Same Passion, New Role for Ilalio
May 15, 2026 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
The contagious smile, the one that the team captain wore time and time again while encouraging his Kansas State teammates during a trying 2025 football season, is ever-present as former defensive tackle Damian Ilalio slides onto a black leather couch in the fourth-floor lobby of the Vanier Family Football Complex over the 2 o'clock hour on Tuesday in sunny Manhattan.
For the next 53 minutes, the former four-year letterwinner turned defensive graduate assistant, will talk. Ilalio played in 41 games with 28 starts over the last four seasons, helping K-State to 34 wins and a 2022 Big 12 Championship — a 31-28 overtime win against No. 3 TCU made possible in part to Ilalio helping key a vicious stop on 4th and goal inside the 1-yard line in overtime, which eventually led to K-State's game-winning field goal. While dear to the hearts of K-Staters, Ilalio during his interview never mentions the heroic play, which was arguably the best and most important defensive stop in the history of K-State football. Bragging? That's just not his style.
Curiously, the 6-foot-2 Ilalio, who played at 300 pounds last season, looks to be 300 pounds no longer and he walks to the black couch and takes a seat. His gray K-State t-shirt appears loose. He's dropped some weight.
"Just had surgery two weeks ago, so I'm gaining a little bit back," he says, smiling and lifting his right arm. "Right biceps. It was all tangled up and messed up. It was a SLAP tear (Superior Labrum, Anterior to Posterior) where the biceps tendon attaches to the shoulder socket. It was weird. Usually, they just tear, but my biceps flipped and then tore and then flipped again.
"Rehab is coming along. I just got my stitches out today, so it's going all right. I played with the injury for two years. It hurt a lot last season. My left shoulder is messed up, too, but I'm not going to get it done. I don't want another rehab. With the biceps, I was having trouble picking up the kids, and that's important, and it's why I got it fixed. I don't need my left shoulder. I'll be all right."
On the contrary, the 23-year-old Ilalio needed his shoulder at least a little bit on Monday to help celebrate the third birthday of his daughter, Oakley. Early to rise to make breakfast for his family before heading to Vanier, Ilalio got his work done in time for a birthday date at Leap, the local trampoline park in Manhattan. Oakley's birthday came exactly four months after the birth of Damian and wife Morgan's first son, Phoenix, who was born on January 12.
"Phoenix, like the bird, like the city," Ilalio says. "Me and Morgan, we contemplated the idea at the Rate Bowl. We thought about where we were in life and what we wanted, so at the Rate Bowl in Phoenix, we were just thinking of names, and one of our good friends lives in Phoenix, and we had said, 'Phoenix' like eight times. I was like, 'That's a nice name. That could be really cool.' Morgan said, 'I like that name.' The name made the final cut. It's a cool name."
Another cool name is Damian Ilalio, who has become familiar in the hallways of the fourth floor of Vanier, where he sits in defensive meetings with assistant coaches and other staff, learning the intricacies of the defensive scheme being implemented by new defensive coordinator Jordan Peterson, who engineered great defenses the past two years at Texas A&M, and whose "knowledge of the game is insane," in the words of Ilalio. "His breakdown of our scheme and our defense is crazy because he knows what to do versus anything," Ilalio says.
Ilalio had an inkling that he'd be in a defensive room this season. He just didn't know it'd be at K-State. In the spring of 2025, four different K-State assistant coaches took turns encouraging Ilalio, a spring 2025 graduate in athletic training, to consider donning the polo shirt and ballcap and getting a promising start on a career in coaching. That lit a spark under Ilalio, who says that "it just felt right" and that "being able to help other people has always been my goal."
A whirlwind hit soon as Ilalio played his final game in a 24-14 win over Colorado on Senior Day on November 29 at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
"I was really excited the entire week leading up to the Colorado game," Ilalio says. "It was bliss for me, honestly. A lot of people asked me why I wasn't sad. My mom and my wife were both like, 'Why aren't you crying?' I was like, 'Man, this is great.' I wanted to make it as memorable as I could so I could hold onto that feeling as long as I could. I never stopped smiling. I was enjoying the moment. It was a great week and a great game and I was thinking about a bowl game. Then things shook out how they did and there was no bowl game, I was still OK with it. I look back on it fondly."
