Czaban's proof? WTEM-AM.

"If people ask why can't Snyder just hire really good people and let them do what they do, well, that's exactly what he's doing on the radio front," says Czaban, co-host of "The Sports Reporters," the drive-time show and jewel in the schedule of Snyder's WTEM, also called ESPN980.

Czaban's got an ego, and he really is really good at what he does, but the "really good people" he's referring to here is Bruce Gilbert, CEO of Red Zebra Broadcasting and the guy who Snyder put in charge of WTEM last year when he bought what was then the only sports station in the market. Gilbert canned on-air personalities Brian Mitchell and Al Koken, but kept Czaban and his longtime partner, Andy Pollin, in the WTEM stable.

Can we trust Czaban's kind words for Snyder? On paper, Czaban's conflicted out the wazoo. He works for Snyder, and needs the WTEM job more than ever now: the bosses at FoxSports Radio, where Czaban had his own syndicated morning show for the last five years, just gave him his walking papers as a Christmas present. Stephen A. Smith takes over Czaban's old time slot there.

Czaban had been tougher on the Redskins than anybody in the market before Snyder became his boss. One example: Czaban lost a moonlighting gig with the Redskins post-game show on Comcast sports three years ago after a testy interview with Mark Brunell, during which he asked the QB how comfortable he was about his job status. Brunell was visibly peeved, and Redskins management quickly complained to Comcast about Czaban. He was immediately suspended by Comcast, and did not return to the postgame show the following season.

Yet, despite the conflicts, any reduction in the harshness of Czaban's Skins critiques under Snyder's ownership has been too subtle to notice.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Who coined "Clinton Tortoise"? Will NFL go for the Clooney Rule? Hire the OTHER Mike: Forget Shanahan, go for Leach! Will next year's EagleBank Bowl be held in a telephone booth?)

For but one of the hundreds of examples of the fun they've had at the Redskins' expense amid the team's debacle of a season: In October, Czaban and Pollin coined the nickname "Clinton Tortoise" for quickly aging running back Clinton Portis.

Just doing his job, Czaban says. "I don't think I've said anything about the Redskins this year that hasn't been said by other people more directly and more harshly," he says.

And Snyder has let him say it all. Czaban says he hasn't even met Snyder since the ownership change. And the ratings of the Sports Reporters in their target demographic — males 25-54 — have never been higher.

The biggest test of Snyder's laissez faire-ness will come a year from now, when Czaban's and Pollin's contracts with Red Zebra come up for renewal. Will Snyder continue to pay Czaban and let him be Czaban?

Or will Czaban's entertaining honesty earn Stephen A. Smith ANOTHER call?

***

The Rooney Rule, at least as applied in the Redskins latest coach search, has turned into a joke, making liars and traitors out of co-workers.

I say the NFL should take its phony foot-in-the-door program several steps further, to add more giggles. Why not institute, say, the Clooney Rule? In honor of George Clooney, nobody gets hired until a team interviews a cheerleader. And the Looney Rule, where at least one certifiable wacko gets a shot (Greg Blache could fill that quota with the Skins). Or maybe the Soon-Yi Rule, in which at least one daughter and/or wife of Woody Allen is considered before anybody's signed?

It's just a joke! Right?

Butt seriously: If, after all the charades, Mike Shanahan is indeed at the end of the Redskins rainbow, nobody's going to be excited by the hire. He won't sell one club seat.

But there is an exciting coach who should be available soon. In fact, as I type this, Texas Tech's Mike Leach, the most exciting football coach in the land might already be up for grabs. Forget the West Coast Offense; he's got the West Texas Offense! Leach is Steve Spurrier, with discipline!

If the papers got things right, Leach is Buford Pusser in a pair of sweat pants. He's going to lose his job at Texas Tech because he locked a player with a concussion in a dark room for an entire practice. Imagine what he'd do to Albert Haynesworth! When Haynesworth comes out of the game on a cart, would Leach allow him to put himself back in the game a few plays later? Hell no! Leach would leave him strapped to the cart all game long! That's just what these Redskins need!

Actually, I'm with Leach in this debacle. The player who Leach allegedly wasn't nice to is the son of Craig James, a lead ESPN football analyst. Leach was suspended yesterday not for having made the kid stand in a dark room, but for refusing to apologize to the player's dad! Craig James got the media's ear early on, but the worm is starting to turn. Leach has asserted that Craig James was constantly phoning him and complaining and acting "like a Little League father." Even if Leach is exonerated, he's a goner with the Red Raiders. Texas Tech's my alma mater, and damn if that place ever misses a chance to screw things up. Lubbock just ain't big enough for Leach.

