For a couple of coaches whose lives revolve around basketball, football played an ironic part of their career paths.

Steve Snell’s start in coaching was actually coaching high school football in his hometown of Radford, Va. It was while he worked basketball camps on the side that the head coach at Radford University, Oliver Purnell, who is a familiar name in ACC circles from his later days of coaching at Clemson, asked Snell if he wanted to be a volunteer assistant.

“Shoot, I didn’t know what it was,” Snell admitted.

Snell said, “Sure,” to Purnell’s offer, the start of a career that now is in its third decade coaching college basketball. It was early in that journey that he first met Kevin Keatts. Once again, football was involved.

Keatts was an upperclassmen in high school and attending a football camp for quarterbacks at Wingate University, and Snell, after his one year at Radford, was in his first year as an assistant at Wingate. The two ended up striking a conversation that day.

The bond really formed though when Keatts began to build his powerhouse program at Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Va., and Snell was an assistant.

“From that point on, we have known each other forever,” Snell said.

In fact, Keatts’ first foray into college coaching came with an assist from Snell, who put in a good word with the head coach at Marshall, Greg White. Snell served as an assistant for five years under White at Marshall. Keatts worked as an assistant there from 2001-03 before returning to Hargrave.

Snell and Keatts had conversations before about coaching together, first when Keatts got the job at UNC Wilmington and then again when Keatts was hired at NC State, but it was this summer that it all came together, and Snell was hired as NC State’s new director of basketball operations.

“Timing and everything, it worked out for the better,” Snell said. “Glad to be here.”

Snell is an ACC lifer, and getting a chance to work on famed Tobacco Road is a bit of a dream come true.

“I’ve grown up in the ACC,” Snell pointed out. “This is it. The best basketball league in the country. One of the best sports leagues in the country. I think it’s one of the best-run leagues in the country. It’s a blessing.

“I don’t come to work every day, I come to do what I love to do at a great place.”

Spending so many years on the bench and transitioning to an administrative role has been an adjustment for Snell, he admitted. Snell thinks he can be a good sounding board for Keatts.

“Being in so many years, I have seen a lot of stuff,” Snell said. “There is not much that can happen with our team or with our program that I haven’t come across. Just from my experience, maybe I can throw a suggestion to Coach about just about anything.”

Working for Keatts has also proven to Snell what he probably knew all along.

“He’s got that ‘it’ factor,” Snell said. “What it is, I can’t tell you what it is, but he has it. People gravitate to him, kids gravitate to him. He has that personality that people gravitate to. You want to be around him. He’s a serious guy when he has to be, but he’s a fun-loving guy when he has to be. … If you talk to Kevin today at the coffee shop, you would never know he’s the head coach at North Carolina State University.”

Snell has many of those qualities in himself. Just before doing an interview with The Wolfpacker earlier in the summer, he had received a text message from an old player that he coached at UNC Greensboro back in 1992 named Scott Harzell.

“He was like, ‘Coach, I just realized you were in North Carolina. I’m still in Greensboro, hit me up.’ That’s the reason why I coach,” Snell said. “Some people do it for money, some people do it for the glory. I do it for that reason and that reason only, the lifelong relationships.

“I am like 95 percent of other assistant coaches in America, want to be a head coach in the Division I level, but there is only 353 head coaching gigs, so it’s hard to come by. … It doesn’t seem like 30 years. It seems like last year I was at Radford University trying to figure out how to do this job.

“It’s fun. You don’t age. I still feel like I am a young guy. I’m down in the gym talking to these guys and feel like I am 18 years old. … They really do keep you young.”

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