Photo Gallery.  Dunbar 33 Coolidge 21.  Nov. 24th.  © 2011 Matt Dunn

Sign of the times: The city's public schools championship game is no longer just the Turkey Bowl. It's the 42nd Annual Safeway Turkey Bowl.

This year's game, featuring Coolidge and Dunbar, will be the first Bowl held since Mayor Vincent Gray sold the naming rights of the biggest event on D.C.'s scholastic sports calendar.

According to Gray's office, Safeway paid $100,000 in cash and will contribute $50,000 worth of what are called "in-kind" donations, meaning barter.

Brand new DCPS athletic director Stephanie Evans says that to satisfy the "in-kind" requirement, Safeway will provide things like in-store advertising space to DCPS to promote the title game.

For old school types, these name-selling ventures that have taken control of big-game sports are unseemly, particularly when students are being used to promote products and causes that they have no control over what brand or cause they're being exploited for. (The Weedeater Bowl, Humanitarian Bowl, etc.)

But DCPS sports are in such trouble, the more folks in the community paying attention, the better. And Safeway frequently has sirloin steak sales for $4.99 or less a pound if you buy side-of-beef quantities, which I take advantage of.

And Gray follows local high school sports more closely than any mayor the city's ever had.

So if the DCPS/Safeway relationship goes swimmingly, look for a spate of naming-rights sales with other school events.

I'm not so sure of the real-world value of advertising space in grocery store aisles. But this "in-kind" concept has all kinds of possibilities beyond the high school realm.

It'd be cool, for example, if organizers of next month's Military Bowl Presented by Northrop Grumman at RFK Stadium accepted the sponsors' cluster bombs as payment.

Not counting interim directors, she is the fourth person to hold the job in the last four years.

Unless I've missed somebody, Evans is also the first female athletic director in the school system's history.

And, boy—or in this case, and girl—does she have a mess to clean up.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Friendship Collegiate faces H.D. Woodson tonight in what's being billed as The Real Turkey Bowl.

The game has scads of story lines. The most dramatic: Woodson is the past; Friendship is the future.

Woodson is the defending public schools champion. They've got a new state of the art stadium and new state of the art school building equipped with new state of the art locker rooms.

Friendship is a public charter school. They have no football stadium to call home. Their campus on Minnesota Ave. NE doesn't even have a locker room. Players dress out for practice day after day in industrial-sized storage bins plopped down on a patch of dirt at raggedy Fort Mahan Park.

That's why the Knights are known by both my readers as the Nation's Best Football Team That Uses a Storage Bin as a Locker Room.

What the Friendship football program has in abundance, however, is talent: 14 players from last year's squad got college scholarships. This year's team is even more loaded. Playing a tough schedule of almost all road games, the Knights have gone 7-1 and sure look like the best team in the city.

Woodson belongs to the DCIAA, the traditional public school athletic league. DCIAA football, meanwhile, is having perhaps its worst season in history. Woodson has gone 5-3, with none of its losses coming against rivals in the putrid DCIAA East.

No DCIAA squad can match up with Friendship player for player this season. Friendship wanted to join DCIAA, but was denied entry by DC Public Schools officials, who don't want to open up their competitions, including the Turkey Bowl football game, to charters.

If Friendship crushes Woodson, that would crush the credibility of the Turkey Bowl.

And that would put pressure on DCPS to open the football championship, and other DCIAA sporting competitions, to public charters.

An upset win for Woodson, meanwhile, could mean the status quo gets a stay of execution.

In other words, bragging rights and the future of D.C. schoolboy football are up for grabs tonight.

The adults who run athletics for DC's high schools do the poorest job of running a league that I've ever seen. Nobody comes close.

Forfeits come in bunches in the city's public schools league, DCIAA, and it often sounds like the grownups in charge go out of their way to find reasons NOT to let the kids play ball.

One example: Coolidge administrators backed out of a game with Bishop McNamara a few weeks ago claiming they couldn't find security guards to work the game. They made this declaration at 11 a.m., meaning they all gave up trying to get the game in at least eight hours before kickoff.

A week earlier the same Coolidge officials said they couldn't play against Carroll because of an earthquake that took place three and a half days before the kickoff.

Nobody else in the region used the earthquake as an excuse for not showing up.

