MANHATTAN — Ben Sinnott’s path to a college football career never came naturally.
Then again, the fact that he’s made himself one of the tight ends of the Big 12 shouldn’t come as a shock either. Kansas State coach Chris Klieman isn’t surprised.
“No, because I just know what a great athlete the boy is,” Klieman said of Sinnott, a 6-foot-4, 245-pound junior from his own hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. “From baseball to hockey to football to basketball to golf, this guy can do it, he really can.”
In fact, Sinnott did a little of everything at Columbus Catholic High School, which also happens to be Klieman’s alma mater. In addition to football, he played in baseball, golf, tennis and track and field.
And that’s not even counting his favorite sport, which wasn’t offered at his school.
“Hockey was my first love since I started when I was three,” said Sinnott, who played in a club league through high school. “That’s pretty much all I knew.
“But football has definitely evolved into that sport.”
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While golf, tennis, and track and field allowed Sinnott to showcase his athletic ability, football provided the only thing that made him love hockey.
“I didn’t want to play football until I could bat,” he said with a smile. “I didn’t play flag football or anything, but that probably came from hockey.
“I think it was like third or fourth grade and it was really fun. I loved it the moment I picked it up.”
Even when Sinnott realized that hockey wasn’t his ticket to college success, football recruiters didn’t break down his doors either. But through his local connections and seeing potential others may have missed, Klieman offered him the opportunity to continue at K-State.
“It wasn’t easy for Ben,” said Klieman. “He was a walk-on who came in here and deserved a chance. He was undersized — 205, 207, 210 pounds — and knew he had to change everything he did in the weight room and everything with his eating habits to stand a chance.
“It’s not easy when you don’t know if you’ll ever get a chance. He bought into everything. He changed everything to say, ‘I want to play. I don’t want to be just a part of his team. I want to play and be a difference maker.'”
When he first arrived in 2020, Sinnott was listed as a full-back, although that positional group was somewhat interchangeable with the tight end on the Wildcat offense at the time. A redshirt freshman in 2021, he had three carries for 12 yards and a touchdown with just two catches for 15 yards.
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But when Collin Klein took over as offensive coordinator at the end of this 2021 season, the tight end’s position became clearer and Sinnott took full advantage. In two years in the weight room with the Wildcats’ strength and conditioning coaches, he had gained more than 240 pounds without sacrificing his speed and agility.
As the season progressed, Sinnott became a favorite target of quarterbacks Adrian Martinez and then Will Howard when Martinez was out through injury. He had four catches for 80 yards at the Big 12 opener in Oklahoma, and then his real breakout game came on November 12 at Baylor, where he caught seven passes for 89 yards with two touchdowns in a 31-3 K-State blowout.
At the end of the season, he had 31 catches for 447 yards and four points.
“If you’re athletic and then gain confidence, Ben would tell you that,” Klieman said. “Once he gained confidence to say, ‘I can play at this level’ …it suddenly started clicking for him in his sophomore year in the redshirt.
“I saw a very confident kid who started believing more and I saw Will Howard and Adrian say, man, this kid is really good and he’s starting to believe how good he is. That’s why he’s such a matchup nightmare for people. “
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Nobody appreciates how far he’s come more than Sinnott himself.
“I’ve moved on here and it just means a lot to know that with the work, the time, the effort and the sweat, it all comes together,” he said. “It means a lot to me.”
At the end of last season, Sinnott was a first-team All-Conference selection by the Big-12 coaches, albeit at full-back. But Klieman believes that was just the beginning.
“He’s an all-American player, if he stays hungry he stays focused, which I think he will do,” said Klieman. “He and Will Howard are very close, and I think that’s a big deal because they watch a lot of movies together, they throw a lot together. I think everyone saw that these two were very much on the same page.
“A quarterback’s best friend is usually a tight end when the heat is on, and you know there’s a big body out there that you can throw it up at and the kid can come down with it.”
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A shoulder injury from last year forced Sinnott to sit out much of spring training but he and Howard will have plenty of time to work together over the summer.
“We have really good chemistry,” said Sinnott. “He’s definitely one of my best friends here. We’re super close on and off the pitch, so when we start playing it almost comes naturally.”
With Klieman hailing him as a potential All-American, Sinnott took it as confirmation of what it took to get to this point, but also motivation to keep moving forward.
“It’s really big and it means a lot to come from a guy like him,” Sinnott said. “It’s something that definitely needs to be thought about, but I’m not going to get into it.
“I’ll come day by day and think about what I have to do that day and things will take care of themselves.”
Arne Green lives in Salina and covers Kansas State University esports for the Gannett network. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @arnegreen.
