Just before game time yesterday, Dan Snyder, following Cheap Seats Daily's pro bono crisis PR counsel, dropped the FedExField sign ban. Snyder had just as quietly and cowardly put the ban in place before the Tampa Bay game a few weeks ago to keep fans from showing how much they hate him.

“We have no intention of trying to control our fans’ varied ways of expressing their views on the Redskins organization and the team’s performance,” former newspaperboy turned Redskins COO  David "Yeah, That's the Ticket!" Donovan said in the very brief ban-lifting statement.

“We’ve disappointed our fans so far this season, and I’m as disappointed as they are,” added Dan Snyder. “I understand that some fans want to express their feelings with signs and they should do so, as long as they stay within the boundaries of good taste and don’t block the view of other fans.”

This gives the "He's learning as an owner" crowd something to throw out as they perpetuate that myth.

The "He's a D-bag!" set, meanwhile, gets plenty to work with here, too.

The timing of Snyder's lifting of the sign ban was grotesque, since it was announced too late for anybody going to the Denver game to even get word. Much worse: The announcement also surely has something to do with the fact that Snyder's sponsoring a fan sign contest this Friday with his sportstalker, WTEM, at Dave & Busters at White Flint Mall as part of a Redskins pep rally.

Snyder's station sponsored the same sign contest at the same venue before last year's home game against Dallas.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Sign policies show Dan Snyder's a hypocrite? Dan Snyder ran the same sign promotion at Dave & Busters last year? Dan Snyder likes signs? You can call Albert Haynesworth lazy, but not cowardly? Tank McNamara's neither fair nor funny? Dunbar's season ends atypically? Spingarn's season ends typically? Will somebody tell Mike Miller to stop dressing funny until his damn team wins?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Dan Snyder Lifts Sign Ban Just In Time for Sign Contest He’s Sponsoring?" »

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?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Are Snyder’s Redskins Worth Only 17 Cents a Share Now, Too?" »

Another day, another update on Dan Snyder's Cheerleader Car Wash Sweepstakes. Another chance to run that fab/yucky photo from Snyder's WTEM promotion, the one that's sucked in some of the most brilliant minds in new media to our humble comments section.

Seems Snyder doesn't really care who he jumps in bed with these days. His partner in the contest, which forces Redskins cheerleaders to put down their pom poms and pick up sponges and go service his radio station's 25-54 year old male demo, was a sponge company called SpongeTech Delivery Systems, Inc.

Well, just as the cheerleader pride giveaway was heating up, Snyder's ally gets nailed for all sorts of alleged shadiness by federal regulators: The Securities and Exchange Commission suspended trading on SpongeTech stock this week because of sketchy reports and non-filings of required documents.

(AFTER THE JUMP: SpongeTech's the Six Flags of the sudsy set? SpongeTech's so messed up it makes Snyder look like a fab businessman? Are Redskins cheerleaders being punished? Is WJFK punishing WTEM in the ratings? Can Mike Wise punish Tony Kornheiser? Is Anacostia/Eastern the Good Counsel/DeMatha of crumminess?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Could Car Wash Contest Be Snyder Punishing Redskins Cheerleaders for Promoting Rival WJFK?" »

For the print edition of City Paper, I wrote yet another column about Charles Mann and Art Monk's debacle in Anacostia. The former Redskins spent a decade promising that community a job training center, and then sold the proposed site for more than 10 times what they paid the city to obtain it.

One fascinating (to me) part of the story that I didn't get into for space reasons: While sitting on the Anacostia building over the years, Monk and Mann, joined by Darrell Green, lobbied the residents of Sursum Corda, a low-income housing development off North Capitol Street NW, to turn control of that woeful development over to them. The ex-teammates made their pitch to redevelop the property right after the murder of 14 year-old Jahkema Princess Hansen. They did not get the job.

For both the Anacostia and Sursum Corda projects, Monk and Mann used the Bennett Group, a DC-based development firm headed by LuAnn Bennett, wife of a longtime Congressman, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.).

Congress gave the Good Samaritan Foundation at least $775,000 in grants for the training center project.

