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

Robert Henson is in a bad place right now. The Skins sub-benchwarmer used Twitter to go after home fans for booing at the game, and cast the disgruntled masses in the stands as "dim wits" and folks who "work 9 to 5 at mcdonalds."

Henson, who wasn't even on the active roster for the game, went from unknown to reviled in a matter of keystrokes.

When I first heard of Henson's comments during the postgame shows -- WJFK gave a running account of the naive blasts --  I was sure somebody hijacked his twitter account. Unfortunately for him, it looks like nobody did. Henson's twittering later claimed he went after the fans only because he had things thrown at him.

Nobody's buying it.

From the sound of things, this could be a deal breaker between the rookie and the fans, at least those that really are dim wits or really do work 9 to 5 at mcdonalds.

In any case, Jim Zorn and Jason Campbell should buy Henson a meal before he leaves town. Henson is going to take a whole lot of heat that woulda gone their way today.

Some writers also expressed befuddlement over the crowd's behavior. Like Henson, writers don't pay to get into the games.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Snyder's the root of all booing? Jim Zorn: Read My Lips? Sonny Jurgensen vs. Jim Zorn, Round II? Juwan Howard is still in the NBA? How much would you pay for Juwan Howard's pants? The Nats are on the entrance ramp for the Road to 100 Losses?)

***

The discord in the grandstands trickled down all over the place. Some posters on the Dan Snyder-owned message board, extremeskins.com, and callers to the postgame show on the non-Dan Snyder owned WJFK, explained that the noise was at its core about dissatisfaction with management.

I agree, especially after hearing one angry lady call WJFK to rail against Snyder, telling host Chad Dukes about showing up at FedExField with her family and having her son's water bottle confiscated at the gate.

"We paid $500 for the tickets!" she huffed at the beginning of a long tirade.

It is amazing that so many people still pay that sort of money to be treated as Snyder treats them. And we haven't even talked about how the new parking rules worked out, Lexus lanes and all...

***

After the Rams game, I will no longer wonder why coaches hold pieces of paper in front of their faces while calling plays. When the Redskins had second and goal in the third quarter, the Fox-TV cameras showed Zorn on the sidelines and I clearly read his lips: "20 draw," he said, then a couple more sentences with "draw" in 'em.

The Skins then ran a draw play that everybody else sniffed out, too. It went nowhere.

I was typing when Fox went right back to the same shot of Zorn on the sidelines, so I couldn't read his lips while he was making the call that will come up in his exit meeting with Dan Snyder: an option pass from Portis on third and goal. Boooooooooo!

If I ran a team, I might hire a smart kid from Gallaudet and give him a pair of binoculars on game day and see what happens. Bill Belichick's probably already done it.

***

For the second week in a row, the postgame interview between Sonny Jurgensen and Jim Zorn was way more entertaining, and had harder hitting, than the game.

Sonny started off telling Zorn if he were quarterback he'd have called a timeout rather than run that option pass to Portis, because coaches only call that play in that situation if  they have no faith in their quarterback.

"Then I take you out of the game," Zorn snipped to the Skins legend.

If I had to bet, I'd say, as the great Keith Jackson used to say during every big game he broadcast, "These two just plain don't like each other."

Sonny also got into Chris Cooley's craw on the air about the offense's non-production. Smart money says this has gotta be Sonny's last year in the booth, and he's going out on fire.

***

Juwan Howard lives to cash another paycheck: The former Bullet has just signed a one-year deal with the Portland Trail Blazers.

Howard was the oddest case of the many underachievers who took Abe Pollin's money in the 1990s. He was beloved when he came here from Michigan, before a holdout and some DUI arrests and getting in trouble hanging out with Chris Webber.

Portland is his seventh team. Blazers General Manager Kevin Pritchard said Howard brings in said the forward will bring a "wealth of experience." A wealth of wealth, too: The guy's gonna put in 16 years in the NBA! Around here, Howard is regarded as a bust, but, again: 16 years!

