By Leonard Shapiro
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, May 1, 2007 11:44 AM

Daniel Snyder ended a year of public silence on all things involving the Washington Redskins last Tuesday when he showed up at team headquarters and appeared at the annual pre-draft press conference allegedly to discuss the state of the organization he owns and its options for improving its talent level going into the 2007 NFL draft.

Seemingly taking his cue on the art of self-delusion from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Snyder proclaimed that the Redskins were definitely on the right track, that he was encouraged that the football team he has owned since 1999 had improved significantly in the offseason and who needs a general manager anyway?

If following a 10-6 season and a playoff appearance in 2005 with a 5-11 record in 2006 is the right track, you certainly could have fooled me. And excuse me, Dan, would you mind possibly explaining which genius was responsible for giving Adam Archuleta a $10 million signing bonus last year, making him the highest paid safety in league history, only to see him ride the bench for most of the second half of the season and became the highest paid special team part-timer in league history, as well?

Surprisingly, he was on the stage at Redskins Park for close to an hour along with Joe Gibbs and personnel chief Vinny Cerrato. I'm told not a single member of the assembled press and local broadcasting corps bothered to ask Snyder why he had continued to make himself unavailable for media questioning for so long. Someone at least should have posed the question.

Snyder has always preferred the easy way out in media relations by having a spokesman say he won't comment or getting the public relations department to issue the occasional insipid press release under his signature. He really should re-think that policy and make himself more available because his approach is more of a slap in the face to his fans than it is to the media.

The man doesn't even make appearances on his own Snyder-owned radio stations, where he'd almost certainly receive kid glove treatment.

One of those silly Snyder press releases was sent out the day Art Monk failed to earn enough votes to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame this past February. Snyder was quoted in the release as saying "a good man and legitimate Hall of Famer is being denied entry for reasons we'll never know, by people who secretly vote... This is not right."

Snyder essentially impugned the integrity of the selectors and the secret ballot process (which is formulated by the Hall of Fame and the NFL, by the way), premises that are profoundly offensive, not to mention possibly harmful to Monk's future candidacy. But as Snyder is often quick to point out, he owns the football team and can do whatever he pleases. As one of his predecessors, the late Edward Bennett Williams, once said in describing an NFL owner's version of The Golden Rule -- "the man with the gold rules."

That doesn't make Snyder particularly popular among his subjects. He could go a long way toward improving his rather tattered public image as a meddling, middling wannabe general manager by showing up in public every once in awhile to answer questions and at least take some responsibility for his actions.

Over the years, Snyder has never seemed comfortable appearing in front of a television camera or standing behind a podium. But occasional informal gatherings with the media assigned to cover his team, say once a month during the season, might go a long way toward improving one of the most strained media-owner relationships in the league, in a dead heat with Al Davis and his own Invisible Man approach to the Bay Area press corps.

Draft Overkill: I sat in a front row seat at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday to cover the first day of the NFL draft, meaning that I could see the big-screen monitors above the main stage showing the pictures from the blanket coverage provided by ESPN and The NFL Network. I just wasn't listening to the babbling broadcasters.

Virtually any time I looked up, particularly after the Cleveland Browns selected Wisconsin tackle Joe Thomas with the third overall pick, a camera focused on Brady Quinn sitting backstage with his lovely girlfriend. The Notre Dame quarterback looked more forlorn with each passing name called until the Browns traded back up to take him with the 22nd overall pick.

Of course Quinn, who expected to go to Cleveland in that third slot, was the most compelling story of the first day of the draft. But both ESPN and The NFL Network seemed to go well above and beyond good taste in constantly sending people back to interview him on a regular basis, at least until Miami strangely passed on him with the ninth overall selection, choosing Ohio State receiver and return man Ted Ginn Jr. instead of a potential franchise quarterback.

Clearly, it seemed like cruel and unusual overkill punishment, the ultimate putdown for a kid who clearly deserved better. After Miami passed on Quinn, Commissioner Roger Goodell, presiding over his first draft, apparently had the same feeling and made a private suite available to Quinn and his small entourage and encouraged them to leave the long-deserted green room.

Still, after the 15th pick, ESPN just had to send Suzy Kolber over to the suite to ask Quinn by far the dumbest and most unnecessary question of the draft.

"At this point, now, what's your game plan?" she wondered.

Did she think he was going to walk out the 51st Street exit, look for someone's shoulder to cry on, tell people he was planning to enroll in law school, jump off the Triboro Bridge?

I also wonder how much time ESPN and The NFL Network spent on the dirty little secret of the NFL draft -- that a number of so-called scholar-athletes likely to be playing pro football in the near future stop going to class during the fall of their senior or junior seasons. Many spend the early weeks of the spring semester enrolling in highly structured workout programs, often far off campus, designed to improve their speed and strength to impress the scouts at the mid-February combine or subsequent pro day workouts.

Blood Lust: Gary Thorne, the play-by-play man for MASN's Orioles coverage, deserved all the flak he got last week when he said on the air that he'd been told the blood on Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's sock during his gritty Game 6 performance against the N.Y. Yankees in the 2004 ALCS was actually red paint.

"Nah, it was painted," Thorne said on the air. "Doug Mirabelli confessed to it after. It was all for P.R."

Thorne has since apologized profusely, but a guy who used to be a former prosecuting attorney should have known better than to just throw out such an accusation without at least making sure it was dead solid perfect information. A call to the Red Sox or even checking with Schilling might have been in order, but Thorne violated every rule of Journalism 101 by repeating something that apparently was said to him in jest. I like Thorne's call of a baseball game, but right now he's also got a very real credibility problem that may take some time to erase.

Double Your Pleasure: Sad to see the injury-decimated Washington Wizards' once promising NBA season come to such an anti-climactic end Monday night. One suggestion for the Wizards brass next year (aside from adding a little depth on the court): how about giving radio play-by-play voice Dave Johnson a little help by adding a color analyst to the broadcast?

Most big-time franchises around the league provide their fans with a two-man radio booth. I have no problem with Johnson's generally competent play-by-play, but there are times when a second set of eyes not focused on the ball -- something every play-by-play guy must watch virtually all the time -- would give listeners a far more complete picture of the game inside the game.

One more request, this time for WTEM announcer Jerry Coleman. Please don't refer to the Wizards home court as "the Phone Booth." Not that we're thrilled about having corporate names on arenas, but the Verizon Center would be just fine, though I still like the ring of Pollin's Palace.

Leonard Shapiro can be reached at Badgerlen@hotmail.com or Badgerlen@aol.com.