At least that's what an official for the NBC affiliate tells me.

WRC's news department has a long track record, stretching all the way back to Dan Snyder's earliest days as Redskins owner, of working for the team while also reporting on it.

The station's great and dead George Michael got the ball rolling by doing play-by-play for the exhibition games produced by the Redskins Broadcast Network, which is owned by Snyder, shortly after Snyder bought the team. Michael also served as emcee for the Snyder-produced coaches shows aired by the station. Michael, til the day he retired, forced his underlings to work on Snyder-produced infomercials about the team that ran on WRC.

Such a relationship wouldn't be tolerated in any other area of news reportage, but WRC management ignored reality and honesty by denying year after year there was any conflict of interest. Things reached the point of ridiculousness last year, when Czarniak, the most watchable sportscaster in the marketplace by a few 300-yard-shuttle runs, delivered reports about the Redskins on WRC's news broadcasts while wearing golf shirts with Redskins logos.

Nothing wrong with that, said WRC management.

But Czarniak's conflicted costume-wearing days appear to be over. After Czarniak and fellow WRC staffer/Redskins employee Dan Hellie didn't appear on the team's preseason game broadcasts, I asked station management if the news people were still working for Snyder's Redskins Broadcast Network.

Nope.

"We did our own pre-season and post-season broadcasts just for our air," said the WRC official. "That was the extent of [Czarniak and Hellie's] involvement." No reason was given for the change.

But...."post-season broadcasts," eh? The Redskins?

Good work if you can get it!

***

Bruce Allen continues to receive the greatest gifts any GM could want this holiday season: higher draft picks and lower expectations. After his new team's blowout loss to the Giants, the shutout to the Cowboys, the disappearance of the offense and the Albert Haynesworth/Greg Blache-instigated implosion of the defense, fans are begging for the sort of rebuild even Michelle Rhee would find excessive.

***

Saturday night's telecast of "Redskins Report," produced by WRC-4, was taped earlier in the week, before the show's founder, George Michael, died. And, probably because of the holiday, nobody bothered doing a retaping to fashion the program as a tribute to Michael, who started the weekly roundtable in 1980.

But even without any tweaking this episode was nevertheless a fine reminder of Michael's impact on the local broadcasting scene. Three of the four members of Redskins Report's latest panel — Dan Hellie, Doc Walker and David Aldridge – were on Dan Snyder's payroll. Aldridge was sitting in for Lindsay Czarniak. She's on Dan Snyder's payroll, too. (Mike Wise of the Washington Post and WJFK was the only guy on the show not on the take.)

Checkbook journalism is as big a part of Michael's legacy at WRC as his reliance on highlights.

Michael was the first sellout. Now there are sellouts all over the DC market.

He used his status as the only sportscaster that mattered — which he earned through sweat and futuristic vision and a level of on-air enthusiasm that can't be faked — to get more work. His popularity allowed him to do things that were unheard of in news departments until then.

Michael took a job with Dan Snyder's Redskins Broadcast Network shortly after Snyder bought the team, creating a blatant conflict of interest, since it meant he was now taking money from the Redskins, the most important subject on his WRC sports beat. And nobody at WRC blinked.

So landing Michael taught the young owner that pretty much all local journalists could indeed be bought. And soon enough Snyder had not only George Michael, but Michael Wilbon, the lead sports columnist in the Washington Post, taking Redskins money and carrying microphones with "Redskins Broadcast Network" logos on air.

Snyder also put several members of news departments from Fox-5 and WUSA on the Redskins payroll to host infomercials produced by the team. In 2001, Snyder hired Andy Pollin, the program director at WTEM, then the only sportsradio station in the market, to do a Redskins infomercial called "Redskins Game Day" — years before Snyder bought the whole station. Snyder added Washington Times writers, some of the last holdouts, to the payroll after acquiring WTEM.

And soon enough Snyder had so many financial relationships with local media that you could never know what to trust.

