But the biggest news reported by attendees to the preseason opener was that the price of beer has gone up a dollar in the grandstands. Drinkers say the roving beer men now charge $9 a pop.

Apparently you can save a buck by going to a concession stand in the concourse.

(No word on the 2011 going rate for a Beer in the Bathroom.)

But seriously: How the hell much will people pay for a beer before it's too much?

And shouldn't you also be able to buy a lap dance at an establishment where drinks are going for that price?

Were Lexus Lanes at FedExField entrances a flop?

More apparent evidence of ticket-selling desperation from the folks in Ashburn: Management appears to have actually started acknowledging that the game-day experience matters!

No, really!

Yesterday over at Extremeskins.com, the Redskins-owned message board, a poster wrote about being solicited to buy premium seats via email and snail mail.

According to the poster, the Redskins latest sales pitch includes a promise that the following "enhancements" will be made to FedExField operations in the 2011 season:

• Addition of more ticket takers, supervisors, ushers, and other staff to get you into the stadium more quickly
• All restrooms will now have attendants throughout the game
• Complimentary Redskins FanVision handheld devices to view replays, fantasy football updates, and scores from around the League

Delivering on all these fronts would mean a sea change for the fans.

More ticket takers? Guess that means the $100 FLO Pass, a sort of Lexus Lane for ticketholders that let holders jump the crazy lines at all stadium entrances, was a bust?

Attendants in every rest room? But, but, but... No more beer in the bathrooms!

Complimentary handheld devices to check scores? So whatever happened to the Kangaroo TV rentals for $39.95 a game???

I swear, I don't even know this organization any more!

"We feel frustration and we feel sorry for our fans," Snyder told a crowd at an event the Redskins organized. He was standing at a podium in front of a gang of players in jerseys and behind a placard that said "Children Come First." As I noticed during a shot of the owner's box in last week's Monday Night Football broadcast, Snyder looks smaller these days than he ever did. (Seriously: Check out this video from WUSA.) Reminds me of what happened to Rev. Dimmesdale in the Cliff's Notes version of The Scarlet Letter.

(AFTER THE JUMP: 2% of WRC viewers are "Thrilled!" by Dan Snyder's mini-contrition? The Bathroom Diaries are looking for a few good places to squat? Have they considered FedExField's beer-friendly head? The EagleBank Bowl adds a conference? Wes Unseld gets a street named after him? Will it be clogged in the middle at all times?)

After leaving the stage, Snyder talked briefly with reporters, but Brett Haber reports for WUSA-TV that the owner refused to answer any questions about the treatment of the fans he feels sorry for, the ones he's taken signs from and ejected for yelling anti-management slogans or wearing anti-Snyder shirts.

Still, just in case this press stop signaled the dawning of a new era of glasnost at Redskins Park, I contacted the team to request a turn at interviewing Snyder.

Longtime Snyder spokesman Karl Swanson, who hasn't been as available to me as he once was, wrote back quickly, just like the old days.

"I’m not sure I’d call being stopped on a sidewalk by a couple of reporters an interview," Swanson said, "but in any event he does not plan on any formal interviews during the season."

Hey, informal's cool with me, Dan! Have you seen my wardrobe? Informal's pretty much the only game I can play!

But I'm guessing Swanson's telling me my request has been denied.

WRC-TV posted some video of Snyder's comments on its Web site last night, along with a "Sound Off" function where viewers could rate what they watched.

The scoring, as of this morning:

Thrilled: 2%
Sad:  3%
Intrigued: 4%
Bored: 8 %
Laughing: 17 %, and, the big winner,
Furious: 66%

***

The Bathroom Diaries, which bills itself as "The World's Largest Database of Restroom Locations," is now taking nominations for the 2009-2010 Golden Plunger Awards. These honors go annually to the best restrooms around the globe.

I think the FedExField bathrooms deserve serious consideration.

The Bathroom Diaries Web site lists past winners of the Plunger. Sure, they all look less viral than Snyder's loo. But, far as I can tell, no previous Plunger honoree had guys with big tubs of Bud Light waiting for you as you flush.

And as both my readers know: FedEx is the home of BeerInTheBathroomsGate.

