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!

I left home at 3:15 pm, drove to the Stadium-Armory Metro stop, parked and took the Orange Line train four stops to the Morgan Boulevard station, then walked a mile and some change to the Green Lot to meet friends at their usual tailgating spot.

At 7 p.m., after a few hours of cooked meats and people watching and taking insults from the funniest folks on the planet—the recipe for bliss at my age—I headed back to Metro. I made it to Petworth in time to watch the game, from its opening kickoff to that Walk-Off Hold, on my TV. Great game.

While taking in the fabulous NBC broadcast, I changed the strings on a guitar I bought on Craigslist for less than what my tailgating pals paid for their Redskins tickets. The game's over, and I still have the guitar. It plays real nice.

(And, yes, for those who would prefer to stick around after the tailgate and spend good money to see the football live, the FedExField box office was still selling tickets for face value at 7:10 p.m. when I stopped by on my way to Metro. The box-office stop is also part of my big-game routine, and there have been tickets for sale every time I've looked. Every single time. Soon, everybody will accept that the blackout rule is as mythical as the waiting list around here.)

The lead sentence of yesterday's press release from the Washington Redskins, dated Jan. 13, 2010, announcing the team won't raise ticket prices: "The Redskins have announced that general admission ticket prices for the 2010 season will be unchanged, remaining at the same price for the fifth season in a row.

The lead sentence of last year's press release from the Washington Redskins, dated Jan. 14, 2009, announcing the team won't raise ticket prices: "The Washington Redskins announced Jan. 14 that general admission ticket prices for the 2009 season would remain unchanged for the third straight year."

One year passes, two years are gained! The new math?

But wait! In fairness to Karl Swanson and the beleaguered Skins marketing machine, I think those statements are both accurate. Then again, I got a D in algebra.

But: A 2006 story in the Washington Post said Snyder raised general admission prices in the lower bowl that year by 39 percent, and the price of parking 40 percent. Since that massive hike — 39 percent in one season? What the heck? — Dan Snyder has learned that demand ain't what he expected it to be, and has gone to desperate measures to keep those ticketholders he has. That means suing 'em. And, much as it surely hurts him, not raising ticket prices.

So, the general admission tickets for the 2010 season will indeed have the same prices as the 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 seasons. Fifth season in a row!

But if you use years, as the 2009 release did, then the prices that were changed in 2006 went unchanged in 2007, 2008, and 2009, so last year was only the third year they were unchanged.

Hence: One = Two!

'Course, the Redskins love to play funny with numbers in these releases. Last year's announcement also had CEO Mitch Gershman saying the Redskins have "more than 200,000 people on our waiting list for season tickets." This year, it's got Gershman's replacement, Dave Donovan, saying: "The Redskins have the largest season ticket waiting list in the NFL." Surely that's hokum, but it' still an improvement from 2008's bogusness.

(AFTER THE JUMP: The Skins are still claiming a sellout streak? The Skins charge the ninth highest ticket prices for the 29th best team? How great was Steve Kolbe's Caps' call? How depressing was Dave Johnson's Wiz call? Shouldn't the Wizards be the ones offering all-you-can-drink tickets? D.C. United gives away some future to get some past? Tim Riggins splits Dillon? How's Lyla taking it? John Riggins is on "One Tree Hill"? Really?)

Both this year's and last year's release both claim the Redskins have a sellout streak that's been running "since 1966." That's totally true...in Opposite Land! Even allowing the team to ignore the strike year's small crowds, Snyder was unloading tickets to last month's Dallas game as Christmas packages to all takers. And Snyder's now got more than 20,000 premium seats that he doesn't count here, even though there hasn't been a single year since he bought the team that those seats have all sold. So stop with the sellout talk.

The recent press release has an odd boast: "The Redskins average general admission ticket prices are below those of nine other NFL teams." (True, according to Team Marketing Report, the prime surveyor of pro sports pricing, with figured that a family of four spent $431 and change per Redskins game this season.) Snyder's release didn't mention, however, that the Redskins record was below that of 28 other NFL teams.

A high draft pick, Bruce Allen, Mike Shanahan and no price increase still ain't gonna be enough to bring everybody back to FedExField.

For starters: The people want a real Jumbotron, Dan Snyder!

***

A Tale of Two of the City's Teams: Steve Kolbe's call on WFED-AM of Tomas Fleischmann's shootout goal, which completed the first-place Caps' comeback last night from two goals down in the third period to beat Florida, was so ecstatic and over-the-top, it was as if he was practicing a Stanley Cup call — which, what the heck, isn't that crazy a thing for this team's play-by-play man to do even this early in the season.

Meanwhile, over at WJFK, Glenn Consor and Dave Johnson were desperate to say something positive about the last-place Wizards, as they fell 22 points back in the first half and lost by 12. The announcers described Antawn Jamison in Herculean terms as he tried keeping the Wiz within reach of a single-digit deficit. The desperation and overall plight of the team made it really hard to listen to.

Also last night, the Caps' radio ads were pushing premium ticket packages that include an all-you-can-eat buffet and even "Unlimited Beer, Wine and Soda." The Snyderesque tickets, called the Dewar's 12 Club, are "starting at $99" apiece. I tried getting tickets for tomorrow night's game with Toronto through Ticketmaster, and, as usual, no pairs were for for sale. The best available was a single seat in the corner for $229.45. Best of times for the Caps.

The announcers' desperation carries over to Wizards marketing campaign. The team is now running high-budget TV commercials starring Caron Butler on local TV — I'd never noticed this sort of advertising before — and, during radio game broadcasts, hawking cheap family packages for $49 for four seats and four hot dogs. Worst of times for the Wiz.

Throw in the off-court troubles, and, if the Verizon Center weren't thrown in, you gotta figure Ted Leonsis would seriously be considering to go for the "refusal" portion of his right-of-first-refusal deal to buy the Wizards from Abe Pollin's estate.

***

Guess you really don't know what you've got til it's gone.

D.C. United gave up a whole lot to bring back former goalie Troy Perkins, who left town in 2007 to play in Norway. Perkins was with United from 2004-2007, and stands as the second-winningest goalie in franchise history. The team sent midfielder Fred, who never lived up to one-name status, as well as a 2010 first round SuperDraft pick (seventh overall) and some cash to the Philadelphia Union just to take the expansion squad's place in the allocation line in time to nab Perkins. United really must've missed him.

And Perkins gives a quote that shows he missed United right back.  "It’s more than just a feeling," Perkins said about the return. "It’s something deep in the heart and the soul."

Awesome Trivia about "More than a feeling": Even Kurt Cobain accepted that his riff for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" transcended from Boston's 1976 smash "More Than a Feeling."