Then came the phone call a few days later as the Ilalio family drove from lunch to the park. A K-State player in a team group chat posted a story indicating that seventh-year K-State head coach Chris Klieman was set to retire. Close friend senior teammate Uso Seumalo phoned Ilalio and they shared their shock over the report. Shortly after, Ialio received a text requesting that all players attend a 2:00 p.m. meeting inside the team theater room.
"There were a lot of people there who don't usually attend those meetings," Ilalio says. "Coach Klieman walked in and said, 'We're not having a funeral, guys.' Then he broke the news to us. It was very emotional, very shocking, but I'm glad he was at peace with his decision."
Shortly after, Ilalio began thinking ahead and pondering the future. In his mind, he already knew who the next head coach would be: Collin Klein.
"I thought, 'Who could come in after Coach Klieman?' But I knew it had to be Coach Klein," Ilalio says. "I didn't know Coach Klein's plans. I knew he was at Texas A&M and going to the College Football Playoff, but I had a feeling from when Coach Klein was offensive coordinator at K-State that he showed that he loved K-State probably more than anybody. You could hear it in how he'd talk about it."
When Klein, one of the finest players in K-State history and a 2012 Heisman Trophy Finalist, was hired as K-State head coach on December 4, it put Ilalio's mind at ease — both for himself and for the program.
"I was really excited, partially because I knew I was going to ask Coach Klein if I could be a graduate assistant here," Ilalio says, "so having that prior connection with Coach Klein made me excited for it. But also having Coach Klein specifically was really cool, because I don't think anybody shows their love for K-State more than him.
"It was really cool to know that the program was going to be taken care of after Coach Klieman, and it was really nice to know that I already knew Coach Klein, so I might be able to get a job."
Exactly one month passed. Klein had hired a bulk of his coaching staff. Little did Klein know on January 4, amidst the tussle and bustle of meeting with potential transfer players and their families touring Vanier, that Klein would also spend a few moments discussing another potential addition to his coaching staff.
"I came up here on Wednesday, January 4, and it was pretty busy around here," Ilalio says. I just hung out in the little waiting section by the coaches' offices. There were some official visits going on for some transfer guys. I visited with defensive line coach Buddy Wyatt a little bit. Coach Wyatt told me, 'Just sit over there and wait for Coach Klein to come out of his office.' So, that's what I did. I caught Coach Klein as he passed by. He pulled me into his office, and our talk went really well. He asked me why I wanted to coach, and I said, 'Helping people is part of my purpose on earth. It's what I feel like I'm meant to do, and I feel like I can help a lot of people in this capacity.' I felt like I'd be really good at it, and I had a lot of practice last year, and it's what I wanted to do in the future.
"I put my phone ringer on and had my phone sitting in front of me on Friday and Saturday. Then Coach Klein called and told me I was hired. And it was awesome."
Less than 48 hours later, Ilalio entered the doors to Vanier for the first time as a member of the K-State coaching staff. When he reached the fourth floor, he found himself in the middle of controlled chaos, as football assistant coaches were showing potential transfer players and their families around the facility. Ilalio, always outgoing and eager to help, decided to make use of his presence. He sat in a chair by the receptionist's desk and did his part to help the K-State football family business.
"Anytime a family came through, I smiled and introduced myself," Ilalio says. "Being able to be sociable and just be myself, I'd just finished playing, and I was a team captain from this past year who could provide some information and knowledge. So, I sat until a family approached and stood up and introduced myself and we'd talk. When one family left, I spoke to the next family. I talked with the family of Austin Ramsey, a defensive tackle from Kentucky who signed with K-State, and they asked me questions. Then I spoke with another defensive tackle, Kamari Burns, who transferred from Cincinnati, along with his family. It was really cool being able to talk to those guys and now I get to coach them."
Ilalio pauses, his eyes fixed on K-State's bowl trophies placed upon shelves on the other side of the lobby.