(Check out the mission statement from The Bathroom Diaries, a site founded in 2000 by Lynchburg, Va.'s Mary Ann Racin that now lists over 12,000 places to do your business: "Few would visit a country without some advanced information, yet our tender bits are exposed to uncharted territories with no help or assistance.  At our most vulnerable, we are blind. Well, no more.")

***

The EagleBank Bowl has broadened its horizons. Organizers have announced they will accept schools from the Big 12 Conference beginning next year.

The game was originally designed to feature one of the service academies against an ACC squad each year. But that setup relied on the military schools fielding bowl-eligible football teams. Navy did its part last season, winning enough games in the regular season to earn a matchup with Wake Forest at RFK in the inaugural tilt. Air Force is a member of the Mountain West Conference, and its obligations to the MWC, which include mandatory appearances in bowls which that conference has contracts with, have proven more cumbersome than EagleBank Bowl planners counted on.

And then there's Army, which just isn't bowl material most seasons. Army is supposed to be the academy invitee to this year's EagleBank Bowl. But Army's on the bubble, at best, for bowl eligibility. Six wins are required. Army is now 3-5, and will lose this weekend at Air Force.

Army could well beat VMI and North Texas later this month. That would put the team at 5-6 heading into the season finale.

That'll mean its bowl eligibility, and a lot of EagleBank Bowl dollars, will be decided against Navy. Army will be a massive underdog going into that game.

The new deal with the Big 12 will take some pressure off organizers to find eligible teams. And Navy can still play every third year.

(The Big 12 pact doesn't kick in until next season. If Army loses out and things get really rough this year, the EagleBank folks can always add a Gary Clark Party to the agenda to get local folks really interested.)

***

Wes Unseld, known during his NBA days for clogging thoroughfares, now has one named after him. Baltimore officials announced that the 200 block of what was once known as Hilton Street will now be called Unselds Way.

From the street-renaming announcement, I learned a couple things about Unseld that I probably should have known. First, he and his wife have operated a private school in Baltimore, the Unselds School, since the late 1970s. Also, Unseld has lived in Baltimore since coming to the Bullets in 1968, having stayed there even after Abe Pollin moved the team to Landover in 1973.

So for all the years Wes Unseld was a fixture in this market, he never lived around here.

***

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

The Redskins stink. Like, really stink. Jason Campbell  stinks. Dan Snyder stinks. Oh my, does Dan Snyder stink.

Chris Cooley doesn't stink. But his different sort of attention-deficit disorder, which has in the past led him to show the world his naughty bits and film himself burning cows, is maddening.

Last night his look-at-me!-look-at-me!-ADD caused Cooley to blonde his hair and leave his helmet off while the TV cameras rolled.

Then Cooley's ankle rolled and he's likely gone for 2009. Cooley had been quieter for a couple weeks, seemingly aware that it ain't cool to be cute when his team was a national punchline. But then this. So the last image of Cooley this season will be him being carted off the field with his head glowing from all that bleach, looking sad and ridiculous all at once.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Dan Snyder's jack-booted thugs were out AGAIN? It's harder to get into a Skins game than an El Al jet? ESPN protects Dan Snyder? Snyder's lonely? ESPN rejects Campbell? PG County lets the Redskins walk for BeerInTheBathroomsGate™? Two free toppings? Have I died and gone to PapaJohn's?)

Dan Snyder's attempt to kill the message was in full force. I didn't go to the game, so everything's anecdotal, but there's so much.

Tales of scuffles with security over signs and t-shirts blasting the owner abound. The only first-person account I got was from a friend who called me from FedExField just after being searched at the gate like he was boarding an El Al flight.

He asked the frisker, "Are you looking for anti-Snyder paraphernalia?"

"As a matter of fact, I am," the guard told him.

***

ESPN seemed to be protecting Dan Snyder throughout the telecast. The commentators, particularly Ron Jaworksi, wanted to blame all the team's ills on Jason Campbell.

The one shot I saw on TV of Snyder in the owner's box, he was standing at the back, not in his normal seat up front. He looked frightened and smaller than I'd ever seen him, and even more lost than duty-free Jim Zorn down on the sidelines. Snyder's box looked pretty empty in that shot.

Someday, people will feel sorry for him.

Someday.

***

Though it now belongs to the world, I can't let go of BeerInTheBathroomsGate™.