That makes Tom Scholz the Karl Marx of the alternative rock revolution!

***

One of my favorite football players of all-time, Tim Riggins of the Dillon Panthers, is moving on. TV Guide reports the star fullback from NBC/DirectTV's "Friday Night Lights" is leaving Dillon so Taylor Kitsch, the actor who's played him so gloriously for four seasons, can make a play for the big screen.

I always figured Riggins, a troubled, wild-and-crazy-but-lovable fullback, was modeled after John Riggins of the Redskins. And he was just one of many seeming Washington references on FNL. There was Coach McGregor, the hotshot coach who was hired as Coach Taylor's replacement at Dillon when he, you know, took a brief sabbatical to give college coaching a try — DeMatha's Bill McGregor, whose squad always makes USA Today's Top 20 national polls, has long been among the most touted high school coaches in the country. And when Riggins and his buddies watch the highlights package he was going to send to recruiters for the University of Oklahoma, as a clip of him bowling over an opposing safety was shown, the guys all agree he looks like "Brandon Jacobs running over Laron Landry."

Why the D.C. nods? Well, turns out "Friday Night Lights" executive producer Peter Berg is pals with Dan Snyder. He's sat in Snyder's box on game days for years, and privately screened his Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx movie "The Kingdom" for the team and its owner. Berg's team's a whole lot more successful on the field than Snyder's.

Meanwhile, the real life Riggins, as in John Riggins, was reportedly taking a role on "One Tree Hill" this season. I see that his alleged character, Ken Arthur, has appeared in three episodes, but I've missed 'em all and read nothing about his acting. Anybody see #44's TV work this year?

***

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MMA booster Luke Thomas

The king of ultimate fighting promotions, UFC, makes its local debut tonight at the Patriot Center. UFC boss Dana White says at least 7,000 tickets have already been sold for the show, which will be televised on Spike TV.

Luke Thomas calls the Fairfax card "arguably the most significant combat sports event since Tyson fought at what was once the MCI Center."

Thomas should be proud. The way I see it, nobody's as responsible for making DC an MMA stronghold, or for putting this area on Dana White's radar, as Thomas. But you'd have to get Thomas in a rear naked choke before he'd take proper credit for UFC's setting up shop here.

"I can't in good conscience take credit for the UFC's arrival," Thomas tells me. "They should pat themselves on the back."

Thomas, a Brookland resident, runs the popular MMA website, bloodyelbow.com, and was hosting an ultimate fighting radio show, MMA Nation, weekends on WJFK-FM long before the station went all-sports. I don't share Thomas's views about the level of artistry or science involved in ultimate fighting — to my lay eyes, it's light years behind boxing in those terms, and I've never gotten beyond the fact that the feature finishing move in MMA is called a "rear naked choke."

(AFTER THE JUMP: A gratuitous "human cockfighting" reference? Does somebody snowboarding for America make your butt water, too? Rink is rigged to keep Ovechkin and the Russkis from winning gold? Gratuitous Pete Townshend kiddie-porn reference? No "Pictures of Lily" at Super Bowl halftime? Reason #1047 why the media despises Dan Snyder? Et tu, Marv Albert?)

But if you listen to Thomas's radio show you know right away he believes everything he says. He'll be on WJFK with live broadcasts from the Patriot Center throughout the day today talking up the UFC card, and will host a post-fight show on the station. "It's the first time MMA has ever been covered by radio like this in the DC media market," Thomas says. "A true and powerful milestone."

Everything ain't rosy for MMA as UFC makes its local bow. The biggest star in the sport, heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar, bowed out with some sort of internal health problems that his camp is playing coy about late last year, just as he was taking UFC and the whole ultimate fighting realm further into the mainstream than it had ever gone. Lesnar will find out how long it'll be before he returns to the octagon, or if he ever will, this week.

Thomas, however, says MMA in general, and specifically around here, will survive with or without Lesnar.

"MMA is here to stay in DC," Thomas says. "And it's only going to get bigger."

John McCain probably won't be showing up in Fairfax. (Media man-law requires that every ultimate fighting piece include at least one reference to McCain's "human cockfighting" description of mixed martial arts from the last century.)

***

Ultimate fighting isn't the only athletic endeavor I'm too old for. Check out this write up on the L.A. Times outdoors blog of the injuries suffered by snowboarder and Olympic hopeful Kevin Pearce:

Pearce had been training in the halfpipe at Park City, Utah, for this week's Olympics qualifier at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, and was knocked unconscious when he caught his toe-side edge while landing a cab double cork.

Why, of course he caught his toe-side edge while landing a cab double cork! How else would the kid have been hurt other than from catching his toe-side edge while landing a cab double cork!

Good god, do I hate the Winter Olympics, where rich people land cab double corks for you and me and all of America! And now I learn that Olympic hockey, the only reason to put up with the whole nationalist shebang, will be diminished greatly this time around: Smaller, NHL-sized rinks will be used for the first time in Olympic history, the only point being to slow down the play and give the North American players a chance to hear their anthems in Vancouver next month.

On the traditional big rink, Alex Ovechkin and his Russian buddies — fellow Caps Alexander Semin and Semyon Varlamov and the most stocked Olympic squad since USA's Dream Team in basketball — would surely skate to gold.

As Al Michaels would say: DO YOU BELIEVE IN HOME COOKING!?!!?!

***

And what about being bludgeoned by blurbs for the Who throughout Saturday's WRC-4 playoff broadcasts for the band's upcoming Super Bowl halftime gig? I'm surprised by the choice, since there are a whole lot pages in the Who songbook that, because of Pete Townshend's past foibles, and the recent protests those foibles inspired, he and Roger Daltrey won't be touching during their mini-set:

The Kids are Alright
Pictures of Lily
It's a Boy
I'm a Boy
It's Hard
Slip Kid
Little Billy
Young Man Blues
Imagine a Man
Cousin Kevin Model Child
A Legal Matter
When I Was a Boy
Real Good Looking Boy (Yes, the Who put out a song with that title AFTER Pete's wayward Net surfing, and threw it on their latest greatest hits package.)

I can't see how the Who can get offstage, however, without playing "See Me, Feel Me" – "touch me" references and all.

***

The wondrous Norman Chad admits in today's Washington Post that his 2009 "Team of Destiny," the Detroit Lions, let him down: "They won one more game than the Rams," he wrote, "which is akin to having one more girlfriend than Harvey Fierstein.

Chad has, for years, averaged more laughs per column inch than anybody in newspapering. Why his genius isn't more celebrated by the Post and the rest of the world escapes me.