The Bennett Group's slogan, which pops up every now and then on the firm's web site: "The bottom line for Bennett Group is value. For us, that means delivering projects on time and on budget, without compromising on quality."

That adage doesn't really jibe with what went on at the Carver Theatre site.

***

(AFTER THE JUMP: Capitals announcer blows off Falls Church High School Reunion for Fan Fest? Anacostia High has chance at Worst Season in DC High School History? Will Eastern and Spingarn keep Anacostia from their date with destiny? The Nats no longer need to consult Mapquest on the Road to 100 Losses?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Caps Announcer Blows Off High School Reunion to Be With the Fans!" »

Stephen Strasburg and the Nationals played chicken, like those hot rodders in "Rebel Without a Cause."

That made for an amazing night to not watch sports, and just refresh this and that web page every few minutes hoping for some Breaking News. Would Strasburg be without a contract? Would the Lerners be without another top draft pick AND a fan base?

My mom's favorite writer, Chico Harlan, was like a political speechwriter on a close election night who has to write both a victory and concession speech, knowing that half his work will be wasted.

In a post made less than an hour before zero hour, Harlan admitted on his Nationals Journal blog that because his own deadlines were approaching he'd had to write two stories, one for the Lerners caving, one for the pitcher caving, before knowing what happened. (Everybody was filing news-free reports 'round midnite. The Associated Press write-up was headlined "Strasburg, other 1st-round picks go to deadline.")

At 12:18 a.m., Chico filed the bulletin report that Strasburg was signed, and attributed the news to Baseball America. Two minutes later, Chico filed one of his fab pre-fab pieces -- headlined "It's Done: Strasburg Signs" -- with the amount of the contract, $15.7 million guaranteed, filled in. The only clue that this was a dummy piece: Chico's story didn't attribute the information to anyone or anything.

Then, within minutes of the climactic posting, Chico changed the headline to "It's Done: Strasburg Agrees."

Which, you know, coulda been the headline for the unused post, too. (Not to go all CSI on Chico, but the link to the updated post, even with the new, CYA headline, still ends with "its_done_strasburg_signs.html")

(AFTER THE JUMP: The fat lady's going to sing at Nats Park? Clemens makes a comeback? Eastern High football makes a comeback? Just like Dick Cheney, Darth Vader's going to throw out a first pitch?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: It’s Not Over ’til the Fat Lady Signs! Or Agrees! Whichever Comes First!" »

When I spoke with the NFL's Davis brothers, Vernon and Vontae, before last weekend's youth football camp at their alma mater, Dunbar, they confirmed that they decided where to go to college because of Mike Locksley. He's the DC native and former Maryland and Illinois assistant coach who gained renown by developing a pipeline of gridiron talent from DC to whatever school employed him.

His powers will now face their greatest test: Locksley just took the head coaching job at New Mexico. Shortly after taking the job, Locksley landed two of the top prospects in DC's prep class of 2009: Coolidge’s heralded quarterback Emmanuel Yeager and the city's top receiver, also from Coolidge, Derrell Person. (However, Yeager, who went to three different high schools here and whose recruitment was marked by questions about his transcript, recently dropped off the New Mexico squad, citing family issues back in DC.)

So I ask Vontae, who was lured to Illinois by Locksley and thrived there, the question that every rival recruiter in college football has been wondering for years: What's Locksley's secret?

Read More "Vontae Davis Says Coach Locksley’s DC Pipeline Will Reach Albuquerque" »

Via DCSportsFan.com: Spingarn football coach Paris Adon won't be back next season.

I've been following that school's football woes for several years. There is probably a coaching job somewhere as bad as Spingarn's. But not worse. Can't be.

Adon, like every Spingarn coach I've met, had heroic qualities. I went to Spingarn's first football team meeting last summer. The Green Wave was coming off an 0-9 season, its first year with Adon as coach, and had been outscored 415-44.

Only 11 kids showed up that day, and a couple of them were ineligible to practice or participate in any extracurricular activities because of grades.

The scene depressed the crap outta me.

Read More "Another Spingarn Football Coach Leaves" »