I passed up a chance to buy a pair of Juwan Howard's Bullets used warmup pants for $12 at some charity auction years and years ago because they wouldn't fit. They still wouldn't fit, but I'd pay $12 for 'em today.

***
The Nationals are cruising on the Road to 100 Losses: The Mets take another at federally funded Citi Field, leaving our boys just 2 defeats away from triple-digits.

The latest loss brought a milestone: It guaranteed the Nats last place in the Eastern Division...again. We'll have to wait a week or so before the team also locks up National League and Major League worst honors.

***

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

Snyder now adds a parking surcharge to the cost of every ticket sold at non-football events at FedExField. All other venues around town put parking charges, if there are any, in the advertised price of the ticket.

Snyder doesn't. He throws it at the consumer at the point of purchase, as a line item on the invoice that can't be turned down by the buyer. For Paul McCartney, where around 60,000 folks attended and there was a $10 per ticket parking charge, whether they intended to use FedEx parking services or not, that added an additional $600,000 to Snyder's bank account.

For U2's upcoming show at FedEx, the forced charge is $8 per ticket; if that show sells out, the add-on charge will mean more than $700,000 sneaky dollars for Snyder. And this is with zero overhead, unless you count the cost to his reputation, which really can't be harmed around here at this point.

Snyder's the king of parking schemes, as outlined in the story, and a godfather of the sneaky surcharge: He's the guy, remember, who after buying the Redskins took a ticket price that had historically included state and local taxes, and then added a new charge equal to the state and local taxes onto the old ticket price, but left the old price as the face value of Skins tickets -- just so he could act like he wasn't really raising the price of tickets!

So where's the outrage?

***

Betting Football season begins tonight!

(AFTER THE JUMP: Cheap Seats Daily gives you tonight's winner? "Biggest Loser" back in play? Which pregame show are you going to listen to? What's the meanest sport? Is there a Curse of Tom Boswell?)

Albert Haynesworth and Clinton Portis won't play for the Skins. What's left of Mike "Biggest Loser" Williams, who's down more than 100 pounds from his weight of a year ago, will suit up.

On paper it looks like the Ravens defense has more scoring potential than the Skins offense. Other than maybe to root for Williams, the game's not worth watching.

Unless you bet on it! So let's bet!

Skins are 3-point underdogs to Baltimore. The Over/Under is 31 1/2.

Put this month's mortgage and then some on the Ravens and next month's on the under.*

***

New sportstalker WJFK is having its own pregame broadcast for the preseason opener. To jab the owner of competing sportstalker WTEM, the flagship of the Redskins broadcasting network, 'JFK is calling its program "the Unauthorized Pregame Show."

'TEM's owner is, of course, Dan Snyder.

***

There's a professional lacrosse team that calls DC home: The Washington Bayhawks of Major League Lacrosse. The 'Hawks finished fifth in the six-team league in the just-completed 2009 season, which wasnt good enough to make the postseason tournament.

But, this area remains the lacrosse epicenter, so the MLL has put all playoff games in our market. The semis and championship match will be played next weekend, August 22-23, at Navy Marine Corps Stadium in Annapolis.

Back to me: When I was a kid in the mid-1970s I used to go to the Capital Centre to watch the Maryland Arrows of the National Lacrosse League, the first DC pro lacrosse franchise.

These were the most violent sporting events I ever attended. The team's mascot was a cartoon thug name Crunch Crosscheck and its slogan was "You gotta be mean to play box lacrosse!" Its radio commercials featured a faux endorsement from Attila the Hun. (The Arrows marketing team included a young AU graduate named Andy Dolich, now the chief operating officer of the San Francisco 49ers.)

The games lived down billing, too. You were pretty much guaranteed a bench-clearing brawl every night, and the situation in the grandstands was even bloodier. A gang of older guys from my neighborhood went to every game dressed up in the same outfits, topped by yellow and black CAT hats, from heavy equipment maker Caterpillar. They called themselves the CAT Patrol and they'd fight any willing partner at Arrows games. They never had trouble finding willing partners, and one guy even jumped the glass to throw punches with players from the Philadelphia Wings.