***

Dan Snyder hates the media. The vicey versey's also true. From the New York Post's Phil Mushnick:

Marv Albert didn't call Westwood Radio's Giants at Redskins, Monday night, Dec. 21, because his deal allows him to miss some broadcasts, and he chooses to skip Skins' home games because club owner Dan Snyder put the visiting radio booths near the end zone, making accurate calls impossible. Snyder made luxury box seats out of the former radio booths.

Before games in D.C., Giants' radio man Bob Papa has apologized to his audience for uncertain calls that are coming. "Our position is now low, end zone," Papa said, Friday. "It went from bad, to worse, to ridiculous."

***

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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Scout 1998-2008

Tis the season to adopt a greyhound. Though D.C. isn't near any dog tracks — the closest racing outposts can be found about five hours away in Wheeling, W..V. — the city is a hotbed of greyhound adoption. (My favorite adopted greyhound of all time, Craig Brownstein's Scout, is pictured here. Here's their story.)

Adoption's a real big deal right now, because the sport, or whatever you want to call greyhound racing, is dying fast. As 2009 ends, a lot of these 40-mile-an-hour couch potatoes will need new homes.

Several greyhound tracks are shuttering within days. Raynham Park in Raynham, Mass., is closing Dec. 26. Phoenix Greyhound Park in Phoenix, Ariz., and Dairyland Racetrack in Kenosha, Wisc., will end live racing by Dec. 31.

That means hundreds of dogs are being put up for adoption.

Voters in Massachusetts, where racing thrived for decades, banned dog tracks as of  2010, joining Vermont and Maine among states that have put prohibitions on the books. Two New Hampshire tracks went out of business earlier this year. That leaves Twin River in Rhode Island as the  only dog track in New England, and its owner is in bankruptcy and has asked to shut down its live racing operation.

Contact greyrescue.org for information on how to help.

***

The demise of greyhound racing has caught some two-legged victims around here, too: Andrew Beyer, who in his years with the Washington Post became arguably the most important horse racing writer of all time, lost a lot of money when Hinsdale, a New Hampshire tack, went under this year.

From a report in early 2009 in the Daily Racing Form, an equine publication:

Andrew Beyer, the popular handicapping expert, book author, and columnist, had $20,441 in his Hinsdale account at the time of the bankruptcy. Beyer, who frequently has columns published in Daily Racing Form, said on Thursday that he had never considered that the account could be wiped out by a bankruptcy filing.

For anybody still wondering what Beyer's been up to since he took his buyout from the Washington Post, let me try to explain something: HE HAD MORE THAN TWENTY GRAND IN A BETTING ACCOUNT AT AN OBSCURE NEW HAMPSHIRE DOG TRACK!

Good God.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Tommy Amaker bails on Falls Church High, loses to Georgetown? Can anybody explain why the Desiree Jennings crippled-by-a-flu-shot story died so fast? Can anybody explain why the D.C. Armor died so fast? Want to collect debts for Dan Snyder?)

***

A long time ago, Tommy Amaker, a Falls Church guy, was supposed to attend my alma mater, Falls Church High. But Amaker somehow weaseled his way out of attending FCHS and got himself enrolled at W.T. Woodson, an outside-the-beltway school with a better basketball program (and a better everything else, truth be told) than Falls Church had. He had a great run at Woodson, then went off to Duke and had a fabulous college playing career. Falls Church continued losing 16-20 games a year.

Amaker came back to town yesterday as coach of Harvard. He got whupped by Georgetown in a rare weekday day game at Verizon Center. I'm not sure how his coaching failures at Seton Hall and Michigan and yesterday's blowout are related to his bailing on FCHS all those years ago, but I'm sure they are.

***

I only got into this stuff this week, but I'm stunned at how fast the story of Desiree Jennings went away. Jennings became world famous overnight this fall as the Redskins cheerleader who was crippled by a flu shot. She set up a web site, desireejennings.com, just as her story went viral and it was used by leaders of the anti-vaccination movement (including Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy) to promote their cause.

But mere months after it went live, Jennings' site is dead. Visitors are now redirected to godaddy.com. The anti-vaccination crowd doesn't mention her anymore. Jennings quietly put a video on youtube indicating that the incurable disease brought on by the flu shot has been cured.

This is weird stuff.

***

The body hasn't yet been recovered, but there a few more clear signs that the D.C. Armor really is lifeless:

1)The official website of the city's first and only arena team has been shut down. As recently as last week, the front page of the site begged readers to keep showing up for news about the city's first and only arena football team.

2)The American Indoor Football Association no longer shows the D.C. Armor in the Eastern Division on its league standings, or anywhere on the AIFA website.

Why won't Armor owner Corey Barnette just come out and say the game's over? If he's even whispered it, I haven't heard such a thing.

There's no longer any shame in an arena team folding. If the Armor are indeed muerte, they'll have tons of company: One report has the AIFA killing off six of the 14 teams that played in 2009, and the DC franchise is listed among the fatalities.

But more suckers prospective franchise owners stepped over the bodies, so the league will add five new teams for 2010: New Jersey Revolution, Richmond Raiders, Wenatchee Valley Venom, Yakima Valley Warriors, San Jose Wolves.

***

Via Mister Irrelevant: Dan Snyder is looking to take somebody off the unemployment line just in time for the holidays.

Lest you think our town's Mr. Potter has changed his stripes, however, the job Snyder is looking to fill is a start-up position in... collections!

And not collections in the curator sense of the word, like somebody to work with art collections. No, this is collections in the pay-for-your-premium-tickets-now-or-we'll-sue-your-ass-like-we-sued-that-broke-grandmother's-ass sense.

We at Cheap Seats Daily are not usually in the business of giving Snyder free advertising space. But, he's filled so many thousand digital column inches for us in 2009, and, what the hell, it's Christmas, so:

Collections Coordinator – Washington Redskins (Landover, MD)

The Washington Redskins are seeking a highly motivated, energetic professional to join the organization on a Full Time basis as a Collections Coordinator.

Job Responsibilities:

• Oversee the collections process
• Coordinate with Legal and Finance departments
• Make calls to customers
• Process payments
• Set up payment plans
• Assist with customer related needs
• Transfer contracts
• Assist on game day
• Assist in preparation of legal correspondence
• Prepare reports for management

Requirements:

• Knowledge of FDCPA guidelines
• At least 2 years of collection experience
• Basic computer knowledge
• Strong communication and negotiation skills
• Must be able to work a flexible schedule
• Experience with Archtics database a plus

The Washington Redskins offer a competitive salary and an excellent benefits package. If you wish to become a part of this exciting, fast paced organization AND you meet the requirements listed above, please reply with a resume, cover letter and salary requirements or fax your information to (703) 726-7172. Apply Now NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer.