"It wasn't as weird as coming into the building as a coach for the first time," he says. "It was more like I was coming into a building that I always knew, but I was just going to do something that I'd never done before. And I'm grateful. It's a great thing to stay at home."
Today, home is relatively quiet, as the assistant coaches are scattered across the country, in search of the next crop of players who are interested in becoming a part of the "new old school" and yearn to "live in physicality."
"In May, for me with coaches on the road, I'm a little bit more flexible with my time," Ialio says. "During spring ball and when the season hits, it's really hard to get time outside of football, and so the older coaches let me know that now's the time to fix your car — which I did the first day that we had off — or go to the dentist, and take care of all those kinds of things.
"Really, I try to get here early, because I wake up early anyway, at around 6:00 a.m. on my own. I enjoy waking up and making breakfast and hanging out with my family before I have to go. Next week when all the coaches get back we'll go into another phase. I've learned that the schedule is in phases, so right now I'm enjoying the time that we have to just get our work done and do our business."
Today, home — Ilalio's office home, at least — is a non-descript office with chairs and computers.
"This morning, I had my post-operation appointment when I got my stitches out on my biceps, and then I came here and I met with some of the guys this morning and did some opponent breakdowns," Ilalio says. "This morning, I met with defensive tackle Patrick Tackie and one of our new additions, Elijah Jackson, another defensive tackle. I met with them, went over defense installation and reviewed various things from the spring.
"Last week, I reached out to the guys, I texted in our group chat and said, 'If you guys want to meet, I'll be here.' I'm probably the only guy they can go to that isn't on the road. I try to let them know and guys have texted me back and have come up on their own, which has been great and shows their commitment. It's a testament to them for using it. I try to get them as prepared as I can."
When Ilalio isn't tutoring current players, he's immersed in study of his own that encompasses hours upon hours of review, replay, rewind, and rewatch — focusing on every detail and tendency of every single play that the coaching staff can use to its advantage in preparation for opponents in the fall.
"Right now, my responsibility is to go through all the opponents for the 2026 season," Ilalio says. "I'll tag every play with our language and with our verbiage and I'll pretty much dissect each play the opponent's offense is running.
"There are a lot of clips so we're trying to do it as accurately as we can, check and double check. I've probably watched every single clip of every single game probably five or six times."
Ilalio wears a gray K-State t-shirt, sweat shorts and a pair of white slippers as he lounges on the couch and discusses his life. A man wears slippers when he's home. And Ilalio is home.
"It's a blessing," he says. "That's the best way to put it. I could be someplace else having to go into this brand new system and brand new scheme and brand new everything. Obviously, we have new coaches here at K-State, and I'm able to help show some of the coaches where things are and I get to share with them the history of K-State football.
"It's really cool that I'm able to do that and be here at K-State and still learn. But it's not like they just gave me the job, and I sit around all day and do whatever I want. There are demands and expectations. K-State has been a part of my life for five years and I care a lot about this place and this program. For me to still be involved, when we win games, I can say that I was still a part of those wins. That's really important for me to be able to do in my first year as a graduate assistant. It's awesome. It's a blessing.
"I'm very grateful that I'm able to stay at K-State."
Ilalio will sit in the coaches' booth at K-State football games. And that'll different. But at times, he does wonder what it will be like to come out of the tunnel that first time in the season opener against Nicholls on September 5 at Bill Snyder Family Stadium — this time as "Damian Ilalio, defensive graduate assistant," — a man who's moments away from his first-ever game as a coach.
"I don't want to think about it too much, because I start getting really excited, hut it's going to be awesome," he says. "I'm going to be ready. I almost feel a bigger responsibility now that I'm doing this for the players. It's not necessarily on me to go and make the play. My job is to put them in the best position to make the play and win games. For me, that's almost more pressure because now I have a bunch of people relying on me in a different sense.