How messed up is that? I  grew up in Falls Church, about six miles from the D.C. border. I'm certain that out there any grownups who showed just once the level of incompetence and disregard for the kids that DCIAA officials show week after week, year after year, would be publicly humiliated and unemployed.

Why o why do D.C. residents let this city's kids get treated like crap?

More DCIAA buffoonery will be on display tonight, when Dunbar plays DeMatha. League administrators have set up a forfeit-friendly situation by reinstating a rule that allows fifth-year seniors to play sports in DCIAA. That rule was carelessly inserted by Michelle Rhee early in her tenure as DCPS chancellor.

I know of no other public school league in the country that allows fifth-year seniors, so-called "redshirts," to play high school ball.

Every athletic league in this area, including the WCAC, DeMatha's league, prohibits its member schools from scheduling games with teams that allow fifth-year players. Rhee said she would remove the rule after finding out it made DCIAA schools persona non-grata with outside confederations. She never followed through.

One DeMatha official I spoke with said WCAC leaders were unaware that DCIAA allowed redshirts until it was too late to do anything about the Dunbar game.

"We thought we were playing a team that was adhering to a four-year policy," a DeMatha official tells me. "We thought the rule allowing five-year guys was gone. But I think [WCAC officials] understand the people at DCIAA are having a hard enough time walking and chewing gum these days, or just chewing gum. So, yes, even though when we agreed to play we thought it was a team that played only four-year guys, we did agree to play, and we know the teams want to play, so we're not going to not play. We'll play the game."

Unless Dunbar can' t get security guards, that is.

DCIAA City Title Game, Turkey Bowl, Nov. 25th. © 2010 Matt Dunn

photo by Darrow Montgomery

Somebody's gotta win.

Remember when Michelle Rhee pronounced the vote against her boss as "devastating for the children of D.C.," the cockiest  utterance from a D.C. public official since Marion Barry's "Get over it!"? (Yeah, Rhee is a public official. I just looked it up.)

Well, it's real tough to view Rhee's leaving, if that's what she's promising us, as much of a loss when looking at tonight's football matchup of Coolidge and Anacostia. The athletic programs at both schools are a mess—neither team has won a game yet, for starters—and their problems are symptomatic of larger ills within DCPS athletics that Rhee, megalomania notwithstanding, has done nothing to cure.

Coolidge, a regular Turkey Bowl contender in recent years, goes into the game 0-5, and has been outscored 125-37. The team is now in the hands of first-year head coach Natalie Randolph, who, much like Rhee, didn't have a fit resume when she was handed the job but looks good on a magazine cover. Coolidge, as a school, isn't really even run by DCPS any more. Rhee turned the school over to Friends of Bedford, some New York-based education reform clique, and they hired Randolph. It's not Randolph's fault she was hired, and Rhee could learn a lot by watching Randolph, who has been humble and hardworking as her squad's taken its lumps.

Anacostia, meanwhile, isn't really even run by DCPS any more, either. Rhee turned its management over to a charter school, Friendship Public Charter School. Anacostia, which had the best football program in the city 20 years ago, is 0-4 and has been outscored 130-12. Anacostia didn't even field a team at the beginning of the 2010 season. The Indians were forced to forfeit their opening game with Gonzaga because there weren't enough kids on the roster.

That's a pretty good indicator of the competence of the Friendship administrators Rhee gave the school to. Nicely done!

The athletic problems at these schools, and all of Rhee's DCIAA high schools, run way beyond the football field. Both Coolidge and Anacostia, like all of Rhee's schools not named Wilson, treat girl athletes like they don't exist. For all the years she's held the title chancellor—somehow, even her title is obnoxious—the utter absence of girls' sports teams is on Rhee, too.

What's devastating, again?

Let other folks repeat the feel-good portions of the Natalie Randolph story. There's a whole lot about the hiring of America's only woman football coach that's suspect.

On paper, Randolph is laughably underqualified to take over a DCIAA program, where the football programs routinely crank out NCAA scholarship athletes. Her football coaching experience amounted to two years as a receivers coach at H.D. Woodson high school, and she didn't coach football at all last year, according to the version she's been telling the press for months. But don't blame her for being hired: She wasn't even looking to become a coach when she was recruited for the top job at Coolidge, she told Parade. Randolph's hiring was handled by some outsider funky education reform group called the Friends of Bedford, which now runs the long-troubled Coolidge, located in Takoma.

