Advertiser upset MU coach told ‘you’re fired’

Doug Compton godfather to Quin Snyder's son

It’s bad enough that Helen Snyder and three of her closest friends are staying at his house.

Or that he’s the godfather of Owen Snyder, 2-year-old son of Helen and Quin Snyder.

Or that seemingly the entire student body sported “M— FIZZOU” T-shirts in the north end of Allen Fieldhouse.

But Doug Compton’s First Management Inc. logo popped out from a two-page ad in the University Daily Kansan calling for Quin Snyder, Missouri’s embattled men’s basketball coach, to be fired.

That’s right: Compton, president of First Management, paid good money for 4,000 students to hold up papers calling for his friend of 20 years to get Trumped — Donald-style.

“He’s my best friend,” said Compton, one of KU’s most visible fans and high-profile boosters, sporting a black corduroy jacket one row behind the KU bench at the fieldhouse. “I learned a valuable lesson: Never endorse or spend any money to sponsor anything without approving it first.”

Compton’s pervasive property-management, development and construction company signed on this season as a sponsor of the Kansan’s game-day poster series. The two-page spreads are carted into games by KU fans, who wave them during introductions of opposing teams’ lineups to show their collective disinterest.

But Monday’s edition caught Compton’s ire soon after rolling off the presses. An Athletics Department staffer personally delivered a copy to Compton’s office, where the disgust led the KU alumnus to drive immediately to the SpringHill Suites by Marriott, the Tigers’ team hotel, for a personal explanation to the coach himself.

Kansas University fans hoist newspapers denouncing Missouri basketball coach Quin Snyder. The ad appeared in the University Daily Kansan and was purchased by Doug Compton, a longtime friend of Snyder's. Compton is angry about the ad content.

“I told him it wasn’t anything that I’d OK’d or I’d approved of,” Compton said. “He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I know that.'”

Compton said that the advertisements were meant for a simple purpose: to reach the students, who lease his hundreds of apartments in town.

Compton said the snafu left him with a new resolve.

“It’s in poor taste. I mean, isn’t KU better than that?” he said, as students ruffled the papers as the Tigers were being introduced. “Well, I do know this: We won’t sponsor these kinds of things anymore.”