"When I was playing, if Uso wasn't on the same page as me, I could make up for it with a play. Now my responsibilities are different, and it could affect how players are thinking. I remember our student coach used to make this sheet filled with stats and tendencies and I studied it throughout the week as a player and that really helped me go into the game and anticipate what was going to happen and be able to make plays and do my job. That really helped me. Now I'm on that side making the sheets and I feel a really big responsibility and I'm ready to get to work, I'm ready to do all that stuff, and come game time, it's going to be pretty similar, but I'm going to be very locked in, so I don't let anybody down. It's a different beast being able to help people to put them into that position. It'll be a little bit more serious, honestly, and a lot more aggressive, but it'll still be really fun."
When Ilalio makes his way to the K-State coaches' booth high above Bill Snyder Family Stadium, he'll see Klein down below on the sideline, a man who cares about K-State perhaps more than any other, and who Ilalio remembers fondly from the first time they met in the fall of 2021.
"I can tell you what struck me most before I even talked to Coach Klein back then was the way he carried himself," Ilalio says. "He carries himself with this presence. Whenever I looked at him, I always thought, 'That's one competitive dude.' He was a coach that's very competitive. A lot of people don't realize it because he's not a yeller or screamer, and he's calmer and more collected, but Coach Klein is fiercely competitive. He's a legend here. I'd hear stories about Coach Klein and what he did on the field as a player. I heard about crazy moments, upsets, and crazy touchdowns. But the biggest moment where I was like, 'Wow,' was when I went down to the weight room my freshman year. On a chart, it showed that Collin Klein set the bench-press record for quarterbacks at 395 pounds.
"I said, 'He benched 395 as a quarterback? That's crazy. This guy is different.'"
Ilalio offers a big smile and wags his head at the memory and moment that he realized that Klein was simply different. And times are different since 300-pound Ilalio in full uniform embraced Oakley, who sprinted toward her daddy on the football field during the Senior Day ceremony on November 29. The 23-year-old who secretly nursed an ugly screwed-up, flipped-around, tangled right biceps for two seasons because of his love for the game and for K-State, now has two healthy arms for big bear hugs for his children inside their loving home in the Little Apple.
Summer is time for walks in the park and playtime in the grass. Eventually, the morning wake-ups will grow earlier, and as fall nears, the mornings will grow darker and colder.
Damian will kiss Oakley and Phoneix goodbye.
Daddy has to go to work.
The contagious smile, the one that the team captain wore time and time again while encouraging his Kansas State teammates during a trying 2025 football season, is ever-present as former defensive tackle Damian Ilalio slides onto a black leather couch in the fourth-floor lobby of the Vanier Family Football Complex over the 2 o'clock hour on Tuesday in sunny Manhattan.
For the next 53 minutes, the former four-year letterwinner turned defensive graduate assistant, will talk. Ilalio played in 41 games with 28 starts over the last four seasons, helping K-State to 34 wins and a 2022 Big 12 Championship — a 31-28 overtime win against No. 3 TCU made possible in part to Ilalio helping key a vicious stop on 4th and goal inside the 1-yard line in overtime, which eventually led to K-State's game-winning field goal. While dear to the hearts of K-Staters, Ilalio during his interview never mentions the heroic play, which was arguably the best and most important defensive stop in the history of K-State football. Bragging? That's just not his style.
Curiously, the 6-foot-2 Ilalio, who played at 300 pounds last season, looks to be 300 pounds no longer and he walks to the black couch and takes a seat. His gray K-State t-shirt appears loose. He's dropped some weight.
"Just had surgery two weeks ago, so I'm gaining a little bit back," he says, smiling and lifting his right arm. "Right biceps. It was all tangled up and messed up. It was a SLAP tear (Superior Labrum, Anterior to Posterior) where the biceps tendon attaches to the shoulder socket. It was weird. Usually, they just tear, but my biceps flipped and then tore and then flipped again.
"Rehab is coming along. I just got my stitches out today, so it's going all right. I played with the injury for two years. It hurt a lot last season. My left shoulder is messed up, too, but I'm not going to get it done. I don't want another rehab. With the biceps, I was having trouble picking up the kids, and that's important, and it's why I got it fixed. I don't need my left shoulder. I'll be all right."