Since being handed the job, Randolph and her players have been followed around by an ESPN crew. According to the Parade story, one of many national profiles of Randolph that's run recently, she and her players made a trip to the NFL Draft in New York a few months ago.

Color me cynical, but: Really? Aren't there more pressing needs at Coolidge where that sort of money could have been spent. If footage of that New York excursion shows up on ESPN, an investigation of the whole shebang is in order. The entire Randolph saga so far stinks of a publicity stunt, like a real-life remaking of "Wildcats," the Goldie Hawn feature film where a petite pretty woman takes over an inner city football program.

But the stinkiest thing about the Randolph hiring is that all the attention it's generating masks some incredibly serious problems with the athletic programs at Coolidge, specifically, and throughout Rhee's DCPS. Randolph or no, female students at the school and all over this city have criminally few athletic opportunities compared to girls at D.C.'s private schools or public schools in surrounding jurisdictions. If it weren't for volleyball, in fact, at Coolidge the girls would have just about no athletic opportunities this fall. Randolph, who grew up in the area, went to a private high school a couple miles south of Coolidge when she was a kid. That school has varsity and JV soccer teams, field hockey teams, lacrosse teams, and cross country teams for girls. Coolidge has none of those.

But, Coolidge has a woman football coach. So all's square, right, Michelle Rhee?

(And, sorry, DCPS, cheerleading IS NOT a sport in the eyes of the law.)

The reality show that is Randolph's Coolidge experience makes its national television debut tonight, as ESPN broadcasts the season opening game with Carroll. Kickoff is at 7 p.m. at Coolidge.

“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?)

From a preview of the 2008 sign sweepstakes: "A pair of tickets to the game will be awarded to the winner of the best 'Beat Dallas' sign." The same prizes are used to draw fans to Snyder's event this year.

Bottom line: Dan Snyder used to encourage fans to make those dangerous, eye-poking thingamajigs. Like the Geico sign giveaway promotion Snyder put on during the Monday Night Massacre revealed, if signs put money in Snyder's pocket, he likes 'em.

What a champ.

***

Who's not a coward? Albert Haynesworth.

Outta shape? Sure seems like it. Malingerer? Sure seems like it.

But not a coward. Haynesworth went down in a big heap in the 4th quarter and stayed there.  It's a routine he goes through pretty much every game. The replays didn't show where his injury could have occurred, but he acted like he was in a lot of pain. But, as the cameras showed him being helped off the field yet again, you could see that he was wearing no protective pads in his pants.

"Albert doesn't even appear to be wearing knee pads," Dan Dierdorf, the CBS commentator, commentated.

The pads weigh nothing. Not wearing them seems almost masochistic, or maybe it's intended to send a message of invincibility to opponents. A lot of players these days are sending the same message. But why take up this no-gain, more-pain habit? Especially if you just got paid 42 million large, like Big Al?

***

By gametime yesterday, the Redskins had earned "object of pity" status from some quarters of the Washington Post. The paper's comic books blog, Comic Riffs, had a poll asking readers if Tank McNamara had "crossed the line" of fairness to Dan Snyder in its Friday panels.

The strip in question featured a mythical contract negotiation between Steve Largent, representing Jim Zorn, and Snyder's management team. The debated line-crossing segment had Largent saying all time spent on the Redskins is "garbage time." Forget fairness. I'm more concerned that the strip didn't cross the line from unfunny to funny, yet clearly did cross into "what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about?" territory.

In any case, the recent Tank material is nowhere near as brutal to the Skins owner as when the strip named Snyder its "Sports Jerk of the Year" in 2001.

***

Big news from Saturday's DCIAA semifinals doubleheader, held at Cardozo's beautiful stadium: Dunbar WON'T be in the Turkey Bowl. The dynastic Crimson Tide got walloped by Woodson, knocking Craig Jefferies' squad out of the Thanksgiving Day championship for the first time in a dozen years.

At the "Unsurprising" end of the spectrum: Spingarn, which provides fodder for my Washington City Paper Education Issue column every year, ended the season as the worst team in the city.