Yesterday I spoke with Norma Lindsay, the chief liquor inspector for Prince George's County, about the photo and video evidence that Dan Snyder's beer vendors had been setting up shop in the men's rooms at FedExField for at least a year.

Lindsay said she hadn't heard of the bathroom sales until last week, after Cheap Seats Daily linked a youtube video that had been, you know, leaked by a disgusted fan. (If you haven't watched yet, it's a must-see film with all sorts of fab moments, from the surprised tones of a urinator catching on to what's going on — "Beer in the bathroom!" he says — to the requests for pot.)

But once the story broke, her office was flooded with calls from sickened citizens.

“Our phones were ringing off the hook last week,” Lindsay says. "Everybody — us, the [P.G. County] health department, everybody — got involved. That sort of conduct is absolutely against code, because it's a health issue. There's every sort of health inspector in the world at that stadium for Redskins games, but nobody had ever heard of that or witnessed it before. I can't even imagine who would would want to buy a beer in the bathroom. That was frightening.”

Lindsay says her agency didn't level any sanctions against the Redskins for the bathroom beer sales, and adds that the team cooperated with the county officials who inquired. "They assured us they had fired the man in the video," she says.

From now on, she says, PG's health and liquor inspectors will add public restrooms to their rounds of spots to check out when looking for bad liquor distribution.

“Nobody ever thought of looking in the men's room for beer sales," Lindsay says.

Cheap Seats Daily, flushing out the bad guys, one at a time...

More to come...

***

Let's end with a shred of good news: Today, for the first time following a home game all season, you can get free pepperoni AND free extra cheese on your Redskins special PapaJohn's Pizza.

To paraphrase Warren Zevon: Enjoy every slice.

***

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

As if vending beside urinals at Redskins games wasn't viral enough: Jennifer Donelan of WJLA put BeerInTheBathroomsGate™ on her station's evening news, and even took a few seconds to give Washington City Paper kudos for blowing the lid off Snyder's newest revenue stream.

Here's Donelan's WJLA piece. Wait til the 50-second mark. Don't take a pee break or beer break or both, or you'll miss my work. And remember: TV puts on 10 pounds, and I've been watching a lot of TV lately.

Otherwise, I think I nailed my line. Thinking ahead: "I'd like to thank-thank...both my readers-readers...and the Academy-Academy..."

Reading between the lines of Donelan's copy, it looks like the Redskins fired the beer man caught on tape dispensing beer in an environment teeming with second-hand poop. A commenter on City Desk yesterday wrote that he was a vendor at FedExField, and he found the bathroom vending "disgusting." But he warned Redskins patrons who are "worried about sanitation" that they should really "stay far away from the lemonade."

Yucky!

***

Sticking with local media, via DCRTV: Two more guys fired by Dan Snyder will have a radio show to bash their former boss. WTOP will give John Riggins and Frank Herzog at least a tryout for a weekly show called "Ask Riggo." (The first installment of Riggins/Herzog is going off the air as we type. "We should do this again," Riggins said to Herzog at sign-off.)

(AFTER THE JUMP: Does everybody who despises Dan Snyder get a radio show? Will Laveranues Coles get a program? Timmy Smith's out of jail? Dan Snyder benched Jason Campbell? Jeff George who? Dan Snyder will put Jason Campbell back on the field Monday night?  Night of Quarterbacks what?)

Herzog lost his 25-year gig as Redskins announcer a few years ago to make room in the booth for Dan Snyder's sidekick, Larry Michael. Riggins had a radio show on Snyder's embarrassing Triple-X sportstalk network, but got canned by Snyder last year when he bought WTEM-AM, a station that could actually be heard in DC.

Riggins, meanwhile, has been brutal on Snyder and Vinny Cerrato in recent Youtube monologues.

Riggins and Herzog join an army of folks who've been grinding their axes with Snyder over the public airwaves. Brian Mitchell, who crushes Skins management on Comcast and during Sunday night spots on WUSA-9 TV, has been fired not once but twice by Snyder: The first firing came in 2000, when Mitchell, the NFL's all-time leader in kickoff and punt return yards, got booted off the Redskins to make space for one of the owner's early jock sniffees, Deion Sanders.

Then Mitchell got canned by Snyder yet again last year when his former boss bought the sportstalk station WTEM, where Mitchell had been a co-host of the "John Thompson Show."