On the contrary, the 23-year-old Ilalio needed his shoulder at least a little bit on Monday to help celebrate the third birthday of his daughter, Oakley. Early to rise to make breakfast for his family before heading to Vanier, Ilalio got his work done in time for a birthday date at Leap, the local trampoline park in Manhattan. Oakley's birthday came exactly four months after the birth of Damian and wife Morgan's first son, Phoenix, who was born on January 12.
"Phoenix, like the bird, like the city," Ilalio says. "Me and Morgan, we contemplated the idea at the Rate Bowl. We thought about where we were in life and what we wanted, so at the Rate Bowl in Phoenix, we were just thinking of names, and one of our good friends lives in Phoenix, and we had said, 'Phoenix' like eight times. I was like, 'That's a nice name. That could be really cool.' Morgan said, 'I like that name.' The name made the final cut. It's a cool name."
Another cool name is Damian Ilalio, who has become familiar in the hallways of the fourth floor of Vanier, where he sits in defensive meetings with assistant coaches and other staff, learning the intricacies of the defensive scheme being implemented by new defensive coordinator Jordan Peterson, who engineered great defenses the past two years at Texas A&M, and whose "knowledge of the game is insane," in the words of Ilalio. "His breakdown of our scheme and our defense is crazy because he knows what to do versus anything," Ilalio says.
Ilalio had an inkling that he'd be in a defensive room this season. He just didn't know it'd be at K-State. In the spring of 2025, four different K-State assistant coaches took turns encouraging Ilalio, a spring 2025 graduate in athletic training, to consider donning the polo shirt and ballcap and getting a promising start on a career in coaching. That lit a spark under Ilalio, who says that "it just felt right" and that "being able to help other people has always been my goal."
A whirlwind hit soon as Ilalio played his final game in a 24-14 win over Colorado on Senior Day on November 29 at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
"I was really excited the entire week leading up to the Colorado game," Ilalio says. "It was bliss for me, honestly. A lot of people asked me why I wasn't sad. My mom and my wife were both like, 'Why aren't you crying?' I was like, 'Man, this is great.' I wanted to make it as memorable as I could so I could hold onto that feeling as long as I could. I never stopped smiling. I was enjoying the moment. It was a great week and a great game and I was thinking about a bowl game. Then things shook out how they did and there was no bowl game, I was still OK with it. I look back on it fondly."
Then came the phone call a few days later as the Ilalio family drove from lunch to the park. A K-State player in a team group chat posted a story indicating that seventh-year K-State head coach Chris Klieman was set to retire. Close friend senior teammate Uso Seumalo phoned Ilalio and they shared their shock over the report. Shortly after, Ialio received a text requesting that all players attend a 2:00 p.m. meeting inside the team theater room.
"There were a lot of people there who don't usually attend those meetings," Ilalio says. "Coach Klieman walked in and said, 'We're not having a funeral, guys.' Then he broke the news to us. It was very emotional, very shocking, but I'm glad he was at peace with his decision."
Shortly after, Ilalio began thinking ahead and pondering the future. In his mind, he already knew who the next head coach would be: Collin Klein.
"I thought, 'Who could come in after Coach Klieman?' But I knew it had to be Coach Klein," Ilalio says. "I didn't know Coach Klein's plans. I knew he was at Texas A&M and going to the College Football Playoff, but I had a feeling from when Coach Klein was offensive coordinator at K-State that he showed that he loved K-State probably more than anybody. You could hear it in how he'd talk about it."
When Klein, one of the finest players in K-State history and a 2012 Heisman Trophy Finalist, was hired as K-State head coach on December 4, it put Ilalio's mind at ease — both for himself and for the program.
"I was really excited, partially because I knew I was going to ask Coach Klein if I could be a graduate assistant here," Ilalio says, "so having that prior connection with Coach Klein made me excited for it. But also having Coach Klein specifically was really cool, because I don't think anybody shows their love for K-State more than him.
"It was really cool to know that the program was going to be taken care of after Coach Klieman, and it was really nice to know that I already knew Coach Klein, so I might be able to get a job."
Exactly one month passed. Klein had hired a bulk of his coaching staff. Little did Klein know on January 4, amidst the tussle and bustle of meeting with potential transfer players and their families touring Vanier, that Klein would also spend a few moments discussing another potential addition to his coaching staff.