You can keep the referral fee, Dan.

***

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Listeners are urged, "Bring your best 'Beat Dallas!' sign and you can win a six pack of club seats!"

I can't wait to see how high the "Worst Owner Ever!" banner will place.

***

Moderators at Dan Snyder's message board, extremeskins.com, no doubt emboldened by the see-no-evil clause their boss invoked while banning signs from FedExField, have a type-no-insult policy in place.

Posters on the site have been warned not to say anything negative about the team in a thread announcing a send-off that's being organized from Redskins Park for the Dallas game.

The warning:

"Be advised: This is not an opinion or debate thread. Please do not use this thread to verbally attack, make fun of, laugh at, or otherwise belittle any of the participating members or Redskins players/coaches/staff or owner. To do so will result in a mandatory ban."

(AFTER THE JUMP: Why would Dan Snyder sanction such censorship? Why is Slate so mean to Sandra Bullock? Why didn't the Redskins draft Michael Oher? Why did John Riggins jump on Joe Theismann when Joe Theismann's leg was broken? Did you just say John Riggins jumped on Joe Theismann when Joe Theismann's leg was broken?)

Before this season, these send-off announcements were posted regularly on Snyder's site. But, the gathering memos were stopped because they only inspired fans to tell the owner just how much they loathe him in follow-up posts.

The situation Snyder has created in this market is unlike anything in all of professional sports.

I've said it before, and I believe it: Even if the Redskins go on a miracle streak and win the Super Bowl this season, when Snyder holds up the Lombardi Trophy at the victory rally, he will be booed.

***

In his Slate review of "The Blind Side," the feature film based on the life of Baltimore Ravens' rookie Michael Oher, friend and hero Josh Levin treats Sandra Bullock as Lawrence Taylor did Joe Theismann.

I only used that simile so I'd have an easy segue into this: I haven't seen "The Blind Side," but I'm told it opens with a clip of one of the most famous plays in Redskins history — Taylor playing wishbone with Theismann's leg in that 1986 "Monday Night Football" game.

Looking at the gruesome clip this morning, I noticed for the first time that John Riggins for some reason jumps on top of the pile with Theismann and his newly restructured leg at the bottom. Riggins had tossed the ball back to Theismann just before Taylor hit him during the flea-flicker gone wrong.

Perhaps that's why Theismann went after Riggins so hard last week after Riggo piled on Dan Snyder. Or maybe it's because Theismann is employed by Snyder.

In any case, Theismann never played another down of football. But, he lived to talk about it and everything else...a lot. If he was a horse, Theismann would have had a curtain around him within a minute and there'd be one less sportstalk host in the DC market.

***

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"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.

***

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The piece takes a photo of a poster taken by FedExField security guards before the Eagles/Skins game that says "Hi to my huband in Afghanistan," and runs with it. The Great Dan Steinberg made that poster famous after fishing it out of the trash near the stadium entrance.

To be fair, Snyder has shown support for our National Defense. Well, he put out a Commemorative Sept. 11 Redskins hat that had a red-white-and-blue Pentagon stitched on to the side in 2005.

And he sold that hat for only $23.99. Plus shipping. And he kept the money. But still. Bottom line: When Military.com lowers the boom on you, something's gotta give.

And everybody's favorite magazine geared toward an audience of corporate counsel people, Corporate Counsel magazine, also jumps in this week with "Not Exactly a Banner Season for the Washington Redskins."

The publication interviews new Redskins COO and total BS'er David Donovan about the new policies at FedExField prohibiting signs and banning interviews in the parking lot, and he was also asked about fans at the Eagles game having to remove their t-shirts if the message on the garments was anti-Snyder.

"We're not trying to limit what anyone wants to say or chant or wear," Donovan told Corporate Counsel.

Wow. Thus continues Donovan's awe-inspiring streak of just saying stuff so dishonest that not even he could believe it.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Not even Corporate Counsel magazine can stomach David Donovan's whoppers? David Donovan and Dan Snyder, adrenaline rush buddies? How does a Redskins win compare to a class action lawsuit? Skins are only the third-worst team in the NFL? Bono had a hand in Cooley's wounding? D.C. United coach bails?)

Though you'd think a trade publication would be a kind audience, the tone of the Corporate Counsel piece clearly shows the writer had little trust in what Donovan was spewing about the rules changes,  as the story contains clauses like "Donovan can't account for the discrepancy," and "Donovan remains vague."

"Donovan remains full of crap" is the gist of the piece, basically.

Bottom line: When Corporate Counsel magazine lowers the boom on you, something's gotta give.

***

The Web site of DC law firm Wilmer Hale has a big write up of David Donovan's path to the Redskins.

The highlight for me was an anecdote about Donovan's first game as Redskins general counsel. That came in the comeback game in Dallas in 2005 that featured two Mark Brunell/Santana Moss bombs,  and gave the team easily its biggest win in the Dan Snyder era.

Donovan was in the visiting owners box with Dan Snyder. When the Skins came back, the story goes, "the two men enjoyed the rush of adrenaline," and Snyder "grabbed Donovan by his jacket" and yelled “This beats asbestos lawsuits, doesn’t it?”

***

Everybody agrees this year's Redskins are bottom feeders. The Sagarin poll now puts the Skins as the 30th best team in the NFL. The only squads ranked lower are Tampa Bay and St. Louis, the only teams Washington has beaten this season. The two teams just above the Skins in the poll are Detroit (29) and Kansas City (28), each of whom beat Washington for their only victories.

The Redskins schedule thus far, says Sagarin, ranks as the easiest in the league.

***

Redskins fans have thrown out an interesting theory about the injury: Bono broke Chris Cooley's leg! Had Dan Snyder not thrown a midseason concert at FedExField, the theory goes, the field would have been in finer shape and Cooley's foot wouldn't have hit whatever caused it to roll over.

The turf at FedEx during the Eagles game sure did look faded and sandy, nearly a month after the U2 concert there drew 80,000 or so. (Watch the sand fly off everybody's feet here during DeShawn Jackson's long run for a TD.)

As for motive: I was at a U2 show in 1987 at the Redskins former home, RFK Stadium, where Bono separated his shoulder during a fall. Hmmm.

***

DC United Coach Tom Soehn won't be coming back. United just put out a press release saying it was all Soehn's decision to leave the team when his contract runs out after this season.

The release:

Tom Soehn removes name from consideration for Head Coach of D.C. United

Process for finding United’s next head coach will begin immediately

Washington, D.C. (November 3, 2009) – D.C. United announced today Head Coach Tom Soehn has removed his name from consideration for United’s head coaching position ahead of his contract expiring at the end of the calendar year.  Soehn served the Black-and-Red as an assistant from 2004-2006, before leading the club to two major trophies, a Supporters’ Shield in 2007 and a U.S. Open Cup in 2008, in three seasons as head coach.   The process for finding United’s next head coach will begin immediately.

