Bruce, the ostensible general manager, doesn't pick the players on the roster.

And brother George, the former and possibly future U.S. Senator and oldest of former Redskins Coach George Allen's brood, doesn't pick the Skins in his betting pool.

Over the holiday the Washington Post published a piece on George the Younger's weekly routine of going on sportsradio and making picks of NFL games.

Allen puts a lot of the picks he's made this year on his campaign's web site. A couple clicks show Allen took the Dallas Cowboys over the Redskins last week.

To folks of a certain vintage, that pick is shocking, especially for an Allen. Forget that a sibling is now a high-ranking Redskins official. George Allen the Elder was the one guy who made our entire region hate the Cowboys back in the 1970s. Dallas was on a par with Moscow.

"George Allen never used to say 'the Dallas Cowboys,' it was always 'the goddamned Dallas Cowboys,'" John Wilbur, an offensive lineman with the Redskins under George Allen, once said. "It's the Cowboys' uniform. It strikes hate and loathing in my mind, almost in a Pavlovian sense."

Publicly picking against the Redskins during Dallas Week would be a courageous/suicidal choice for a guy running for office in Virginia.

But all the Cold Wars are over. Allen would rather be right than political, and, since he wasn't picking against the spread, Dallas was the only pick. The Cowboys came through for the ex-coach's son in last week's OT win.

But for Thanksgiving weekend, when Washington ended its six-game losing streak with a win over a lousy Seattle squad, Allen avoided picking on the Redskins game altogether.

Allen's prognosticating has been hit or miss this season, according to the Post's account. But he was four for four on his latest batch of picks so far: Green Bay over Detroit, Baltimore over San Francisco, New England over Philadelphia, and Oakland over Chicago.

Still time to get on the Allen Bandwagon: He's got New Orleans over the Giants tonight, too.

All Your BlackBerries Are Belong to Us: It's bad enough that the government is going to shut down, making the U.S. look more and more like the sort of country that used to be relegated to the newsbriefs in the "world" section of newspapers (when newspapers still ran lengthy "world" sections), plagued with bizarre and amusing political and budgetary squabbles. Even more embarrassing: The worst part about it, to many government workers, is the loss of their federal email accounts. Yes, D.C. is a status-obsessed town, where "status" is usually determined by just how obsessed by work you are. Still. If you can't go a few days without checking your email—oh, wait, sorry, we just have to reply to something real fast and then we'll finish this item. -1

Congratulations, It's a Leopard!: The baby boom continues at the National Zoo. Zoo officials say their female leopard, Sita, gave birth to two cubs late last month—and they're significantly cuter than the baby anteaters born a short while before that. Male leopard Ta Moon is the father. No word on how the possible government shutdown will affect Ta Moon's ability to take paternity leave. +4

Virginia is for Racially Clueless Politicians: Five years ago, then-Sen. George Allen of Virginia lost his seat, and probably a decent shot at the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, in part because of a controversy that erupted after he called a volunteer for his opponent's campaign "macaca," which happened to be a racial slur used mostly to describe people with dark skin (which, gee, the volunteer happened to have). Which means you'd think Allen might be extra sensitive about racial matters now that he's running again for the Senate. You would be wrong. The other night, talking to NBC4 reporter Craig Melvin (who's black), Allen asked him—apparently for the second time—what position he played. Melvin never played sports. And Allen may not have assumed he did just because of Melvin's race—but voters may well wind up wondering if he did. -2

Virginia is Also for Follically Clueless Would-Be Politicians: When he's not busy firing people on national television, Donald Trump enjoys indulging in the inane fantasy that President Obama wasn't born in the United States, pretending to be preparing to run for the Oval Office himself—and now, apparently, making wine in the Old Dominion. Trump bought the Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard near Charlottesville, spending $6 million for 800 acres. Look for Trump Blanc de Noir at liquor stores near you sometime soon. -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 63 Today's score: 0 Today's Needle rating: 63

Bruce Allen

Bruce's older brother George Allen is mounting a comeback.

George, the eldest son of the deceased Redskins coach and, on a very related note, possessor of one of the most recognizable names in the region, was run out of the U.S. Capitol in 2006.

His downfall, as the legend holds, began when he rallied animus among an overwhelmingly Caucasian crowd at one of his campaign rallies against a young American of Indian descent—and Democratic operative—in their midst by calling the youngster "macaca."

Allen then lied about what he'd done again and again, claiming, among other absurdities, that he'd actually called the operative "Mohawk," even though nobody on the premises had a mohawk. Turns out "macaca" is an insult directed at folks of color in some parts of the world, including Allen's mother's native Tunisia.