"I came up here on Wednesday, January 4, and it was pretty busy around here," Ilalio says. I just hung out in the little waiting section by the coaches' offices. There were some official visits going on for some transfer guys. I visited with defensive line coach Buddy Wyatt a little bit. Coach Wyatt told me, 'Just sit over there and wait for Coach Klein to come out of his office.' So, that's what I did. I caught Coach Klein as he passed by. He pulled me into his office, and our talk went really well. He asked me why I wanted to coach, and I said, 'Helping people is part of my purpose on earth. It's what I feel like I'm meant to do, and I feel like I can help a lot of people in this capacity.' I felt like I'd be really good at it, and I had a lot of practice last year, and it's what I wanted to do in the future.
"I put my phone ringer on and had my phone sitting in front of me on Friday and Saturday. Then Coach Klein called and told me I was hired. And it was awesome."
Less than 48 hours later, Ilalio entered the doors to Vanier for the first time as a member of the K-State coaching staff. When he reached the fourth floor, he found himself in the middle of controlled chaos, as football assistant coaches were showing potential transfer players and their families around the facility. Ilalio, always outgoing and eager to help, decided to make use of his presence. He sat in a chair by the receptionist's desk and did his part to help the K-State football family business.
"Anytime a family came through, I smiled and introduced myself," Ilalio says. "Being able to be sociable and just be myself, I'd just finished playing, and I was a team captain from this past year who could provide some information and knowledge. So, I sat until a family approached and stood up and introduced myself and we'd talk. When one family left, I spoke to the next family. I talked with the family of Austin Ramsey, a defensive tackle from Kentucky who signed with K-State, and they asked me questions. Then I spoke with another defensive tackle, Kamari Burns, who transferred from Cincinnati, along with his family. It was really cool being able to talk to those guys and now I get to coach them."
Ilalio pauses, his eyes fixed on K-State's bowl trophies placed upon shelves on the other side of the lobby.
"It wasn't as weird as coming into the building as a coach for the first time," he says. "It was more like I was coming into a building that I always knew, but I was just going to do something that I'd never done before. And I'm grateful. It's a great thing to stay at home."
Today, home is relatively quiet, as the assistant coaches are scattered across the country, in search of the next crop of players who are interested in becoming a part of the "new old school" and yearn to "live in physicality."
"In May, for me with coaches on the road, I'm a little bit more flexible with my time," Ialio says. "During spring ball and when the season hits, it's really hard to get time outside of football, and so the older coaches let me know that now's the time to fix your car — which I did the first day that we had off — or go to the dentist, and take care of all those kinds of things.
"Really, I try to get here early, because I wake up early anyway, at around 6:00 a.m. on my own. I enjoy waking up and making breakfast and hanging out with my family before I have to go. Next week when all the coaches get back we'll go into another phase. I've learned that the schedule is in phases, so right now I'm enjoying the time that we have to just get our work done and do our business."
Today, home — Ilalio's office home, at least — is a non-descript office with chairs and computers.
"This morning, I had my post-operation appointment when I got my stitches out on my biceps, and then I came here and I met with some of the guys this morning and did some opponent breakdowns," Ilalio says. "This morning, I met with defensive tackle Patrick Tackie and one of our new additions, Elijah Jackson, another defensive tackle. I met with them, went over defense installation and reviewed various things from the spring.
"Last week, I reached out to the guys, I texted in our group chat and said, 'If you guys want to meet, I'll be here.' I'm probably the only guy they can go to that isn't on the road. I try to let them know and guys have texted me back and have come up on their own, which has been great and shows their commitment. It's a testament to them for using it. I try to get them as prepared as I can."
When Ilalio isn't tutoring current players, he's immersed in study of his own that encompasses hours upon hours of review, replay, rewind, and rewatch — focusing on every detail and tendency of every single play that the coaching staff can use to its advantage in preparation for opponents in the fall.
"Right now, my responsibility is to go through all the opponents for the 2026 season," Ilalio says. "I'll tag every play with our language and with our verbiage and I'll pretty much dissect each play the opponent's offense is running.