And there's LaVar Arrington, the afternoon drive-time star at WJFK, a rival to Snyder's sportstalker, WTEM. Arrington was once an owner's pet, but has been blasting Snyder since the end of the 2003 season, when he went through a contract negotiation with the Redskins owner. Arrington claims that Snyder pulled a bait-and-switch during negotiations, in the process eliminating a huge bonus that Arrington says he was promised.

The turning point in the player/owner talks, Arrington said a year later, came when Snyder asked him to sign a contract that had "666" written somewhere on it.

“[M]e and my agent, we are Christian people and we were alluding to the fact that there were three sixes in the total of the contract,” Arrington told FoxSports interviewer James Brown. “Three sixes, I think if you are a Christian you know what three sixes means. It is the mark of the devil.”

Arrington then asked Snyder to crunch the numbers in his contract a little bit to “get those three sixes off.”  The team did so, and Arrington say he signed the contract without re-reading the re-worked contract. He later discovered that the way Snyder got rid of the "666" was by removing the $6.5 million signing bonus Arrington says he was promised.

Arrington has had a lot to say about Snyder, all of it brutal, ever since.

The FCC would have to open up some more frequencies if everybody screwed by Snyder were to get a radio show, of course. But if I could pick, I'd like to see Laveranues Coles get a forum where he can tell that story about Snyder threatening to ruin his career and turn him "into Terry Glenn" during a nasty contract negotiation. Recap: After Snyder threatened to send a "flat-screen" television to Coles' house so he could watch football at home, since he'd make sure that Coles wouldn't be playing the game anywhere if he didn't play along with Redskins management, Coles got his wish and was traded to the New York Jets.

***

Timmy Smith talks about the Super Bowl, not about prison. Yes, Skins fans, the team used to be in the Super Bowl pretty regular.

***

A moderator at Extremeskins.com reports that Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato left the owner's booth at halftime and didn't come back. Jason Campbell got benched at that time.

Did Jurgensen's cigar smoking buddy, Snyder, personally put JC on the bench? Snyder wouldn't personally get involved in lineup changes, and force a coach to to accommodate Jurgensen's whimsy, would he?
Oh, right! Jeff George who?

But now reports are that Jason Campbell will be back in the starting lineup for Monday's game with the Philadelphia Eagles. Zorn, however, wouldn't confirm that, as if he's not making that decision, either. So maybe Snyder is calling this shot, too? He wouldn't want Campbell back in the lineup, would he?

Oh, right! Snyder's still trying to sell his Night of Quarterbacks!

Great Moments In Capitalism (Cont.)

I thought Dan Snyder couldn't top himself after selling Sept. 11 Commemorative Hats for profit.

Note to self: Never overestimate Dan Snyder. Never. Ever ever. Never never.

Folks at FedExField for yesterday's game reported that Snyder's vendors were selling beer to fans IN THE RESTROOMS!

And this isn't the first time.

(After the jump: New evidence of Snyder's "revenue stream"?)

The above photo was posted on Snyder's message board, ExtremeSkins.com, a year ago. A witness who goes by the board name of Gracelander wrote:

I'm in 418 and this one dude kept coming into our section peddling the beer and he was obviously in someone elses territory cuz there were alot of back and forth stuff said between them. Then what made me mad was when I went to the bathroom at the start of the 3rd quarter and this guy was in the BATHROOM selling beers to guy's who waited for the urinals. I found this just wrong on so many accounts. I took a pic of him because i'm sure this isn't typical "fed ex" rules for it's employees.

Gracelander later posted that he had received apologies from FedExField management, who blamed the bathroom retailing on maverick vendors.

Well, Gracelander went back to the scene of the grime yesterday for the Kansas City Chiefs game. Only this time, he brought along a video camera.

So now there's fresh video showing that the filthy sales practice is still in found at FedEx. Gracelander posted this video on youtube.com.

Other posters on Snyder's message board seconded Gracelander's yucky tale.

I mean, sure, with about half the ticketholders staying home yesterday, I can understand Snyder needs to come up with some new, um, revenue streams.

But...beer in the bathrooms?

Stay with Cheap Seats Daily for continuous updates on BeerInTheBathroomsGate™!