MANHATTAN — It should come as no surprise that Kansas State head football coach and Matt Wells someday would find themselves on the same staff instead of lining up across the field from one another.
The fact that it took 10 years was simply a matter of timing.
But here they are together at last, after Wells accepted Klieman’s job offer as quarterbacks coach, co-offensive coordinator and associate head coach.
Klieman often expressed his admiration for Wells, who took the head coaching job at Texas Tech for the 2019 season, the same year Klieman moved from North Dakota State to K-State. But the two of them go back farther than that.
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Kansas State football associate head coach Matt Wells, left, meets with Wildcats athletics director Gene Taylor before an October 2021 game in Lubbock, Texas, when Wells was head coach at Texas Tech.
“It started in my early days at Utah State, becoming a head coach and really looking out there at potential defensive coordinators, and just studying what they did at North Dakota State and how tough they played and how they ran to the football and how they tackled,” said Wells, whose first head coaching job was at his alma mater, where he compiled a 44-34 record in six seasons before taking the Texas Tech job. “That was important to me as an offensive guy being a head coach.
“And then I was like, ‘Who’s this guy coordinating this defense?’ And then I found out and we started a relationship, and I offered him the defensive coordinator’s job there at Utah State, and he said no. So, he turned me down and I said yes to him, so you have to fast-forward 10 years later.”
Klieman turned Wells down in part because in 2014 he would get the head coaching job at North Dakota State, where he won four FCS national…
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