The folks at the Kansas City Star are all over the way that Quin Snyder apparently learned about his fate as the head coach of the Missouri men's basketball team.
One day after saying he would stay to the expected bitter end of his seventh season as the Missouri basketball coach, Quin Snyder is out.
How he got there is a story that could create more shockwaves than Snyder’s departure.
Multiple sources said Missouri athletic director Mike Alden on Thursday dispatched a messenger — his assistant, Gary Link, an MU radio broadcaster — to inform Snyder that he would be fired at season’s end. Friday afternoon, Snyder informed his players he would no longer be their coach. Alden had told The Star on Wednesday that he would wait to decide Snyder’s fate until after the end of the season.
...In another twist, Don Walsworth, a longtime Snyder confidant and a member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators, told The Star he thought “Quin might have misinterpreted what Link was doing there.
“I talked to Gary Link today and he was in tears. He spoke to Quin, but Mike Alden didn’t send him,” Walsworth said.
Walsworth said he had not spoken to Snyder. He said Snyder either misinterpreted Link or Snyder is “making this up.”
Close friends of Snyder — who wished to remain anonymous — told The Star that by Thursday evening, Snyder’s agent had started negotiations with MU about a severance agreement.
...But the story changed throughout the day.
“We just talked with Coach,” Dave Reiter, sports information officer for men’s basketball, told The Star around 4 p.m. on Friday. “He just told the team five minutes ago. It’s just to let the team play basketball. They don’t need to shoulder this.”
Jon Sundvold, a former MU star basketball player, a broadcaster and a member of the search team when Alden hired Snyder, was struck by the abrupt reversal of Snyder’s words Thursday and his supposed actions Friday.
“I know someone who was with him until 3 in the morning,” Sundvold said. “You know, I just had this feeling (something would happen).”
And yet Walsworth said he and other MU officials were shocked by Snyder’s “resignation.”
And from an article from Feb 12th:
But MU’s athletic department would not respond to The Star’s report that Alden sent Link to Snyder on Thursday, and what role that meeting played in Snyder’s departure. Multiple sources told The Star on Saturday that Link’s meeting with Snyder was designed to produce a resignation.
Walsworth denied that.
When asked whether Walsworth simply was unaware or possibly lied to, he responded:
“People don’t lie to me. I’m not saying that Link and Quin didn’t meet. I’m not saying they didn’t talk about how the season might turn out. But Mike Alden didn’t send Gary Link to Quin.
“Gary and Quin are friends. They’d talked about what might happen back in September.”
As talk of Snyder’s exit filtered across the college basketball landscape, plenty of attention was given to how Snyder may have been told of his future.
“If it ever plays out that way (at Kansas),” Jayhawks coach Bill Self said, “I hope (athletic director) Lew (Perkins) tells me and not (radio broadcaster) Bob (Davis).
“I hate the way it ended at Missouri from a professional standpoint. You hate to see people not finish. That’s not the message we need to be sending in our profession.”
What message is that: the way it ended (i.e. that Quin's boss didn't notify him) or the fact that Quin didn't survive the season?
Anyways, I'm not sure the flap being made over the apparent meeting is all that big of a deal. From what I've seen, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch hasn't mentioned it and the Columbia Daily Tribune only mentioned what the KC Star folks had reported. It'd be a bigger deal if more outlets were digging into it. Besides, it's not like Quin's tenuous hold on the program coming into this year was inside information and the quit his team has shown in the past 6 games simply sealed his fate.
I agree with my friend Eric: I'm more interested in who department officials hire than how Quin found out about his fate.
Today, on espn.com, I read a quote from Jason Horton somewhat along the lines of, "We're going to play for Coach Melvin like he was Coach Q. We're going to keep playing hard and together for him."
"KEEP"? Over the last 6 games, it seems pretty clear that the team had quit, and from what I hear, Horton was one of the worst culprits. At least they "kept" playing hard enough to beat K-State yesterday. If the "keep" this up, they may actually be able to salvage a tiny bit of dignity this season.
Posted by: Eric Parsons | February 13, 2006 at 01:11 AM
Heh. I'm sure that Mr. Horton meant to say "start" instead of "keep" in his second sentence.
Posted by: Phil | February 13, 2006 at 11:25 AM