 3-1 in this game, winning in 1993, 2013 (Buffalo Wild Wings) and 2017 (Cactus), while losing in the 2001 Insight.com Bowl.

K-State is seeking its second straight 9-win season and third straight season with 9 or more wins against the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers, who are 7-5 this season and 4-5 in the Big 10. K-State and Rutgers have met on the football field only once, with the Knights winning 34-10 in the first Texas Bowl in 2006. That team, then a member of the Big East Conference, was also led by head coach Greg Schiano, although the Piscataway head coach left the NFL in 2011 for a brief, disastrous career in the NFL before getting back on his feet and eventually going to school from New Jersey returned in 2019.

Rutgers won its first four games this season, including a win at Virginia Tech and at home against Washington, but then endured a four-game losing streak with losses at Nebraska, against Wisconsin and UCLA, and at USC before finally falling A victory redressed the balance with consecutive victories against Minnesota and Maryland to become bowl eligible. They split their final two games, a loss to Illinois and a win against Michigan State, to end the season. Their best win was a 7-5 win over Minnesota, but two losses came to teams that finished the season 5-7. So really not much different than K-State.

These two teams are pretty evenly matched, although the oddsmakers give K-State the advantage. The stats look eerily similar, with average QB play, one rusher over 1,000 yards (although both starting backs, DJ Giddens and Kyle Monangai, have declared for the NFL Draft) and the leading receiver with just over 700 yards receiving. Both lost some backups to the transfer portal, but K-State took hits from starters Jacob Parrish (NFL Draft) and Carver Willis (Portal), and departed contributor Tre Spivey (Portal) opted to leave K-State before the bowl -Leave the game.

So it’s a bad decision in a relatively meaningless game for both teams. Hopefully we get a good game (or a blowout win for the Cats) before we start the long offseason without football.

We have kickoff at 4:30 p.m. CT for today’s game at Chase Field in Phoenix, AZ, and you can watch the action on ESPN (or online at WatchESPN.com) with Wes Durham (play-by-play) and Tom Luginbill track (analyst) and Dana Boyle (sidelines) on the phone.

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

Come on, cats!