In other words, Spingarn's football program enjoyed a typical year: Still another new coach was hired, not enough kids to field a team show up when practice starts in the summer, the Green Wave goes on to lose every game, mostly by blowouts, etc.

Spingarn cemented itself as the bottom of the bottom with last week's 55-0 loss to Woodson. That left Spingarn at 0-8, having been outscored by opponents 378-24.

Wait 'til next year.

***

With Saturday's latest fourth-quarter disappearance against previously nosediving Detroit, the Wizards stuck to the script of their version of "Sleepless in Seattle" — "Winless in November." The line between fatalist and realist was obliterated years ago among Bullets/Wizards fans. This franchise still wears lousiness just like destiny. Given the past and present, Mike Miller's game-day costume — from his hair on down, it's an outfit loaded with look-at-me accessorizing –  exudes nothing but silliness. My inner geezer is sure his get-up should go.

***

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

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?)

Here's a release from the Securities and Exchange Commission dated Monday, October 5, 2009:

It appears to the Securities and Exchange Commission that there is a lack of current and accurate information concerning the securities of SpongeTech Delivery Systems, Inc. ("SpongeTech") because questions have arisen regarding the accuracy of assertions in press releases to investors and in periodic reports filed with the Commission concerning, among other things: (1) The amount of sales and customer orders received by the company; (2) the company's investment agreements; and (3) the company's revenues as reported in its financial statements. In addition, SpongeTech has not filed any periodic reports with the Commission since the period ended February 28, 2009.

The Commission is of the opinion that the public interest and the protection of investors require a suspension of trading in the securities of the above-listed company.

Therefore, it is ordered, pursuant to Section 12(k) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, that trading in the securities of the above-listed company is suspended for the period from 9:30 a.m. EDT, on October 5, 2009 through 11:59 p.m. EDT, on October 16, 2009.

By the Commission.

Elizabeth M. Murphy,
Secretary.
Citation: "74 FR 51626"
Document Number: "File No. 500-1"
Federal Register Page Number: "51626"
"Notices"

Investors were apparently already clued into SpongeTech's difficulties. The stock (SPNGE) was trading at $.06 a share when the SEC booted it off the board.

Now that I think about it, it makes sense that Snyder would be attracted to SpongeTech. It ain't easy for Snyder to find a company that's as much a laughingstock on Wall Street as is his Six Flags. For all the mess Snyder has made while running that theme park giant into bankruptcy, perhaps SpongeTech makes him feel like Warren Buffett! (Thanks to Destino for the SEC tipoff.)

***

The director of the Redskins Cheerleaders told me earlier this week she wasn't aware that members of her crew had agreed to wash cars for WTEM. Redskins spokesman Karl Swanson hasn't responded to my query about the contest. But I now have a theory why Snyder would give the Redskins Cheerleaders such a degrading and subservient job as washing cars for sportstalk radio listeners: He's still peeved at the First Ladies of Football for working the launch party for rival radio station WJFK in July.

That episode was a total embarrassment for the cheerleader obsessed Snyder, but with this contest he can show his WTEM listeners that he's back in control of the troupe.

***

Speaking of the radio rivalry: The news ain't much better for Snyder in sportstalk land.

WJFK boss Chris Kinard, the brains behind hiring the Redskins Cheerleaders for the coming out party of Snyder's competition, put out a statement yesterday saying that his station is walloping the bejeezus outta Snyder's.

Portions of Kinard's release:

"According to Arbitron ratings released today, Sportsradio 106.7 The Fan is the No.1-ranked sports radio station in Washington, D.C.  The station signed on July 20 and has eclipsed sports radio rival WTEM with listeners 12+, and in its target demographic of Men 25-54.

In the September ratings period (Aug. 20-Sept. 16), The Fan showed growth across the board.  Its overall share of listeners 12+ was up 38% from the prior ratings period. During the same time period, the station increased its share among Men 18+ and 18-34 by 24% and 35%.

Additionally, The Fan was the No. 1 choice for Men 18-34 sports radio listeners in the coveted morning and afternoon timeslots, as well as in midday and evenings."

These numbers only include about one week of the Mike Wise v. Tony Kornheiser late-morning battle, which provides the most intrigue of all the WJFK/WTEM subplots.

Wise is a radio newcomer; Kornheiser, despite being damaged goods after the extended "Monday Night Football" debacle, is the biggest name and probably highest paid guy in Snyder's deejay stable.