“Tommy has done an outstanding job at D.C. United, first as an assistant and then as our head coach,” said United President and CEO Kevin Payne.  “Over the past three seasons, Tommy has faced greater challenges than any other Major League Soccer coach.  His record in all competitions this season was outstanding and he should not be judged on the basis of missing the MLS Cup Playoffs.  Tommy is a fine young coach and I know we will face him in the future in MLS play.  I wish him all of the luck in the world.”

Soehn was named Head Coach of D.C. United on December 21, 2006.  The Black-and-Red won the 2007 Supporters’ Shield and the 2008 U.S. Open Cup under his guidance.  In all competitions, Soehn posted a career mark of 55-48-31.  United was 36-30-24 in League play in his three seasons at the helm.

“My family and I have spent a lot of time in reaching this very difficult decision,” said Soehn.  “I've been fortunate to spend the last six seasons with this organization.  I'd like to thank the staff and fans for their support throughout my tenure.  In particular, I'd like to thank Kevin Payne, Dave Kasper, Chad Ashton, Mark Simpson, Francisco Tobar, Brian Goodstein, David Brauzer and the entire technical staff.  When you're in this business, the experiences you face together forge special bonds and friendships that will always remain.  My appreciation also extends to the players.  We accomplished a lot together since I arrived in 2004 and I thank them for their dedication and wish them the best in the seasons ahead.”

Soehn joined Peter Nowak’s coaching staff prior to the 2004 campaign.  In three seasons as an assistant coach, United won two major titles, the 2004 MLS Cup and the 2006 Supporters’ Shield.

“I want to thank Tommy for his six years of great service at D.C. United,” said United General Manager Dave Kasper.  “He is a terrific friend and colleague, and he played a major role in the club winning four trophies during his time here.  He is a bright young coach who has a big career ahead of him.  I wish him continued success with his next coaching position and his family the best of luck always.”

***

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Sure, the Nats season ended a while ago. But it makes sense that the Lerners would reach out while local sports fans are planning their sports ticket budgets and deleting Dan Snyder and Redskins.

But this Nationals ad is horrible.

After an all-glowing recap of the 2009 season — two of these three made the cut: Zimmerman/Dunn had big homer totals, Stephen Stasburg signed, and the Nats had THE WORST RECORD IN ALL OF BASEBALL — the ad copy climaxes with "[W]e can all see why Washington, DC is truly becoming the home of the National Pastime in the Nation's Capital."

Washington, DC is the home of baseball in the Nation's Capital? Who knew?

And who wrote that?

***

WUSA is also kicking the Redskins when they're down.  Advertisements for the local CBS affiliate that ran during the Ravens game yesterday urged Skins fans to "sound off " about the team.

"We won't throw away your signs!" said the voiceover.

Ouchie wouchie! Didn't you WUSA guys used to be covert "partners" with Snyder and help him out with all his infomercials? Guess the contract's up.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Reebok boasts of its butt-enhancement powers? Shannon Sharpe goes after the Redskins? Dan Marino goes after the Redskins? 66 percent of CBS viewers go after the Redskins? Dan Marino says Bill Cowher ain't gonna go for the Redskins? Heath Shuler has MVP award taken away from him by Politico? Ethics panel still gunning for Shuler? Chest bumping on the sidelines can get you suspended?)

***

Another commercial during the Ravens broadcast that showed the decline of Western Civilization came from Reebok, which is trying now to sell shoes using the motto: "Better legs and a better butt with every step."

***

The national folks got into the Skins-kicking swing of things, too: CBS pre-game show panelist Shannon Sharpe showed up on the set wearing a bag over his head, and carrying a sign that said "Fire Dan, In Bill We Trust" with an arrow pointing at fellow panelist and likely target of Dan Snyder affection Bill Cowher.

Sharpe's get up inspired another CBS pundit, Dan Marino, to jump in that because of the disastrous managment in Washington, the Skins won't be able to sign a "big time" coach.

Marino didn't mention Cowher by name, but the implication was clear. Given the high stakes, Marino wouldn't have said that without consulting Cowher. Cowher just smiled after Marino spoke.

Guess that means The Countdown to Cowher™ won't ever make me rich.

Also, 66 percent of the respondents to a CBS poll about what ails the Redskins said the biggest problem is the owner.

***

Heath Shuler almost had a good week. On Tuesday, Shuler (D-NC) led the Congressional football team to an overtime win over the Capitol Police squad in a charity football game at the DC Armory. Shuler was 29-45 with five TDs.

"It kind of brings back old times,"  Shuler told the Asheville Citizen-Times, his hometown paper. By "old times," he means his days playing QB with the Swain County High School Maroon Devils, not the Redskins.

For his performance, the Citizen-Times reported, Shuler was named the game's MVP.

But maybe the lawmen will laugh last. While Shuler was celebrating his finest football moments in DC, the Washington Post reported that investigators with a House of Representatives ethics panel are still looking into a land deal Shuler was involved in back in Knoxville, where he was once a superstar with the University of Tennessee and later a real estate honcho.

From the Post piece:

Before he was elected to Congress in 2006, Shuler invested in a real estate development called the Cove at Blackberry Ridge near Knoxville. The investment is worth from $5 million to $25 million, according to his financial disclosure reports. In August 2008, the [Knoxville] News-Sentinel reported that the TVA gave the Cove waterfront rights to build a boat dock in exchange for other land the real estate venture owned. The swap was made while Shuler sat on a House transportation subcommittee that oversaw the operations of the TVA, an entity chartered by Congress to manage the Tennessee Valley and its resources.

Worse yet, the Post originally misspelled his name ("Schuler") in the story's headline, and closed out the story with: "A call to Schuler seeking comment was not returned."

But the harshest blow came in Politico, which reported that Rep. Anthony Wiener (D-NY), and not Shuler, was actually named the charity football game's most valuable player.

And, yes, Politico also misspelled his name. From Politico's game write-up: “Heath Schuler has the offense humming after a sluggish beginning,” an announcer at the game said.

(More bad news on the Shuler beat late last week, Benjie Shuler, Heath Shuler's brother and former business partner in Heath Shuler Real Estate, what was once a powerhouse Knoxville agency, declared bankruptcy. In court filings, Benjie Shuler, who also was a reciever at the University of Tennessee while Heath was QB, listed assets of $265,000 and liabilities of over $10 million.)