(Texas Tech is the school that brought in Bobby Knight, the godfather of player abuse, after he was fired for assaulting a kid and lying about it.)

***

Kendall Marshall, an O'Connell guard who was starting for his high school varsity team when he was in sixth grade (somehow, that was seven years ago), is not as highly prized as he once was by the ranking services. But his future coach, North Carolina's Roy Williams, says Marshall's going to be just fine.

***

The Examiner ran a rosy preview of the EagleBank Bowl yesterday.

The second EagleBank Bowl takes on greater prominence than the inaugural 2008 game — a matchup of Wake Forest and Navy that was buried in the bowl mix with an 11 a.m. Dec. 20 start.

That game drew fewer than 29,000 fans, far short of the average bowl attendance of 55,183. Many, including the Navy squad, came from a short distance. Only 22 sponsors signed on.

But this year's game has a forecast for partly sunny skies and a more fan-friendly 4:30 p.m. kickoff, and bowl organizers hope to seat 40,000 for the nationally televised battle. There are more than 60 sponsors and an intriguing first-ever matchup between UCLA and Temple, a marquee program from the Pacific-10 Conference versus a team from the Mid-American Conference that hasn't been to a bowl game in 30 years.

"This is a dead time of year in D.C.," said Steve Beck, EagleBank Bowl executive director. "It's creating a lot of activity."

The Washington Post, also yesterday, said that organizers "were hoping for an attendance of around 25,000."

The Post came closest. In today's Washington Times, in the middle of Dick Heller's gloomy and doomy review of the contest, he put the crowd at 23,000 and change. Even that number might be inflated. The stadium looked much emptier than that in photos.

And, as pointed out by SB Nation, the attendance slot on the official EagleBank Bowl box score was filled with "NA."

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

Above is an ad e-mailed out by the Redskins ticket office this week. As you read this, remember, for chuckles, that just a couple months ago Redskins executive Mitch Gershman was claiming in press releases that the team had a waiting list of "over 200,000."

Sure, the Skins waiting list has long been bogus. But this year it's also become apparent that the NFL's blackout rule is enforced as stringently as its steroids policy.

(AFTER THE BREAK: Where's Chris Cooley in that photo? Clinton Tortoise? Lord Farquaad? Lindsay Czarniak cheers on teams that don't pay her? Is the NY Times reporter on Dan Snyder's payroll, too? Another Have-Nots bowl this week?)

FedExField this Sunday would be a good place and time to test my theory that Dan Snyder has mucked up the Redskins every bit as much as he mucked up Six Flags.

Tickets to Skins games have been overpriced, based on demand, since FedExField opened. I've never been to a game there when tickets couldn't be had for far less than face value. I used to half-joke, based on experience, that if you simply held a $20 bill in the air in the stadium parking lot on game day you'd get mauled by folks trying to unload spare tickets.

But, the bottom is about to fall out of the Skins ticket market, and that could happen this weekend with KC in town: Craigslist had 908 separate ads hawking Skins/Chiefs tickets posted when I checked late last night.

So: Six Flags stock, which sold for $11.92 shortly after Snyder took over the theme park chain in 2005, now goes for 17.2 cents.

I wonder if Skins tickets will be worth any more than that this weekend.

Anybody willing to sell Redskins tickets for 17.2 cents, please e-mail cheapseats@washcp.com.

***

Interesting thing about that photo the Redskins marketing department is using to move excess tickets this week: Two tight ends are up front, Todd Yoder and Fred Davis. But no Chris Cooley. Sort of like the box score to last weekend's game in Carolina.

Seriously, after spending the summer yelling "Look at me! Look at me!" and hoping to become the face of the franchise through any number of off-field stunts, Cooley's disappeared. Cooley had no catches on Sunday, and only showed up in the highlights because he had mimicked Santana Moss's silly first-down routine after a play.

Cooley's used up most of his attention-getting tricks by now, too. The guy's going to have to burn two cows or show two penises to get noticed.

Or, you know, catch some passes.