The league only lasted two seasons. The memories endure...

***

Could the Nats sudden downfall be blamed on The Boswell Curse?

The Nats turnaround began on July 21, sparked, we think, by Cheap Seats Daily's proclamation of Guaranteed Win Night and declaring "Thunderation" as the team's unofficial official fight song.

But, maybe it's all about Boswell.

You can look it up: Boswell went on vacation or otherwise stopped writing after a column that ran July 20.

The Nats Great Turnaround of 2009 began the next day.

Boswell's vacation ended or he otherwise started writing on August 10, when he typed up a column with the line "The Nats aren't just winning. They're clubbing people." That night the Nats get shellacked in Atlanta. And superstar in waiting Jordan Zimmermann announced he'd be getting Tommy John surgery and would be out for A YEAR AND HALF.

Last night, Day 2 of Boswell back on the job: Another shellacking in Atlanta. Nyjer Morgan gets picked off to end the game, even with his team down by four and the meat of the lineup behind him.

How pre-Turnaround is THAT?

Go back on vacation, Boz. Or write that the Nats will lose 14 of their next 20! And insist that the Lerners won't pony up for Stephen Strasburg.

Yeah, especially the Strasburg column! Please!

Good thing it's football season!

***

*Don't really bet the mortgages, dumbass....Unless you really really need the money!

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

Nearly all the ads, as far as I can tell, are for sales of pairs or groups of tickets to this Sunday's Skins/Eagles game.

Steve Czaban, the voice of the fan on Dan Snyder's sports station, WTEM, called on fans to kickstart a "Give Your Tickets to an Eagles Fan" movement for the game to protest the ineptitude of Redskins management.

The Skins have no realistic shot at the postseason after the loss to Cincinnati.

As if the meaninglessness of the game for the Redskins, Snyder's beer and parking costs, and advances in TV technology didn't provide enough incentive to follow Czaban's lead and stay home, weather.com predicts rain and a high of 40 degrees on game day.

The only reason to show up would be to see if or how many fans boo Clinton Portis, Santana Moss, Jason Campbell and Jim Zorn.

Come to think of it, that might be enough to get me out there.

On Saturday, Maret's basketball boys were leading Sidwell Friends on the road when the home crowd taunted the visitors with a chant ripped from the headlines:

"The Sidwell kids started yelling 'O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!' at us," a Maret parent who attended the game tells me.

The First Family Elect's first major post-election decision, of course, dealt with where to send daughters Malia and Sasha to school. Most reports had Maret and Sidwell as the finalists in the Obama sweepstakes.

After tours of both, Sidwell landed the kids for next year. So while Malia and Sasha aren't even enrolled there yet, they're already cheerleaders. And what the Sidwell fans were telling Maret with their "O-ba-ma!" chant was: "Even if you whup us at hoops, we still beat you in a bigger game!"

The Maret parent says Maret's administrators looked confused, and Sidwell's bemused, as "O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!" rained down from the grandstand.

Just words? Hardly.

"On the Maret side, that was insulting and incendiary," says the Maret parent, who requested anonymity. "How crass!"

Maret's side eventually responded by yelling "Oatmeal sucks!" -- a play on Sidwell's nickname, the Quakers.

To add insult to insult: Perhaps inspired by the clever nastiness of the home fans, Sidwell came back and beat Maret by a point, 47-46.

A call to Sidwell's athletic director to get a comment on the fans' alleged un-Friendly chant hasn't yet been returned. But we'll follow this story and do everything journalistically possible to build the Sidwell/Maret rivalry into something that can last two terms.

The big news for now: There's a Sidwell/Maret rematch tomorrow night at Maret.

Come game time, the Maret kids will have had almost a week to come up with something better, or at least something bitterer, than "Oatmeal Sucks!"

The whole world is watching!