Kinard didn't provide specific numbers about the 10 a.m. to 12 noon portion of the midday slot. If WJFK can win that against Kornheiser and during the NFL season, WTEM's future's bleak.

God knows what Snyder'll force the cheerleaders to do if this keeps up.

***

Reminder: Haves and Have Nots Bowls are both being played on area high school gridirons tonight.

The Haves Bowl: DeMatha hosts Good Counsel at the Prince George's Sports and Learning Complex.

In recent years, DeMatha v. Good Counsel gets people as fired up as Roe v. Wade.

These are the top two football teams around town. DeMatha has an athletic program second to none not only locally but anywhere. Good Counsel has tried to model itself after the Hyattsville powerhouse, hiring several DeMatha alums and coaches.

But though Good Counsel has been able to crack the national prep football rankings in recent years, it has been nothing more than a bridesmaid to DeMatha in the powerful WCAC Conference for Catholic schools. It'll take a win tonight and a win in the WCAC championship game to change the local landscape.

The Have Nots Bowl:  Eastern at Anacostia

Both programs are the vying for the worst of the worst right now. Anacostia is 0-6 and has given up 50 points in four of those losses. Anacostia has a chance to become the first DC high school program ever to go 0-11 in a season.

But Eastern is at least as godawful. The school didn't even field a team last season and probably won't field one next year, and thus far in 2009 has put up an 0-3 record and has been outscored 114-13.

Eastern's best chance for victory here would come if Anacostia is looking past today's game to the upcoming matchup with Spingarn.

Spingarn, another perennial Have-Notter, is currently 0-4 and is losing the points battle 200-6.

Good golly.

***

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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?)

There are two big get-togethers in the area this weekend: The reunion of the Falls Church High School Class of 1979, and the Washington Capitals Fan Convention.

Because of the latter, Wes Johnson won't be able to attend the former.

Johnson is the Caps longtime P.A. announcer, and far as I can tell the only guy from Falls Church (full disclosure: my alma mater, same class as Johnson) to ever make anything of himself. The only other alum from FCHS to get the spotlight was a Pizza Hut delivery man who jumped the White House fence and got shot in 1995.

Johnson, a professional voice-over artist when not riling up the home fans from his perch in the penalty box, has been working the microphone at Verizon Center since 2000.

He says he favored an understated delivery when he first got the Caps job, but turned into the over-the-top bellower fans now know and love after a gig for a video-game producer in which he had to play an arena announcer... for gladiators.

"For that job, I put my regular voice 'on steroids,'" says Johnson, speaking figuratively in case it's illegal for P.A. guys to be juiced, "and it carried over to what I do with the Caps. And, I've found the arena-announcer-for-gladiators voice works pretty well with hockey, too."

Johnson will spend all Saturday at the Caps event, to be held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill. Other scheduled special guests include NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, owner Ted Leonsis, general manager George McPhee, head coach Bruce Boudreau and former fan favorites including Rod Langway, Al Iafrate, and the long-absent Dennis Maruk.

Tickets for the Caps event are sold out. If you want to go to the Falls Church High reunion, however, call 703-471-6700.

***

Anacostia has a fighting chance of posting an 0-11 season. That might well have never happened in DC high school football history. Some DCIAA teams this year have added a game to the traditional 10-game maximum slate that has long been in place for prep football.

DC football has long been a game of haves and have nots, and Anacostia is the only one of the have-nots in the public school league to throw in the extra game on this year's schedule.

Anacostia has gotten off to the kind of start that makes the winless, record-breaking season seem very possible:  The Indians are already 0-4 and have suffered some major blowouts, including a 60-0 pounding from Dunbar last week.

But ignominy isn't going to come so easily:  Anacostia has games at the end of the season against Spingarn and Eastern, the reigning kings of DC's Have-Nots.

So far in 2009, Spingarn and Eastern have a combined record of 0-4, and have been outscored 168-12. Both schools will take big time beatings today. Spingarn faces Dunbar, and Eastern, which didn't even field a football team last year, will get grounded and pounded by charter school powerhouse Friendship Collegiate.

But, Eastern has only eight games listed on its schedule this year, and Spingarn nine. So neither has the chance for Historical Badness that Anacostia does.

