The good news: George W. Bush is no longer running Washington.
The bad news: He is now running the Washington Redskins.
No, not literally.
However: the comparisons go beyond simple simile and inexorably, enter into metaphor.
Daniel Snyder is George W. Bush.
I know.
The only thing more played out and passé than blindly bashing (or praising) Barack Obama is blindly bashing Bush.
He was the sine qua non for polarizing political certitude. And he is likely to remain the heavyweight champion for the foreseeable future. He is, not to put too fine a point on it, our country’s Asshole Emeritus. Like those wizened professors put out to pasture and summoned only at graduation ceremonies, Bush earned that status; he put in the time and we do him and ourselves a disservice if we ever forget how incredibly, and uniquely awful he was. This most untalented and incurious man had to experiment often to eventually understand—to the world’s chagrin—that his one true talent was being a moron. He was a genius at incompetence.
But everyone knows that.
So what is the point, where is the originality, not only engaging in the gratuitous name-checking of he-who-should-never-be-named, but using him as a basis of comparison for anyone? Logically, the rationale does not sustain itself; employing such a singular entity as a metaphor is a crime against grammar and sustained thought. But still, it is, in the end, inevitable. It was not a rhetorical flourish easily arrived at, and it was not for considerable lack of effort hoping to avoid it. Ultimately, it was as T.S. Eliot once wrote: We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
I knew that place for the first time when I—along with a loyal and long-suffering fan base—watched the Washington Redskins go from being a disappointment to an enigma to disgrace to, finally, an outright caricature. This once-successful (I can’t quite say once-proud because the name has always been Redskins which is slightly worse than unconscionable by any reasonable standard) franchise has now become a veritable case study for how not to run a professional sports organization.
Let’s get the unspeakable out of the way as quickly as possible. Here is something I never thought I would say: Al Davis is not the worst owner in sports. And, for anyone who does not know, Al Davis is the gold standard for over-the-top, meddlesome, megalomaniacal team cancers. But, at this point, he’s got one thing going for him: he’s not Daniel Snyder.
Seriously, at least at one point Al Davis was a legend. At one point Al Davis did put in the time and build a respectable (and winning) franchise. Snyder, on the other hand, knows less than a little about the actual nuts and bolts of evaluating talent or inspiring confidence. He is literally a nerd who happened to get filthy rich, so he bought a team. Put another way, Al Davis got old and senile and has slowly but steadily sucked the life out of his organization; he is a sports version of King Lear and his is a straight-up tragic story. But Raiders fans can hold their noses and hang in there until he eventually goes to that big pirate ship in the sky.
It would be tempting, and too simple to decree Snyder a sports version of Macbeth, (or better yet the conniving, deeply evil Lady Macbeth) but that sells these great Shakespearean figures short. Better off turning to an earlier, less significant work: perhaps Danny Boy, with all the failed plots and burned bodies in his wake, could be considered a sports version of Titus Andronicus. But no. Snyder simply does not have the heft to be tragic; he is little more than a bit player in a minor comedy. And yet, the team he has ruined is still the second most profitable franchise in all sports: the stakes are substantial and the ultimate carnage is infinitely larger than the man creating it. Looking at a tragedy and finding comedy, Daniel Snyder is the Pigskin Polonius.
This is a serious charge, not made lightly. So let’s consider this with the carefulness it warrants and examine the case before us before we feel we can render a verdict without reservation.
The first step is diagnosing the subject and determining certain inviolable symptoms. So, for starters, let’s confirm that some or all of the obvious ingredients, shared by any bad owner, are firmly in place.
Owner never actually played the sport at a competitive level: Check.
Owner’s wealth has obliterated any sense of perspective that might allow him to relate—with anything approximating authenticity—to the fan base: Check.
Owner is petty: Check.
Owner is a bully who insists on surrounding himself with craven and sycophantic lackeys: Check.
Owner, despite unimaginable net worth, is consistently cheap and will cut corners every time: Check.
Owner has the worst sort of interpersonal skills: Check.
Owner takes rabid and historically solid fan base largely for granted? Check.
Owner confident in powers of perception and intelligence that do not remotely exist: Check.
Owner alienates people who do—or have—worked as employees: Check.
Owner can’t find anyone not on the payroll to offer support, solidarity, or utter any sentiment that could be construed as positive: Check.
You get the picture.
But for a fair and accurate rendering of what an impossibly tone-deaf, cocky and self-immolating imbecile Daniel Snyder is, one act stands out (above and beyond the coaches who have turned the front office into a not-so-merry-go-round, the abrupt firing of a successful and respected GM, the cycle of signing increasingly outrageous and irresponsible “big name” free agents—often at the expense of high draft picks, the firing of a coach who had managed to wrestle the key away from the inmates only to hire the head lunatic, the unwarranted promotion to VP of Football Operations of the most singularly and spectacularly unqualified buffoon who happens to be his racquetball buddy) above all others: having owned the team for little more than a year—and on the heels of yet another in a series of mind-numbingly stupid free agent signings (Bruce Smith? Deion Sanders?! Jeff George?!?!)—had the temerity, nay the audacity, nay the chutzpah to charge fans admission to watch the team practice in training camp. If ever there was a moment where prescient people should have taken to the streets with torches and pitchforks (or, short of anything truly dramatic, just refused to show up at that dump called Fed-Ex Field—of which more shortly), this was it. Everything we needed to know about the man, and where he was coming from (hint: it rhymes with $), was abundantly revealed in all its non-glory. Practically everything that has happened since has grown out of that indelible desecration.
