Posts Tagged ‘dunbar’
Cheap Seats Daily: Dan Snyder Lifts Sign Ban Just In Time for Sign Contest He’s Sponsoring?
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?)
Cheap Seats Daily: Will Prague Spring for Redskins Fans Survive Snyder’s Jack-Booted Thugs?
David Alprin had his anti-Dan Snyder artwork, or whatever you want to call the above paper plate thingee, confiscated at the gates of FedExField two weeks ago.
Alprin's a longtime Skins season ticketholder and was one of many fans who wanted to make a statement about the state of the franchise.
He'd stayed up late the night before the Tampa Bay game crafting dozens and dozens of his statement-makers. But then Snyder's jack-booted thugs, in the form of the yellow-jacketed FedExField security staff, threw Alprin's civil-disobedient plates in the garbage before letting him in the stadium.
But while Snyder killed the message, he didn't kill the messenger. And Alprin's going back for more of the same this weekend.
"I'm thinking about going stealth and bringing in pens, markers, etc., and making signs in the stadium either on paper we bring or the back of the drink caddies," he says.
He won't be alone.
More on the Prague Spring of Redskins fans to come.
***
(AFTER THE JUMP: Another installment of BogusHogetteGate? Really? Michelle Rhee thinks she's god? Really? Coat-tailing on Mike DeBonis' genius? Really? Melanie Oudin's coming to town with her mom, dad AND coach? Really? Snyder comes out on top in something? No way! Way?)
Cheap Seats Daily: What Does Michelle Rhee Know About Dunbar/Fort Hill, and When Did She Know It?
On this anniversary weekend of the Dunbar/Fort Hill debacle, it's about time to call for an investigation of Michelle Rhee for her handling of the racial slur allegations made by Dunbar coach Craig Jefferies a year ago.
DCPS, the agency she lords over, has impeded every attempt to find out what really happened on that Allegany County football field last Sept. 19, 2008.
At least, that's what school officials in Allegany County and Maryland athletic overseers say about Rhee's handling of the matter.
Rhee won't say anything. So why not believe everybody else?
(AFTER THE JUMP: Why didn't Michelle Rhee cooperate in the Dunbar/Fort Hill investigations? Why won't Michelle Rhee explain why she didn't cooperate in the Dunbar/Fort Hill investigations? How did we reach a point where Michelle Rhee feels she doesn't have to explain why she didn't cooperate in the Dunbar/Fort Hill investigations? Redskins fans are racist? Dinosaurs and Indiana and preseason hockey trump postseason Mystics? )
Final Fort Hill/Dunbar Fallout: You Can No Longer Use the ‘N-Word’ on the Gridiron in Maryland
At its regularly scheduled meeting next week, the board of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, which runs high school sports in the state, will be presented with a revised code of conduct for all athletes under its jurisdiction.
The biggest addition to the code will be a clause prohibiting the use of any racially charged language during sporting events sanctioned by MPSSAA.
"There was no section on racial slurs before," says Shanetta Paskel, spokesperson for Maryland Attorney General's office. The AG's office worked with MPSSAA on the new wording.
The MPSSAA board's vote on the slurs clause will be the final official action related to the fiasco that was the Dunbar/Fort Hill high school football game held last September 19.
Dunbar coach Craig Jefferies pulled his team off the field with about four minutes left in the third quarter with his team leading 14-8, but with host Fort Hill on the verge of a go-ahead score. Referees had just flagged Dunbar with three consecutive unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. The first flag was thrown when a Dunbar player, arguing with one of his assistant coaches on the sideline, kicked his helmet onto the field right in front of a referee.
The second 15-yarder was a called after a very late hit by Dunbar on the very next play, again right in front of a referee. And the third came when Jefferies walked to the middle of the field to yell at the referees as they're marching off the late-hit penalty. "Highlights" of the debacle are available on youtube, and while there's no way to tell what was or was not said on the field from watching the clips, any objective observer would conclude that all three flags against Dunbar were justified.
Vontae Davis Says Coach Locksley’s DC Pipeline Will Reach Albuquerque
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" »
Football’s Davis Brothers Put on a Clinic
DC's own Vernon and Vontae Davis, the 3rd set of brothers ever to be drafted #1 in the NFL, will come home to put on a free youth football clinic this Saturday at their alma mater, Dunbar.
Along with being Exhibit A on how much gridiron talent can be found within the underappreciated DCIAA, the Davis brothers tale shows how valuable a great recruiter can be to a college program.
Both were wooed out of high school by Mike Locksley, a Ballou alum who for the last decade has controlled the flow of DC-area football talent the way the Corleone family once did olive oil.