***

Sunday's Washington Post has a maddening story about a superstar running back from Broad Run High School facing a suspension from an upcoming playoff game for chest bumping teammates after touchdowns. One of the chest bumps occurred on the sideline, the Post reported. Any player who gets two personal foul calls has to sit out a game. Broad Run's next game will come in the playoffs. Broad Run coaches have appealed the suspension, and Northern Virginia athletic officials have the opportunity to reverse the call.

Perhaps some facts have been twisted as the tale made its way from the sideline to the Sunday paper.

But if that story's legit, if a chest bump on the sidelines after a touchdown will indeed ruin a player's season, whoever made that call should never be allowed to work with kids again.

***

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And he won. But it took eight years before Stewart was told by the courts he could carry his sign into the stadium here.

Times and venues have changed. It's unclear if Rockin' Rollen's case will help victims of the Redskins latest purge. Will somebody who had their poster taken please sue Dan Snyder so we can find out?

***

Also, for the eating-disorder-looking print edition, I squeezed BeerInTheBathroomsGate™ for a few more drops. Completists will want this umpteenth revisitation upon the same story so they can see the only appearance of "oral-fecal" in a sentence. Kind of like getting the repackaged Elvis Costello's Greatest Hits every three years, just for the remixed-again version of "Mystery Dance."

***

David Alperin checks in with some more Dan Snyder weirdness.

Alperin was the first guy to tell me that Snyder changed the sign policy at FedExField. Before the Tampa Bay game, stadium guards confiscated a sign he made saying "Love the Redskins, Hate the Owner."

(AFTER THE JUMP: Fake cheering at FedEx? You're going to use "Douchewellian" again? AND the trademark sign? El Al disputes charges that its security is as Douchewellian as Dan Snyder's? You're going to promote the Great Dan Steinberg again? GEICO signs good, Snyder Sucks signs bad? Why would anybody go to Snyder's "Night of the Quarterbacks"? Brett Haber plays the feud with his former boss?)

Before making the sign, Alperin had checked on Redskins.com, Snyder's own site, to make sure that it was within the rules to bring it to the game. It was. When Alperin told the confiscators he had looked at the team's own rule book, the guards told Alperin that the rules had been changed "last night" and took his sign anyway.

Alperin now says that while attending the Eagles game he noticed that Snyder's message control efforts go way beyond that latter-day book burning.

"The crowd noise after DeSean Jackson scored and for the remainder of the game was fake," Alperin reports. "It was pumped in over the speakers to create the illusion of excited fans.  I looked around and the majority of the crowd looked like someone just killed their puppy.  There was no energy.  The only cheering I did was to boo Campbell, Snyder & Cerrato."

When will the Douchewellian™ tactics cease?

(Alperin, by the way, says he will not be renewing his season tickets after this season.)

***

The other day Cheap Seats Daily mentioned how a friend was given a total body frisk by a guard looking for anti-Snyder signs at the gate before the Eagles game, and threw in a line that the security checks were tougher to get into FedExField than to "board an El Al flight."

That prompted the following response from Ron Glickman, account manager for El Al Israel Airlines Ltd:

"Enjoyed reading your comments about the security checks at FedExField, but I must assure you, the checks that one would go through for an El Al flight are a lot less hands on as your article suggests. All of our checks are first to screen the passengers and provide them with a sterile environment as they check in and on the aircraft. If anyone is ever searched, it is always a last resort and we rarely do a body search. In fact, I don’t think that we have done any in the past year in the entire United States."

Glickman then plugged El Al's "code share flights" with American Airlines from DC to Tel Aviv.

***

The Great Dan Steinberg, who has chronicled the Prague Spring of Redskins Nation like nobody's business, had another golden nugget yesterday: The Skins gave away Geico signs at the gate of the Redskins/Eagles game, while confiscating and destroying all other signs.

I guess this means David "Yeah, That's the Ticket!" Donovan, the Redskins chief operating officer and neo-Karl Swanson, was caught lying again? Donovan's been on a spree all week — saying Philly fans weren't in FedExField, that only a few posters were confiscated at the Monday game, that Redskins fans aren't acting any different this season, etc. And during his own personal WhopperFest, Donovan has also asserted that the Redskins have a policy against all signs, for safety reasons.

Now come tales of Monday's Geico banner giveaway by the team Donovan chiefly operates. To find out that what Donovan has been saying wasn't true is just, well, business as usual.

Nobody ever heard of Donovan until the Washington Post's ticket scandal investigation broke, when he came out to say the team doesn't really sell to scalpers and doesn't really sue its season ticket holders — both big, bad fibs.

And ever since that coming out party he's kept up a pace for fibbery that's just awe-inspiring. I can't ever remember a public figure being caught in so many lies in such a short period of time. If untruthiness were an Olympic sport, well, Donovan'd be on a podium and they'd be playing our anthem. Sorry, Gov. Sanford, you'll have to settle for the silver medal. (For a different take on the guy, the commenter on the fan message board Hogs Haven says he was once a neighbor of Donovan's, and remembers him being "of good character." Then the ex-neighbor adds, Donovan "knows who signs his paycheck.")

(I had heard Geico commercials on Snyder's sportstalk station, WTEM, in the days leading up to the Eagles game saying that the "first 10,000 fans" to show up at FedEx would get a "free gift" from Geico. But they never mentioned what the gift was. Now we know why.)

***

Another victim of the Skins crisis: Snyder is running commercials for the Redskins party he's throwing next Tuesday, dubbed "Night of Quarterbacks" and featuring speeches from Sonny Jurgensen, Joe Theismann and Jason Campbell, at a pace that seems desperate.

Pretty much every break on his radio sportstalker, WTEM, includes another spot for the party. So every 10 minutes or so, you hear: "Space is limited!"

Tickets are $106.50. On the invitation, suggested dress is "casual business attire." I wonder if Snyder will admit couples who show up wearing "Dumb" and "Dumber" shirts.

Actually, I wonder if anybody will show up.

***

But, there are some winners in the Skins soap opera: Rich Tandler tells me his RealRedskins blog has never been more popular.

"They say that Redskins TV ratings are down and that team merchandise sales are down," Tandler says. "But the hits are booming at my website. I’m on pace for a 30% + increase in unique visitors to RealRedskins.com for October compared to September. Page views already are up 30% and there are five days to go in the month."

Why?

"It seems that giving fans a place to vent is good for business," Tandler says.

Now Brett Haber, who used to work for Dan Snyder, wants a piece of that. Haber is now touting a message board to bash the Redskins owner. It's been accepting viewer harangues since yesterday afternoon.