The slur was caught on tape and called "the most famous online gotcha video of all time." Allen saw his gargantuan lead in the polls over Jim Webb (D) disappear by election day, as he went from future presidential contender to national punchline and U.S. Senator to ex-U.S. Senator.

But now he's back, like the Redskins gold pants.

And no matter what you think of the Allen boys, damn, their dad was awesome.

The highlight of last night's lousy BCS game was the Gatorade shower gone awry. Alabama coach Nick Saban almost went down after taking a huge hit from two surely former players who ran into him with a tub full of beverage.

Local football fans already knew how dangerous the Gatorade shower can be: That's what killed Bruce Allen's dad, former Redskins Coach George Allen.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Can Mike Shanahan make "mastermind" good again? All the Redskins losses are bad for the bars? The great Dave Kindred loves the Washington Times? And shows his love by slamming the Washington Post? Didn't Dave Kindred work for the Washington Post? Didn't Dave Kindred write a book about the Washington Post? Isn't Dave Kindred right about the Washington Post? Caron Butler has a stuck-up coat drive? Caron Butler hasn't heard Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors"? Maryland Governor declares big day for one of state's football teams?)

***

One good thing about the signing of Mike Shanahan: We now have a chance to rescue "mastermind" from the bad guys.

Ever since 9/11, I've only seen "mastermind" used in relation to somebody behind a bad deed.

Every mention of Osama bin Laden is accompanied by "mastermind," for example. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is a "confessed mastermind"—hell, in the old days, who wouldn't confess to that? By now pretty much everybody else with an Islamic-sounding name has also been labeled as a "mastermind" for some sort of evil-doing. It's trickled down so far that even Iraqi grandmother Samira al-Jassem earned the "mastermind" tag after being accused of involvement in Baghdad bombings. I'm sure somebody's already called the guy who put a cherry bomb in his underwear a mastermind. Remember: If we only use "mastermind" with terrorists, only terrorists will be masterminds.

Now Shanahan can bring benevolence back to the word. His nickname while coaching the Denver Broncos to Super Bowl wins in the 1990s was "The Mastermind." That used to be a cool nickname.

One more Super Bowl, Mike, and it'll be cool again.

***

On the day that Dan Snyder hired Shanahan and allegedly turned over a new leaf, a big black truck was spotted cruising around Bethesda slamming everybody's least favorite sports owner. Big commercial magnets on the vehicle touted "Redskin Fans Against Dan Snyder" and urged locals to join in an anti-Snyder movement on Facebook.

"Yeah, that's my truck," says Alan Pohoryles. He's the founder of RFADS, a group hoping to depose Snyder that Pohoryles says he concocted after the Skins' loss to Kansas City early in the 2009 season, one of the year's many debacles.

Pohoryles and his group got a lot of media attention right away, as the vitriol against the owner inspired a protest-laden Prague Spring for Redskins fans. Eventually 14,000 fans signed up with RFADS, he says.

But things have slowed down quite a bit since Snyder got rid of Vinny Cerrato. And with the arrival of big guns Allen and Shanahan, much of Redskins Nation has given up the fight and reverted to the same sort of postseason hopefulness that Snyder has inspired and exploited since taking over the team in 1999.

Not Pohoryles.

"I'm going to keep [the anti-Snyder magnets] on the truck," he says. "Nobody's asked me to take them down this week. I'd love to believe [Snyder] that he's going to let Shanahan and Allen do their job. And if he really does that I'll shut down the group. But it's just really hard to believe that he is. His ego will get the best of him and he'll probably continue to stick his nose where it doesn't belong. We've been through all this before."

Along with being a Snyder basher, Pohoryles owns Tommy Joe's, a Bethesda bar. He says Snyder's tenure as owner has hurt him as a fan and a businessman.

"I remember how full the bars around here would get when the Redskins were good," he says. "They're not like that anymore."

***

Dave Kindred puts together "Fifty more dos and don’ts on sportswriting" for the blog of Indiana University's National Sports Journalism Center. Some of Kindred's tips are old-school gold. Among my faves:

"33. Never trust a high school program’s spellings."

Wait? There was a time when spelling mattered? Oh, right...

But a couple other tips stand out for another reason. Kindred, who's really, really nice, uses two tips to praise the Washington Times' defunct sports section, but he takes breaks while doling out that praise to throw haymakers at the Washington Post's.

