Manhattan. ? The same problems that have plagued Kansas State for two seasons are not getting any better.

Indecisive and sporadic quarterbacking, and a kicking game that would make a high school coach pull his hair out cost KSU big in a 17-14 loss to Texas on Saturday night.

It will take something unexpected for K-State to have the special kind of season that seemed to be there for the taking just two weeks ago.

Now the Wildcats seem headed for one of those inconsequential bowl games – Alamo, Independence, Holiday, Galleryfurniture.com.

When the schedule sets up as favorably as it has for K-State this season, you have to take advantage. The Wildcats haven’t. They lost a tough game at Colorado on Oct. 5, then dropped Saturday’s home game to the Longhorns.

K-State’s defense is good enough to take this team places. So is the offensive line. The Wildcats have much better receivers than they had a year ago and a big-time running back, sophomore Darren Sproles.

And while it’s certainly not popular to cast stones at Bill Snyder, whose role in K-State’s dramatic football turnaround has been fully documented, I’ll toss a pebble his way for not fixing the team’s most glaring problems.

Fans still hold their breath every time Snyder sends one of his kickers on the field.

Against Texas, Jared Brite had a PAT blocked. Then, with a chance to send the game into overtime with a 36-yard field goal, Brite didn’t get the ball elevated and it was blocked by Texas lineman Marcus Tubbs, who is 6-foot-4 and weighs 305 pounds. Needless to say, Tubbs was not recruited for his jumping ability.

But against K-State’s kickers, you don’t need to be able to jump to get a piece of the ball. You just have to get a little surge and put your arms up.

You would not be wrong in associating K-State’s decline the past two years to its kicking game. With Martin Gramatica and Jamie Rheem doing the kicking, the Wildcats were nearly perfect from 1994-2000.

Snyder has flip-flopped between Brite and Joe Rheem, and neither has been able to get the job done. With Gramatica and Jamie Rheem, the Wildcats were almost automatic on PATs and nearly that good kicking field goals.

In the past two seasons, K-State has converted only 80 percent of its PATs. That’s unacceptable. Texas kicker Dusty Mangum has made 69 consecutive PATs.

A missed or blocked PAT should be as rare as a good Madonna movie. There isn’t another top flight Division I-A program that is as hit-and-miss in that area as K-State.

As for quarterbacking, who isn’t tired of the team’s continuing struggles? Ell Roberson has been in K-State’s program for four years. He has had time to learn the system. Yet he is as inconsistent as ever. Roberson is one of the best two or three athletes on the K-State roster. Yet he either refuses or is unable to give the Wildcats the stability any team so badly needs from its quarterback.

Don’t give me the stuff about how Marc Dunn should be starting. Dunn hasn’t proven to be more qualified. He’s not the running threat Roberson is.

Of the quarterbacks in the program, Roberson is the best.

But he’s not good enough to lead this team back into the elite among college football.

There are so many little things he does that hurt the Wildcats, they overwhelm his good deeds.

Barring a Colorado collapse, about the best K-State can hope for now is a 10-2 season and a second-place finish in the Big 12 North.

That’s nothing to sneeze at. But Kansas State had a real chance to do better. If Snyder had fixed his kicking game and solved the team’s quarterback woes, the Wildcats would have.