***

The Skins' lousy season has produced some giggle-friendly new nicknames. Among them:

"Clinton Tortoise," attributed to WTEM hosts Andy Pollin and Steve Czaban; "Albert Buttersworth," all over sports radio; and, the clubhouse leader by several strokes, "Lord Farquaad," for Dan Snyder, which I first saw two weeks ago on Snyder's own message board, ExtremeSkins.com, and has since caught fire.

Damn, that's funny.

***

The New York Times has been writing a lot about the Redskins these days. The Times' coverage of the Dan Snyder administration is very different from the Washington Post coverage.

While the Post and Snyder go at it behind the scenes and in print, the Times' Skins stories, all from reporter Judy Battista, have sometimes been fawning.

Sometimes, they're just plain fictional. (Double-dare you to match the headline with anything in the story!) Battista referenced that latter story, which insinuated for no apparent reason and with no evidence to support the insinuation that ex-Skins GM Charley Casserly was impressed by Dan Snyder's coolness this season, in one of her pieces this week, saying "Snyder was still feeling patient" a little more than two weeks ago."

Says who?

What is it with Times reporters named Judy getting snowed when they cover D.C. matters?

***

Lindsay Czarniak led off her sports report on WRC-TV's 11 o'clock newscast last night with an incredibly enthusiastic segment on the Wizards three-point win over Detroit, pumping up Gilbert Arenas' stats and Flip Saunders revenge. I'd never seen such fervor for a preseason NBA game.

The excitement was catchy, and seemed totally genuine: Czarniak works for Dan Snyder, but not Abe Pollin, and so she wasn't wearing any Wizards' gear as she gushed.

If you follow sports in Washington, I guess preseason is the best time to get excited, before hopes and dreams get crushed.

***

Update on the Road to 11 Losses: We now know there will be no 0-11 season in local high school football.

Anacostia's chance at having the losingest year in D.C. high school football history got waylaid last Friday, as the Indians beat Eastern 36-0 in a matchup of really down programs.

Anacostia, which went into the game 0-6, has scheduled 11 games this year, one more than the standard 10-game season, and far as I can tell, no D.C. school has ever had an 0-11 record. But Anacostia just couldn't find a way to lose to Eastern, which didn't have a football team at all last year because of a lack of players, and so far is 0-4 in the 2009 season.

Eastern, which only has 8 games listed on its schedule, now has its biggest game of the year this Friday when it hosts Spingarn in the latest Have-Nots Bowl: Together, Eastern and Spingarn have been outscored 397-19 and have an 0-9 record.

Somebody's gotta win!

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

He was awesome.

Hosts Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin brought up the rumored but unspecified injuries to Alex Ovechkin and Mike Green, giving Leonsis an opportunity to blame his team's ouster from the Stanley Cup playoffs on mitigating factors.

He wouldn't take it.

"All teams are banged up," Leonsis said.

Leonsis thanked the fans and sounded sorry for letting them down. He said he's capped the number of season tickets at 13,000 for next year so folks who have been loyal for years but can't afford to buy for every game can still get in.

Not that the cap will hurt his wallet: He said he expects all games in the 2009-10 season will still sell out anyway.

Why do fans like him so?

Leonsis said it's because his organization is "transparent" and "honest" with the fans.

The Leonsis interview will be repeated on WTEM on "The John Thompson Show."

On a related note: WTEM is owned by Dan Snyder. If I'm not mistaken, Snyder has NEVER been interviewed by Pollin and Czaban, hosts of the best and top-rated show produced by the station, which runs in afternoon drive time.

Leonsis: Honest, transparent, beloved.

Snyder: Meh. Nah. Bah humbug.

***
The positive power of exposure was also in evidence when another Snyder employee, DeAngelo Hall, went on WJFK's "The Sports Junkies" during yesterday's morning drive-time.

Hall came to the Redskins last season with an awful reputation. He'd been given away by Atlanta and Oakland, and in the past his alleged no-goodnickness was brought up more than his 40 time or two Pro Bowl appearances as a cornerback.

But hearing him talk with the Junkies, who asked again and again about his purported dark side, Hall was impossibly likable. Even when he was saying things folks could have trouble with. Like when he talked up his old teammate, the notorious dog killer Michael Vick.

Or about how much money he makes, and accusing ex-teammates in Oakland of disliking him only because he "got paid."

He boasted about his own off-field awesomeness, too: "I'm the coolest cat you'll ever meet."

And, after just a few minutes of hearing him talk about himself, you could believe he really was the coolest cat.

