Think Chuck Landon, Jr.... looking for the clever angle that no one else has thought of... and if they had, decided it better to just not write it out for everyone else to see.
Marshall fans have expected the prominence of the last decade to have continued through these years, but it did not. Coach Snyder may have known what he was working with and knew it was going to be a longer turnaround than expected...
The problems facing The Thundering Herd were not going to disappear overnight, and I believe Snyder knew that. Animals have defense mechanisms and human beings are no different. Putting up a false front is one of the oldest tricks in the book...
Going into the 2009 season, I feel, from what I have seen and heard, Snyder knows a lot more than he wants everyone else in Huntington, WV, and Conference USA to know.
To the contrary, Snyder has never been particularly slow to mention the challenges he faced when he accepted the job; in fact, his enemies have used that against him, considering it little more than excuse-making.
Hey, we all were young once. I cut the guy some slack, and admire the attempt. He probably has a good journalism future in front of him.
Reality is, in case anyone would take that premise seriously, no one likes to see their credibility questioned, no matter what your job is. Right?
If you're an attorney, if you're a physician, if you're an HR manager, if you're a teacher, if you're a mechanic, if you're a pastor, rabbi, priest, or oman... you take pride in the fact that you know your job well, and are repulsed by the idea that a client, a patient, an employee, a student, or a customer, or a lay person could ever sit in judgment of the way you do your job.
And by extension, no one likes to see their credibility questioned when they've spent practically all of their life involved in that field at some level... this, by "experts" who, in truth, don't even barely have the credentials to work for a head coach, let alone be one.
So, again, I compliment the out of the box thinking, but it's a theory that is the proverbial dog that doesn't hunt. Snyder wants to win in the worst way, worse than ever before, and that's saying something... he is, if nothing else, competitive. Not that that's enough, since after all, it is fundamental to the career path.
Vis-a-vis, if he turns it around this year, it won't be as-if he purposely avoided hiring assistants he wanted or as-if he purposely wanted to play Bernie Morris all the years he did or wanted to play a redshirt freshman last season. It won't be as-if he was deliberately setting the bar low with the K-State fiasco, the USM fiasco, or any of the other fiascos often mentioned in Herd forums and in barber shops across the Tri-State. It won't be as-if he convinced Bradshaw to leave early, or as-if he set up certain players to get dismissed from the team so that he couldn't have them available on Saturdays.
No. Not at all. He came here saying it was his dream job, to get to return to his alma mater and re-establish the program. While some may question Snyder's ability to get it done in the won-loss column, I've yet to see anyone propose that he has not been sincere and genuine in his desire to get it done. To propose that is to propose the stripping of all his dignity... though it is inadvertent, I'm sure, that is the end-sum of what Mr. Roach proposes here.
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