22. Do what the Times did, tell us the emperor has no clothes. When I moved to the Washington area 12 years ago I was as near to the ordinary reader as I ever will be. This ordinary reader saw a difference between the sports sections of the Times and The Washington Post, especially in coverage of the Redskins. The Post genuflected at the feet of the boy emperor, Dan Snyder. The Times saw him as a football incompetent. Dan Daly first cast Snyder as a fantasy-football owner eager to collect big names. Daly wrote, "Whether or not it helps the Redskins get to the Super Bowl, signing Deion Sanders sure looks good. Just as signing Bruce Smith, Mark Carrier and Jeff George looked good. We have entered the Age of Appearances at Redskin Park. A player acquisition is only as good as its buzz – and buzz emanates, at least in part, from reputation and name recognition and things that don’t have anything to do with winning football games."

23 When you nail the truth, keep it nailed. Dan Daly did that for a decade of Snyder’s failures. His colleagues Dave Elfin and Rick Snider beat the Post so often with such effectiveness that even an ordinary reader came to believe that the bigger paper avoided stories that would irritate the boy emperor.

These slams are powerful, since Kindred's career as one of the best sportswriters in the history of history includes a long stint as a Washington Post columnist.

He wrote one of the most famous sports columns in the paper's history. Check out his lede for a column previewing the 1983 Redskins-Dolphins Super Bowl, published on the morning of the game:

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 29 — Make it Washington 27, Miami 17.

Half a day after that column hit the streets, the Skins beat the Dolphins, 27-17. Yup, Kindred called the game down to the exact score. 'Course, he could write at least as good as he could tout Super Bowls. Kindred has just finished a book about his old paper, Morning Miracle: Inside the Washington Post, which is scheduled to come out in July.

And that makes his recent anti-Post sorties all the odder. 'Course, if Kindred's slams about the Post's sucking up to Snyder only apply to the George Solomon years, then, hell, truth is a fine defense.

(Full disclosure: I freelance music reviews for the Washington Post, and in 2000 got fired by Solomon, who I really like, from a weekly gig covering horse racing for the paper's sports section for writing a column in Washington City Paper about Tony Kornheiser.)

***

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has declared today Purple Friday throughout the state, in honor of the Ravens' upcoming playoff appearance. There is, of course, another NFL team that plays its games in O'Malley's jurisdiction. And since he grew up in the D.C. area and went to high school at Gonzaga, he'd probably love to have decreed that public servants working under him wear Redskins colors, and to turn the state's official Web site into those shades, as he's done today for Baltimore's team. Alas, O'Malley never got the chance to authorize a maroon-and-black day...

***

While teammates are playing dangerous games and throwing away their careers, Caron Butler, he of the Wizards Big Three Two, still puts his name to good things. Last month he sponsored a charity basketball tournament at Coolidge. This weekend, Butler gets behind "Caron's Coats for Kids Drive," the fourth such coat collection effort in his years as a Wizard. Folks who bring a coat to the Verizon Center on Sunday will get a pass to meet Butler after that day's game with New Orleans. I gotta say, there is one sorta off-putting thing about this event: Only "brand new coats" will be accepted, according to organizers, with "brand new" being put in quotes and underlined throughout the announcement whenever coats are mentioned.

I've never put on a charity drive like this or done anything nice for anybody, so I guess these things attract clowns who turn in useless crap to get freebies in return, but, still: Who has "brand new children's coats" lying around?

If this is really to help "local school children" who are in trouble, why wouldn't you just take every damn coat? Haven't these people heard Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors"?

***

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

The Washington Mystics have been rotten throughout Johnson's run as team president, having finished in the bottom half of the WNBA's Eastern Conference all five seasons under her, and not winning even a single playoff game.

But Johnson has gotten a pretty free ride through all the on-court suckitude. She's hailed by the gay community for not pretending the grandstands ain't laden with lesbians, and, not coincidentally, she brought the Mystics back to the top of the league in attendance.

Perhaps the lack of criticism in the face of such lousiness let Johnson feel empowered to mock Creigh Deeds, the Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, as a stutterer during a fundraising appearance for Republican opponent Bob McDonnell. But she's finding out she's not bulletproof after all.

The incident was weeks ago, but she's still being compared all over to George Allen when he called that kid "Macaca" during a Senatorial campaign a few years ago, even though stutterers don't have enough advocates to make the noise that followed the Allen slur. The Washington Post wrote about it today.

Surely the legs of the story have something to do with the novelty of Johnson, a black Democrat, supporting a white Republican, McDonnell, in one of only two gubernatorial races in the country this year.

But there's also the youtube clip of Johnson's fake stutter, and that shows her to be every bit the naive, heartless jerk that Allen looked like. It's the kind of moment that ain't really worth apologizing for, unless you can come up with a way to apologize for being a naive, heartless jerk.

