NCAA, leagues back $2.8 billion settlement, setting stage for dramatic change across college sports
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Marshall notes: Huff finds himself in a tough spot
By Tom Bragg For The Register-Herald Dec 12, 2023
Charles Huff
Marshall head coach Charles Huff watches from the sideline during the second half of a game against North Carolina State in Raleigh, N.C., Oct. 7, 2023.
Karl B DeBlaker
Charles Huff may be the football coach at Marshall when the Thundering Herd takes the field next fall for the 2024 season, but between now and then there is some work to do to mend a broken relationship with the fans.
Huff was a fan-favorite in Huntington from the moment he stepped foot on campus three years ago until 11:29 a.m. last Wednesday. That’s when WOWK-TV sports director Cassidy Wood tweeted a quote from the Marshall coach on the news that Cam Fancher, the Thundering Herd’s starting quarterback in 2023, had announced he would enter his name in the transfer portal.
Huff, according to Wood, said that he was not surprised Fancher was leaving because, “There isn’t a lot of money for NIL and the fans hate him. The kid has been miserable.”
Oh my.
That’s a mouthful for a guy who is going into the final year of his contract with no extension yet on the table. Essentially, what Huff is saying is Marshall’s fans and boosters aren’t paying his players enough money, and those same fans are so mean they ran off the starting quarterback.
Let’s assume those things are both true (though, Fancher’s mother did refute just how “miserable” her son was in a Facebook post following Huff’s comments). Maybe Marshall’s collective isn’t coughing up cash at a competitive rate. Maybe the fans crossed the line from giving Fancher a hard time about his play (and let’s be fair on this point, when Fancher was healthy he was pretty good but he was rarely healthy in 2023), to taking personal shots at the quarterback. Even if those things are true — and there is probably some truth to both points — it’s a terrible look for the head coach to say them to a reporter.
Recruiting was already going to be more of a challenge this cycle for Huff and his staff due to the fact that Huff’s only under contract for one more season. It’s hard to sit in someone’s living room and sell them on a commitment to a university when you can’t promise you’ll be around to see out that commitment. Now on top of that, you get to explain that the NIL money probably won’t be great compared to other places and the fans will hate you if you make a mistake.
Huff came to Marshall with a reputation as one of the best recruiters in the nation, and through three seasons there have been highly-touted classes of incoming high schoolers. The results between the lines, however, have left a lot to be desired. Now it gets harder.
It’s a bad spot to be in for Huff, who is pretty clearly coaching for his job in 2024, but let’s play devil’s advocate. Maybe the NIL comment was meant to shake some trees and see if a few more bags of cash might fall to his players. Maybe, but airing out the fans for their treatment of Fancher, he’s proving to his players he’ll have their backs in a bad situation.
Maybe I’m grasping at straws, because it’s hard to see a way back into Herd fans’ good graces after seeing the response to Huff’s comments last week.
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So much for Marshall and East Carolina’s non-conference football series.
247Sports reported on Monday that ECU and Marshall won’t be playing their scheduled game in 2025 in Huntington, and the two old rivals also will not find a date to make up a game called off in 2020 during the Covid season.
That’s a bummer, but that might just be what college football has become. We just saw Liberty rewarded with a spot in the Fiesta Bowl for steamrolling through the weakest schedule in the country, and with the 12-team playoff era looming you can bet athletic directors at Group of Five schools around the country saw what happened with Liberty and thought, “yeah, I’m going to do that, too.” Teams are going to water down those schedules. Why play a decent regional rival you have years of history with when you could lose? Sure, you can still lose to an FCS team, but if you can keep winning you could get rewarded with a fat check on your way to the gallows in the postseason.
The trouble is, the playoff committee has consistently shown that it is inconsistent. The logic applied to one season might get tossed and thrown out the next.
There will, at some point, be an unbeaten Group of Five team left out of the 12-team playoff with a weak schedule cited as the reason. And they will cry, “But what about 2023 when you put Liberty in the Fiesta Bowl with the weakest schedule in the country?” The people making those decisions won’t care.
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MU kick returner Jayden Harrison is close to joining the most elite list Marshall football has.
Harrison has been named to two All-America first teams — Walter Camp and the Football Writers Association of America — so far.
To be considered a “consensus” All-American, you have to be a first-team pick on three of the five recognized All-America teams. Harrison has two down already, and the Associated Press team doesn’t feature a dedicated kick return position so he didn’t make that one.
That means if Harrison is on the first team of either the Sporting News or the American Football Coaches Association teams, he will be considered a consensus All-American.
That honor doesn’t come around often at Marshall. In fact, it’s only happened one time in program history when, in 1997, some guy named Randy Moss pulled it off.