"There are a lot of clips so we're trying to do it as accurately as we can, check and double check. I've probably watched every single clip of every single game probably five or six times."
Ilalio wears a gray K-State t-shirt, sweat shorts and a pair of white slippers as he lounges on the couch and discusses his life. A man wears slippers when he's home. And Ilalio is home.
"It's a blessing," he says. "That's the best way to put it. I could be someplace else having to go into this brand new system and brand new scheme and brand new everything. Obviously, we have new coaches here at K-State, and I'm able to help show some of the coaches where things are and I get to share with them the history of K-State football.
"It's really cool that I'm able to do that and be here at K-State and still learn. But it's not like they just gave me the job, and I sit around all day and do whatever I want. There are demands and expectations. K-State has been a part of my life for five years and I care a lot about this place and this program. For me to still be involved, when we win games, I can say that I was still a part of those wins. That's really important for me to be able to do in my first year as a graduate assistant. It's awesome. It's a blessing.
"I'm very grateful that I'm able to stay at K-State."
Ilalio will sit in the coaches' booth at K-State football games. And that'll different. But at times, he does wonder what it will be like to come out of the tunnel that first time in the season opener against Nicholls on September 5 at Bill Snyder Family Stadium — this time as "Damian Ilalio, defensive graduate assistant," — a man who's moments away from his first-ever game as a coach.
"I don't want to think about it too much, because I start getting really excited, hut it's going to be awesome," he says. "I'm going to be ready. I almost feel a bigger responsibility now that I'm doing this for the players. It's not necessarily on me to go and make the play. My job is to put them in the best position to make the play and win games. For me, that's almost more pressure because now I have a bunch of people relying on me in a different sense.
"When I was playing, if Uso wasn't on the same page as me, I could make up for it with a play. Now my responsibilities are different, and it could affect how players are thinking. I remember our student coach used to make this sheet filled with stats and tendencies and I studied it throughout the week as a player and that really helped me go into the game and anticipate what was going to happen and be able to make plays and do my job. That really helped me. Now I'm on that side making the sheets and I feel a really big responsibility and I'm ready to get to work, I'm ready to do all that stuff, and come game time, it's going to be pretty similar, but I'm going to be very locked in, so I don't let anybody down. It's a different beast being able to help people to put them into that position. It'll be a little bit more serious, honestly, and a lot more aggressive, but it'll still be really fun."
When Ilalio makes his way to the K-State coaches' booth high above Bill Snyder Family Stadium, he'll see Klein down below on the sideline, a man who cares about K-State perhaps more than any other, and who Ilalio remembers fondly from the first time they met in the fall of 2021.
"I can tell you what struck me most before I even talked to Coach Klein back then was the way he carried himself," Ilalio says. "He carries himself with this presence. Whenever I looked at him, I always thought, 'That's one competitive dude.' He was a coach that's very competitive. A lot of people don't realize it because he's not a yeller or screamer, and he's calmer and more collected, but Coach Klein is fiercely competitive. He's a legend here. I'd hear stories about Coach Klein and what he did on the field as a player. I heard about crazy moments, upsets, and crazy touchdowns. But the biggest moment where I was like, 'Wow,' was when I went down to the weight room my freshman year. On a chart, it showed that Collin Klein set the bench-press record for quarterbacks at 395 pounds.
"I said, 'He benched 395 as a quarterback? That's crazy. This guy is different.'"
Ilalio offers a big smile and wags his head at the memory and moment that he realized that Klein was simply different. And times are different since 300-pound Ilalio in full uniform embraced Oakley, who sprinted toward her daddy on the football field during the Senior Day ceremony on November 29. The 23-year-old who secretly nursed an ugly screwed-up, flipped-around, tangled right biceps for two seasons because of his love for the game and for K-State, now has two healthy arms for big bear hugs for his children inside their loving home in the Little Apple.
Summer is time for walks in the park and playtime in the grass. Eventually, the morning wake-ups will grow earlier, and as fall nears, the mornings will grow darker and colder.
Damian will kiss Oakley and Phoneix goodbye.
Daddy has to go to work.
Players Mentioned
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