But Johnson, who hangs out with the Virginia horsey set, has now given one of those non-apology apologies, issuing a statement that she's sorry only "for any offense he, or others, may have taken.” That's a tack Allen, and countless naive, heartless jerks before him, already tried. It never works. So now the Mystics management, like the management of a lot of local teams in recent years, is gonna be hard to root for.

The Washington Kastles lost to the Philadelphia Freedoms, the team named after an Elton John song or vice versa, in their home opener last night. The big stories were the sellout crowd that filled Empty Parking Lot Arena, or whatever the temp downtown stadium is called, and the appearance of tireless Venus Williams, who gave a clinic to local kids by day and starred on the court at night.

The loss puts the Kastles at 0-3. Amazing how quickly they've blended into the DC sports scene.

***

Speaking of: The Nats lost again in Colorado. Just another day at the office for the boys: Three errors for Washington (none for the Rockies), one-run loss.

Austin Kearns, he of the $8 million 2009 salary, had a huge pinch hit single in the 8th inning. Huge not for the Nats, but for Kearns, since it put his batting average above .200 for the first time in a while. Alas, the team's mandatory all-star slot has already been filled by Ryan Zimmerman.

The Nats have a death grip on the 1st Pick in next year's draft, and are now 14.5 games out of second-to-last place in the NL East. The team can boast a record -196-run run differential differential (R2D2™) with the league-leading Los Angeles Dodgers.

Manny Acta et al will try to fight off the broom with a getaway-day game this afternoon in Denver.

AFTER THE JUMP: Inevitable Chris Cooley backlash starting already? The guy who taught us "Macaca" still thinks he's righteous? Alberto Gonzales banished to an American archipelago? The Irish play basketball?

***

Whereas being a wild ass came naturally to past Redskins wild-asses (John Riggins, Curtis Jordan, etc...), Chris Cooley's wild-assishness by now seems incredibly forced. Cooley has gotten desperate to throw his wacky side in everybody's face. Every week there's a new stunt, promoted on his blog. If it ain't a shot of his naughty bits, it's a flaming cow. And on and on.

So when somebody at Extremeskins, Dan Snyder's message board, let everybody know that Cooley will be featured on a segment of ESPN's magazine show "E60", with him playing around on a ranch, the reaction wasn't all pro-#47.

The poster SkinsTerps26, whose board signature is a photo of Cooley, singed the star like a cow carcass, and probably spoke for a lot of fans as he did so:

"Cooley being all over TV and Internet bug me," wrote SkinsTerps26. "You are a funny guy... kinda... but after the cow burning and those stupid mustard peanut butter and ham sandwiches, its time to take a time out from video appearances. Go learn how to block."

Ouch!

***

From characters to character: The Examiner reports ex-Senator George Allen is putting out a sports book. "The Triumph of Character: What Washington Can Learn from the World of Sports."

The publisher's tease says Allen is qualified for such a book because he "spent the better part of his life with one foot in both the world of sports and the world of politics." He spent the worst part of his life with one foot in his mouth. Isn't his license to ride the high horse still suspended?

But, damn, his dad was my favorite football coach of all time.

***

Another guy who left town in shame: Alberto Gonzales, the short and disgraced former attorney general, not the shortstop for the disgraceful Washington Nationals, has been hired to teach by my alma mater, Texas Tech. Gonzales probably figured Lubbock is a fine place to go when the rest of the world hates you, seeing how it worked out for Bobby Knight. If Coach Knight were still leading the Red Raiders, you know he'd be asking Gonzales to draw up a memo on how far he could legally push his players during "enhanced workouts." Those who want Gonzales tried for war crimes can take comfort knowing that while it ain't jail, a stay in Lubbock is a close second.

The town gave us Buddy Holly, bless him, but has been making up for that ever since. (Before hiring Gonzales, Tech chancellor and Democrat-turned-Republican ex-Congressman Kent Hance sacrificed whatever pride the school had trying to land the George W. Bush Library.)

***

Speaking of my roots and coaches in exile: Great story in the Washington Times about Jay Larranaga, son of George Mason coach Jim Larranaga.

The littler Larranaga is the player-coach of the national basketball team of Ireland. The squad's never been good. Writer Bob Cohn wraps up Irish international hoops history thusly: "In Ireland's only Olympic appearance in men's basketball in 1948, it lost all four games by an average of 51 points, including a 71-9 defeat by Mexico."

Ok, but in fairness to my people, folks are still talking about that '48 Mexican squad, nicknamed El Fuego Cinco*.

*Nobody's really talking about the '48 Mexican national basketball team, and they weren't really called "El Fuego Cinco." Continued apologies for my Los Lobos spanish. But the W. Times' story is really fun.