Cheap Seats Daily will keep an eye on Anacostia as it makes its way along the historic Road to 11 Losses!

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Speaking of historic losers: Nats lose! Nats lose!

The 7-6 loss to the Dodgers at home gives the their 100th defeat of 2K9.

The Road to 100 Losses is the The Road Traveled for this bunch — three years in a row they've got triple digit defeats. So now the franchise has the same number of 100 loss seasons in Washington as it had in all its years in Montreal! (Anybody who says DC isn't a cursed baseball town hasn't seen "Damn Yankees"!)

One of Riggleman's postgame quotes, meant to praise his boys for not getting blown out like they got blown out on Tuesday, is an unintentional thigh-slapper: "That team's going to be popping champagne any day," Riggleman said, "and we're right there with 'em."

Well, if by "right there with 'em" Riggleman means his Nats, running away with worst-team-in-the-majors honors, are within just 39 1/2 games of the Dodgers, who've won a major-league best 92 games this year, then...OK, Coach, you ARE right there with 'em!

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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?)

But..."signs," "agrees," who cares? That opera simulcast at Nationals Park can't possibly provide more melodrama than Strasburg Signing Night!

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I went to washingtonpost.com's Major League Baseball page a couple minutes before midnight scanning every nook for Strasburg updates. There wasn't a word about the Nats draft pick. But among the lead stories there was one headlined "Retro-Rocket Fired Up," with the lede: "Roger Clemens will pitch the first game of his 22nd season, and perhaps his last, in the major leagues on Friday for the Astros." And the main photo had Gary Sheffield in a Yankees uniform brawling with Red Sox fans.

Clemens is coming back to Houston? Sheffield's back in pinstripes? How out of touch am I?

Well, not as out of touch as the page, it turns out. A note on far right column says, "Announcement: This page will not be updated." This stuff's from all the way back in 2005.

Mr. Gorbachev: Tear down that page!

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I'm a cheapskate, but I was all for the DC government shelling however many millions it cost to give new football fields to DCIAA High schools over the last few years.

About every time I've gone inside a city school for a story over the years, I've seen holes in the ceiling and warped floors and rusty lockers and the sort of plight I used to think only existed in schools in the third world or Camden, NJ.

With the new turf fields, the kids here were finally going to get something that was at least as good as what their counterparts in the suburbs always got but took for granted.

Well, proof that it was indeed money well spent: Eastern Senior High's going to have a football team this year. Forty-four kids came out for the first day of football practice at Eastern last weekend, and the coaching staff tells me the school's new football field brought a lot of them out.

Last year, Eastern never got the mandatory minimum roster size of 18 eligible players, and after forfeiting its first few games the administration pulled the plug on the entire season.

The cancellation of a football season caused a lot of collateral damage: no marching band performances, no cheerleading squads or dance teams, no alumni gatherings, no Friday night lights.

But, all that's back.

"I can't say we're going to have all 42 guys sticking around until the season starts, and I won't say the talent level is anything special," an Eastern assistant coach told me. "But we've got 42 for now, and the new field brought a lot of them out. To host the Turkey Bowl at the school, and not even have a team of their own was embarrassing to the kids, and the school, so that got kids motivated. No matter what, it's better to have a team than no team."

More on the impact of the fields on football turnout in the Titanic platform (or maybe not!) of this week's City Paper.

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The Bowie Baysox, who have more promotional gimmicks than even Chris Cooley, have announced that Darth Vader will throw out the first pitch at Prince George's Stadium this Saturday night, as Altoona visits. "Star Wars" fan clubs are scheduled to show up in costume.

All things considered, I'd rather spend the evening in Altoona.

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?

"It's no secret. He doesn't have a secret," says Vontae, a No. 1 pick of the Miami Dolphins in this year's NFL draft. "He's a DC guy, and he makes DC guys feel comfortable with him. He won't tell you anything he doesn't mean." (The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Locksley's salary of $479,233 while with the Illini made him one of the highest paid workers on the state’s payroll.)

Though Locksley's workplace is now two time zones and a world away from DC, the Davises remain convinced that he'll still work his recruiting magic — even in Albuquerque.

"Oh, he's going to bring talent that New Mexico has never seen before now," laughs Vontae. "Let me tell you that!"