Marshall Football: A Lesson to Learn for Head Coach Mark Snyder

In my years of attending college, out of all my classes, one has stuck with me. That class was an American history class. The professor told a story of a United States president in the early years of the republic.

The media had been lambasting the chief executive and his sons decided to take things into their own hands by assaulting the journalists at the capitol. Of course, this did not stop them from continuing to print stories about the president.

The lesson, of course, was that you do not mess with people who buy their ink by the barrel.

Marshall University Head Coach Mark Snyder missed that day of history class apparently. Over the previous four seasons, things have been uneasy between Snyder and the Huntington, W.Va., media. Then again, replacing Bob Pruett and four straight losing seasons did not help matters.

However, most had settled into the tension between Snyder and many of the sports writers in town. It was something everyone came to accept as gospel and wrote off as the writers being angry over losing seasons.

That was until last week, when things began to boil over for Snyder and the press corps.

The beginning of the end occurred when a local paper ran a story about how the team would be saving the green helmets for special occasions and keeping the white helmets, sticking with tradition.

Coach Snyder, the following day, had a statement released on the subject and informs Herd Nation that Marshall Football would be wearing green all year long.

Following the Southern Illinois game, Snyder made a point to call out the writer and scold him in front of all of the media on proper interview procedure.

The journalist was not mentioned by name, though everyone knew who Snyder was talking about.

The second blow to media relations would come when during the same press conference, Snyder was asked a question about quarterback Brian Anderson rolling out of the pocket.

Snyder corrected the questioner in a similarly condescending tone that the maneuver was called a “sprint out” and proceeded to hammer the point home.

Credit for starting this fight probably goes to the very people Snyder has taken pot shots at this past week. However, there are plenty of adages about sleeping dogs that it would probably behoove Snyder to remember at this point.

With a 1-1 record on the season and a team that has struggled early on does not bode well for him, as it would appear the coach is close to adding more losses to his 17-32 record as Thundering Herd coach.

Public opinion is already against Snyder, the last thing he needs to do is start making more enemies in the media.