Haber recently found out that his former boss at the Redskins Broadcast Network has banned him and Channel 9 and allegedly everybody with a camera from interviewing patrons in FedExField's official parking lot. Haber's peeved at Snyder. Snyder learned how to control the media while putting WUSA news employees on the payroll to run his infomercials and preseason game telecasts, a situation that the CBS affiliate always concealed. Just as WRC now tries to deny that its news employees, even the ones wearing licensed Redskins shirts on the air and carrying "Redskins Broadcast Network" microphones, are working for Snyder.

***

(Full disclosure: I freelance music reviews for the Washington Post.)

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Snyder's heavyhanded attempt at message killing, Douchewellian as it was, worked in the short term: The censorship of fans was treated as a non-story. (Well, OK: Almost a non-story.) And, as we've learned over time — Jeff George, Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, etc... — Snyder only cares about the short term.

No doubt feeling empowered after the Post's appeasement, Snyder's behavior had grown insane by Monday's game with the Eagles. And the once-burned Steinberg, who now buys tickets to the Redskins games to avoid the team's new restrictions on his reporting, became a war reporter. He embedded himself with the insurgents that night, and has continued telling their tales.

The results have been gripping.

(AFTER THE JUMP: The lawyer who whupped the Redskins on the pedestrian ban thinks fans might have some more cases against Snyder? The Redskins have lost federal freedom of speech cases in the past? One small typo for a columnist, one giant slur of Dan Snyder's legacy? Agent Zero is No. 1? The Wizards peak?)

Steinberg has published scads of photos of confiscated posters and the like. His blog has become the clearinghouse for fans who had had their materials confiscated and destroyed.

A couple of the best tales:

Now it's Liz Angevine, who brought a "LET OVECHKIN CALL THE PLAYS" sign, e-mailing me this story about how a security guard snatched the sign out of her hands and threw it on the ground. Liz writes:"When I told her that I wanted to keep my sign and run it back to my car, she stepped on my sign and ripped it apart!!! I could NOT believe it. I'm still in shock."

And, from Steinberg's comments section:

At half time, I went down to the concessions area to get a beer and a dog. Standing two rows away from me in line, were two middle aged men. One wore a T-shirt that read "Fire Snyder", the other's said "Fire Vinny". It wasn't long after standing there that the men were surrounded by close to a dozen people wearing yellow security jackets. The conversation between them and the two men escalated quickly as security asked the men to remove their shirts. Of course the men refused, and one stated that he had been a season ticket holder for 26 years. The conversation continued to get heated and before you knew it 6 or 7 armed security officers formed a circle around the layer of yellowed jacketed security officers. "Sir, you're about to lose those season tickets if you don't take off that shirt" is what he was told...A few minutes later, the men were escorted out of the area and a security woman approached me with an explanation about their actions. "Look, I know what you're saying, and I can't say that I don't agree with you, but I'm a part-time teacher and this job is my Holiday money"...."upper management told us to come up here and ask these men to remove their shirts and I can't lose my job, so I'm doing it."...The way I saw people being treated for voicing their opinions on this night embarrassed me as a Redskin fan, a Washingtonian, and as an American. These sort of totalitarian strong arm tactics are downright shameful and I needed to let others know about it.Posted by CedarR, October 27, 2009 at 11:46 a.m.

I called J.P. Szymkowicz, a local attorney and Redskins fan, to ask for a legal opinion on the Redskins behaviors. Szymkowicz was the lawyer who sued the Redskins for the ban on pedestrians that was put in place in 2000 so ticketholders would have to pay Snyder's inflated parking fees. And he won.

Szymkowicz says that Angevine's situation, if accurately described in Steinberg's column,  "presents a good case for tortious battery and conversion." Getting even more lawyerly, Szymkowicz cites Nelson v. Carroll, 355 Md. 593, 600 (1999), where the Court held that "A battery occurs when one intends a harmful or offensive contact with another without that person's consent."

Also applicable, Darcars vs. Borzym, 379 Md. 249, 262 (2004), where the court held that "The gist of a conversion is not the acquisition of the property by the wrongdoer, but the wrongful deprivation of a person of property to the possession of which he is entitled. Nor need there exist a forcible dispossession of property to constitute an act of the defendant a conversion. A conversion may consist of a wrongful, tortious or unlawful taking of property from the possession of another by theft, trespass, duress, or fraud and without his consent or approbation, either express or implied."

The situation of the guys thrown out for wearing anti-Snyder shirts, Szymkowicz asserts, "presents a case for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing that ticket buyers have with the Redskins and vice-versa."

Speech at Redskins games has come up in court before. A 1988 case, Stewart v. District of Columbia Armory Board, was initiated by Rockin' Rollen Stewart, the guy who used to carry his "John 3:16" signs and wear a rainbow wig to televised sporting events to promote his religious faith. Stewart brought a sign to two Skins games at RFK in 1984, only to have it taken down by stadium security. In 1992, the court granted Stewart the right to bring in his signs to RFK. (But that same year he went really crazy and kidnapped a cleaning lady at a hotel in California while awaiting the rapture. He's now serving three consecutive life terms in jail, wigless and signless).

But, Szymkowicz says that because FedExField is a private venue, Snyder has much more power to legally suppress speech than the Redskins did when they played at RFK, a publicly owned facility. For example: Snyder's ban on posters is likely legally kosher, so long as he bans all signs. "I don't think he would be able to let in 'Will You Marry Me!' and not 'Snyder Sucks!'" Szymkowicz says.

But Snyder overstepped his bounds by going after T-Shirt wearers.

"Unless a T-shirt is obscene," he says, "I believe that the Redskins would breach the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing by denying someone wearing a 'Dumb and Dumber' T-shirt entrance to the stadium or by evicting them from the stadium if somehow they snuck the shirt past the security guards on the way in."

Szymkowicz cites Telesaver, Inc. v. United States Transmission Systems, Inc., 687 F. Supp. 997, 1001 (D. Md. 1988), where the court ruled: "In every contract there is an implied covenant that neither party shall do anything which will have the effect of destroying or injuring the right of the other party to receive the fruits of the contract;  in other words, in every contract there exists an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing."

I'm guessing Snyder and "good faith" are never mentioned together other than in legal contexts.

***

Perhaps Snyder doesn't want to create any more plaintiffs after the Eagles' debacle: Redskins officials now say that Snyder is not going to go after any clothing at future games.

Then again, the same guy says there weren't many Philly fans at Monday's game and that the team's waiting list is 160,000 names long.

***

Concrete proof of the Washington Post's bias against Dan Snyder: Today's Tracee Hamilton column on the burgundy and gold disaster.

Hamilton says:

When Snyder bought the team in 2000, he said he'd always dreamt of owning the Redskins. Turns out he'd always dreamt of running the Redskins. Not the same thing."