All the hosts believed, proclaiming as one that they were now "DeAngelo Hall guys."

I wanna be a DHG, too!

***

Switching Mediums: I have a new favorite TV show: DC Armor game replays, microcast Thursdays at 8 pm on WJLA's surplus digital station, channel 7.3 over the air.

I'd seen snippets of the telecasts before while surfing. But last night I sat through the whole 3-hours-plus broadcast, totally gripped.

The production values were fabulously horrendous. The audio was a quarter-second behind the video, giving interviews the feel of a vintage dubbed Japanese movie. The replays were grainy and choppy and had a Zapruder film quality to them.

The scoreboards in the arena were actually projected tv's shown on white screens set up at each end, the sort of set-up you'd by at Best Buy for your super bowl party then return for a refund after the game.

Even the sponsors were C List: All of the commercials were for some Maryland restaurant/freak magnet called Medieval Times. Tag line: "More Chivalry and romance! Call 1-800-We-Joust!"

The level of play was lousy. One DC Armor kickoff hit the speakers hanging from the ceilings, another went into the crowd at a right angle.

The crowd was announced as 1,389, which seemed accurate only if you removed the "1."

But play-by-play man Mark Gray didn't let the profound tickytackiness poison his commentating.

Gray, the longtime host of WOL's sportstalk show "The Sports Groove," gave fans a game call that could make you think you were watching a World Cup final. After the final gun, Gray told viewers they'd witnessed an "historic night!" What he meant was the expansion Armor had won their first home game ever.

As if the telecast wasn't enough of a time-machine, at game's end the station cut to an episode of "Rockford Files" — already in progress!

Old School! Have I died and gone to 1975?

I can't wait til next Thursday!

***
All the buzz and the money are riding with Rachel Alexandra, the first filly to be favored in the Preakness in a couple decades.

But John Scheinman, also known as the Last Turf Writer in Washington Post History, isn't buying into the hype. He never buys in.

Two of the biggest betting scores Scheinman made while on the Post's racing beat came when he bet against fan favorites and chalk: Barbaro in the 2006 Preakness and Smarty Jones in the 2004 Belmont (and on longshots Bernadini and Birdstone, respectively).

"Going against Barbaro in the Preakness was just not done," Scheinman says. "Everybody was thinking he was the second coming, but he didn't even make it to the clubhouse turn. I carried the ticket and felt like I had blood money in my pocket. When Smarty Jones was [going for the Triple Crown], I would have been happy to lose that bet on Birdstone. I was happier cashing that ticket."

He can't wait to bet against Rachel Alexandra.

"A lot of smart people are saying Rachel Alexandra's win in the Kentucky Oaks made them think of Secretariat in the Belmont Stakes," he says. "I was at the race, and I didn't see a machine. I saw a really good filly chasing down a lone speed horse running its eyeballs out, beating that horse into submission, then galloping away from three deeply inferior horses. That's not Secretariat in the Belmont. Now she's got to beat 6 or 7 or 8 horses the quality of which she's never faced. I don't see it."

But here's what Scheinman does see: Mine That Bird, Pioneer of the Nile, Musket Man, and Big Drama.

"I'm going to box 'em," he says. "All the women at the track for the Preakness will bet on the filly. But if she finishes where I think she's gonna, which is fourth or fifth, then I'm gonna blow up that triple."

You heard it here first, degenerates! And if Scheinman's picks don't come in, you get THE REST OF THE YEAR FREE!

***

My personal view, this Depression needs another Seabiscuit: So if either Rachel Alexandra or Mine That Bird takes both the Preakness and Belmont, everybody wins.

Everybody but Scheinman, anyway.

***
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Whether sincere or not, Czaban's bit was as gutsy as sports radio gets.

For the last several months, after all, Czaban has been working for Dan Snyder, who bought the only viable sports station in the market in the spring.

And after Snyder bought the station, management gave everybody at WTEM new e-mail addresses with the suffix "@redskins.com," just to remind 'em who they're working for.

Czaban and co-host Andy Pollin showed more fortitude by repeatedly reminding listeners that Vinny Cerrato, Snyder's sidekick and the team's executive vice president for football operations, wouldn't be showing up for his own WTEM show, which airs on Mondays and Fridays.

Cerrato has been missing his scheduled Monday air dates after losses since getting hammered by callers after the Redskins lost to the Giants.