Anyone who follows the team knows the sordid details, so no need to rehash each and every awful decision, underperforming free agent, abandoned draft pick and stadium-related outrage. But speaking of that abortion called FedEx Field (how many rotations per minute do you think Jack Kent Cooke is doing in his coffin, by the way? Dude owned the Skins during the glory years, and paid for the new –albeit awful– stadium, which was appropriately named after him, only to be sold, literally, to the highest bidder, so Snyder could wrangle every stinking penny he possibly could out of his investment: file under: soul, sold), that is just a matter of terrible timing that JKC was in the process of building a new palace for his franchise (which never, ever should have left RFK –the best home field advantage in sports during the ’80s along with the also dearly departed Boston Garden) when most baseball and football stadiums were wisely following the excellent example of Camden Yards and incorporating old school aesthetics with modern amenities.
Suffice it to say, FedEx Field is old school in the awful sense of the word: it has every deficiency of those ancient concrete monstrosities from the ’60s and ’70s with none of the charm. It’s oversized yet underwhelming, it has an utter absence of character and it’s conveniently located in the middle of nowhere, with no hope of utilizing that new-fangled concept of public transportation that most major cities use as a prerequisite before construction on a new stadium is undertaken.
In fairness, it’s important to point out that Snyder inherited this mess. So he gets a mulligan for buying a team that happened to have a brand new, terrible stadium. But, in his inimitable fashion, he has not only done nothing to improve the situation, he has actually exacerbated it. The parking lot was a disaster in 1997; it remains a clusterfuck in 2009. The concessions are the worst in the world (this is coming from a person who had the misfortune of eating cinderblock pretzels and dirty-sponge hot dogs at the old Shea Stadium), and they are expensive. No doubt, concessions are expensive everywhere these days, but at least in the new stadiums you get quality food and drink. Case in point: it costs a pretty penny to get a snack at Verizon Center but the food is consistently good (and hot) and you have options beyond plastic bottles of Bud or Bud Light. Speaking of bang for your buck, ever seen that monitor? You’d have a better chance watching replays via a Time Machine. And those graphics (DEFENSE!) are pretty cutting edge. Way to enhance the experience there, Danny Boy. Having sat in the upper, upper decks multiple times, I can propose with some degree of certainty that the PC speakers I had in 1995 were capable of producing louder sound with better fidelity. Think I’m piling on or being petty? Try tacking an hour onto the experience (especially after a loss!) battling the catastrophe masquerading as a parking lot. Ernest Shackleton had an easier time navigating his ship through ice in the South Pole. But at least the parking is free. Just kidding.
Many Skins fans have gone through the familiar stages of grief over the past several years. Once Spurrier spurned Snyder, that seemed like a low point of sorts: the clown prince of college football couldn’t hack it as a pro coach and left many millions on the table to walk away from the team. Joe Gibbs seemed to represent an overdue oasis, but he too finally decided he could not get back to Nascar fast enough. He did try and anoint the controversial, but undeniably talented, Gregg Williams as the heir to his throne. Needless to say, Snyder (and his half-witted consigliere, Cerrato) put their clown shoes through that plan. Besides, who needed a proven veteran coach when untested, inexperienced and underwhelming Jim Zorn was waiting in the wings? (Hiring him was ridiculous enough; the Bataan Death March he is now being made to endure is…typical. Everyone knows Zorn is gone, it’s not a matter of when he’s fired, it’s how much meat will be left on his bones by the time his body is taken off the spit. The recent indignity of bringing in the Bingo-playing Sherm Lewis to call the shots is…typical. But if, as seems likely based on his track record and lack of character, Snyder is stringing the emasculated Zorn along in the hopes of inciting a resignation so he doesn’t have to pay him in full, well he is officially beneath contempt –not just as a scumbag businessman, but as a human being.)
Riggo speaks big truths.
Here’s the thing: it’s not the quarterback, it’s not the coach, it’s not even the useless GM (though it’s impossible to overstate the wreckage he has left in his wake); the reason this fish stinks is because it’s rotting at the head. And that head is Snyder. The only hope is for the owner to hire an accomplished (or merely adequate, if need be) individual to run the operations and step quickly and quietly out of the way. And stay out of the way. (Use some of that impulsive energy constructing a new stadium, in D.C.; or better yet, invest some money into revamping the cathedral otherwise known as RFK Stadium and get the team playing where it never should have left.)
One can only wonder what Snyder sees when he looks in the mirror.
Here is what the rest of us see:
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Presumably, disgracing a franchise and a fanbase was not the mission he wanted to accomplish.
In conclusion, it’s obvious what Snyder needs to do, and only he can do it. That’s the answer.
The question is, will he do it? Can he?