And for the rest of the column, she references the "nine years" Snyder has been in charge.

Well, Snyder really bought the team at auction in 1999, not 2000. Putting the start of his ownership one year later is devastating to the Snyder legacy. One could argue the 1999 season, after all, is the ONLY decent season of the nearly 11 seasons the Skins have had under Snyder.

That's the year the Skins and Brad Johnson won the NFC East, Snyder's only division title. And it's the only time a Snyder team hasn't sneaked into the playoffs as the weakly wildcard, and the only time a Snyder team hosted a playoff game.

Of course, Snyder took over the team too far into the 1999 preseason for him and his already-hired lacky Vinny Cerrato to have any real impact on personnel that season. Again, the year Snyderatto had the least impact is the best year the team has had.

The online version of Hamilton's column now has the correct date. Snyder has that one division title back.

***

Oh, right. The Wizards win, 102-91, on the road, led by Gilbert Arenas, the man fans really, really want to love.

Things can't get better than this. And, as all Bullets fans will tell you, they won't.

***

(Full disclosure: I freelance music reviews for the Washington Post.)

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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.

***

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***

You don't need to read the Washington Post;s redesigned weather page to forecast the perfect shitstorm that is heading for Raljon on Monday evening.

The rest of the paper has all the evidence. There's no section of the Post that doesn't hold horrible news for Dan Snyder.

Mike Wise fills up the front page of Style with a profile of The Man Who Would Be Snyder, John Kent Cooke.

Some of the bitterness from Cooke, whose birthright to become owner of the Redskins was never exercised:

"Dan Snyder destroyed the reputation of this franchise," Cooke said. "I sure as hell don't like the way he gutted the organization after we left. And he commercialized the Redskins like my father would have never commercialized the Redskins. People brought cushions and pennants to the games. You know how they got those? My father gave them out at fan appreciation days."

Cooke also took issue with recent controversy over tickets. "Suing season ticket holders?" he said, incredulously. "My God, it's embarrassing. We would have never done such a thing."

(AFTER THE JUMP: Mike Wise dusts off Bobby Beathard to throw some jabs at Snyder? The Post's Business section tells readers that Snyder's a lousy businessman, just for the hell of it? The bingo caller line, again? The bingo caller last called plays for the Detroit Lions? How much would you have to get paid to go to a Redskins game? Eastern gets its first and last win? )

Better still, Wise dusts off long-ago general manager Bobby Beathard to unload on Snyder. While pretending to be saying how the younger Cooke would have been good for the Redskins, Beathard's really getting back at Snyder for giving him a low-ball offer to return to the team as GM in 2002, as Marty Schottenheimer was getting shown the door:

"I think he learned so much from his father [that] John would have been a great owner," Beathard said. "His dad wasn't a hands-off guy, but he wasn't a meddler. He didn't want to come over and want to watch films or tell us who to take."

Instead of paying Beathard a decent wage, Snyder rehired Vinny Cerrato.

Then, if you jump over to the Business section, Steven Pearlstein writes a few fab and devastating paragraphs about Snyder. And everything Pearlstein says is as easy to understand as, say, "The Emperor's New Clothes."

"What do you call a business that consistently overcharges its customers for an inferior product, hires the wrong people and pays them above-market wages, and yet still manages to be one of the most profitable and valuable franchises in its industry?

Here in nation's capital, we call it the Washington Redskins.

Economists, however, have a more generic name for such an enterprise. They call it a monopoly.

It should be apparent at this point that, whatever his other virtues, Dan Snyder isn't the business whiz he's cracked up to be. From the traffic jams and drunken crowds to the soggy hot dog rolls and the endless TV time-outs, a Redskins game at FedEx Field may be one of the worst entertainment experiences you can buy at any price. And that's not even taking into account the opera buffa now playing out on the field and in the locker room.

But for the fact that Washington football fans have no other choice, the Redskins by now would be in bankruptcy court, right alongside Snyder's other big fiasco, Six Flags."

The brutalest part comes later, when you realize Pearlstein's story is about an upcoming Supreme Court case, and all the Snyder hammering, beautifully written and dead-on as it is, is totally gratuitous!

Then there's the Post's sports section, which is full of the theme that all national reporters will use when the Philadelphia Eagles visit for "Monday Night Football":  The latter-day Redskins are the most messed up franchise in the NFL, and maybe in all of professional sports.

This has been said a lot lately, and will be said a lot more over the next week, but can't be said enough: Dan Snyder just promoted a bingo caller to be an NFL play caller, a job he last held in 2004 with a horrible Detroit Lions team.

Despite all Snyder's wacko meanness, it looks like Jim Zorn ain't gonna follow the owner's plan and quit. So unlike the last two Redskins coaches, Joe Gibbs and Steve Spurrier—both of whom walked away from contracts worth millions—Zorn's going to get paid.

Take THAT, Mr. Snyder!

***

Last week, the The Great Dan Steinberg reprinted a Craigslist ad he'd found before the Kansas City Chiefs game, in which a Redskins fan said he wouldn't go to FedExField—unless somebody paid him:

Don't want to go to the game? ME NEITHER. I will, however, watch my beloved Skins for a fair price...I'll only attend if the compensation is adequate.

Earlier this week, I tracked down the fan who placed that ad. The good news for Dan Snyder: That fan, Mike Stuart, says nobody offered to pay him to go watch the Redskins/Chiefs game.

"I did not get any offers, at least for what I was asking for," Stuart tells me via e-mail. "Instead, I was offered plenty of tickets FOR cash, the most laughable being 'I have 2 tickets in 417 row 15 for the Eagles on Monday Night for $150 for the pair and 2 in 133 row 21 for $260 for the pair.' I think he may have gotten this game confused with a Caps playoff game from last season."

Stuart says he's mad at his friends who used their tickets, and that he doesn't intend to go to any more games this season, and is looking forward to watching the franchise bottom out and start over.

"I don't see single winnable game the rest of the way," he says. "Funny, even though I've bled burgundy and gold my entire life, I actually see that as a good thing."

***

Have-Nots Update: In last week's Bowl for the Bottom, host Eastern defeated Spingarn, 38-12. That means Spingarn, now 0-6 and having been outscored 285-18, will be the city's only winless football team this season, barring something crazy. As for Eastern, the Spingarn game might be the last win in the school's history. Next school year, because of a DCPS reorganization plan, Eastern Senior High School will have only 12th graders, and therefore likely won't have enough players to field a team. And after that, DCPS plans to close the school at least temporarily, and some folks think permanently.

But, if Eastern is indeed going out, they didn't go out on bottom...

***

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™!