What Boone Pickens Taught Bill Snyder About Work

Boone Pickens was a speaker at The Concordia 2016 Summit (a public-private conference, whatever that means) this week and did an interview with Tom Brokaw. In it he talked about why he will never retire and relayed a great Bill Snyder (yes, Kansas State’s Bill Snyder) story.

“I love to work,” Pickens said. “And people say to me, ‘Well, Boone, you’re 88 years old. You really should retire.’ Well, to hell with you. I’m not going to retire.”

Yep, that sounds about right. Here’s the Snyder story.

“He’s 10 years younger than me,” said Pickens of Snyder. “We watched a football game together four or five years ago. He said to me ‘I wanted to sit with you today because I maybe have made a mistake.’ I said ‘you retired.’ He said, ‘That’s, right, I retired. I’m retired now. And I don’t know why in the hell I did it.'”

“I said, ‘You can’t find people that you want to be with that are productive like you are and you are still a factor in football coaching. And you left early.’ As long as you’re productive, you can carry your weight in the crowd you’re associated with, I don’t see any reason to retire.”

This would have been more like 8-9 years ago as Snyder retired from Kansas State in 2005 but came back in 2009. In any case, we would have known who to blame had KSU ruined that 2011 season! Also, I’m pretty sure Tom Brokaw has no clue who Bill Snyder is.

h/t Business Insider