Michael tried to camouflage his relationship with the team. On the coaches shows produced by Snyder, for example, Michael always gave out an NBC email address for viewer comments, giving an air of credibility to the programs that they didn't deserve. I called Michael at work in the WRC studios years ago to ask him how he handled the conflict of interest caused by covering the Redskins for the news department of an NBC affiliate while also working for Snyder's Redskins Broadcast Network, and if he was uncomfortable carrying a microphone with the Redskins logo on-air.

Michael, who was as energetic off the air as on and always very fun to talk to, said he saw no conflict, and that he wouldn't use microphones with Redskins logos on camera. When a co-worker listening to our conversation in the WRC studio corrected him and told Michael, "Yeah, you carry Redskins microphones," Michael laughed and laughed and said, "Really? Well, it doesn't matter. I can say anything I want to say."

But, just as everybody long suspected, Michael didn't say everything.

Snyder confessed for Michael. Asked by WTEM host Tony Kornheiser for his recollections of Michael the day he died, Snyder said that Michael wouldn't give his WRC audience the whole story when Snyder didn't want it given.

"George knew a lot of things here that we were doing," Snyder said, "but he was somebody the franchise trusted."

***

Jason Reid and Dan Steinberg had a great story in Saturday's Washington Post. The time bomb that is Albert Haynesworth finally exploded. He's been sitting on the sidelines and taking a knee on crucial downs all season, while reports of his nightlife are all over the place. (Anybody out in Reston on Christmas Eve see Al pounding a Skinny Bitch on the Rag?)

Reid and Steinberg, the Woodward and Bernstein of SkinnyBitchontheRagGate, got Haynesworth to go all ground-and-pound on defensive coordinator Greg Blache, saying as a player he could not "survive another season in this system." ReidStein also also coaxed Haynesworth to whine about coaches treating him with harder kid gloves than unnamed teammates because "they're all against me or whatever."

"In the preseason, I fell asleep and was like a couple of minutes late for a meeting," Haynesworth said. "This is the second time I've ever been late for a meeting and I get sent home."

Reading the story, I thought about George Michael and the ties that blind. If Michael or any other Redskins employee knew that the highest paid player on the team was falling asleep during meetings, would he or she have reported it?

***

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

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Six Flags' reorganization is nowhere near complete, and god only knows what's beneath the surface of this debacle. But from the sound of things, when all's said and done Snyder will still be chairman of Six Flags board of directors when that company comes out of bankruptcy.

How can this be? In Snyder's world, what do you have to do to lose your job?

One small aspect of the fiasco: Would somebody PLEASE explain to me how Snyder was allowed to pay a whopping $175 million for Dick Clark Productions using private equity money from Red Zone Capital, a fund he controls, then turn around and sell 40 percent of Dick Clark Productions to Six Flags, using public equity money, which he also controlled? And Snyder did this deal, remember, in 2007, while Six Flags was on the way to the bottom and he was already blaming the company's woes on its billions of dollars of debt.

Snyder made the Dick Clark Productions sale around the time he made a licensing deal between Johnny Rockets, another Red Zone-owned company and controlled by Snyder, and Six Flags. Again, would SOMEBODY please explain to me how that's allowed?

I mean, I make a lot of fun of Lindsay Czarniak and Dan Hellie working for Snyder's Redskins Broadcast Network and WRC News at the same time. And that really does bug me. But Czarniak and Hellie's conflict of interest ain't a hair off the ass of the conflict of interest Dan Snyder had in dealing with himself during Red Zone's sale of a huge chunk of Dick Clark Productions to Six Flags. Let alone the Johnny Rockets deals.

How hard a bargain do you think private-money Dan Snyder drove with public-money Dan Snyder in making these deals?

(AFTER THE JUMP: More on Dan Snyder, Red Zone and Dick Clark? DeMatha sends more jocks to college? Remember Harvey Grant? The DC Armor are gonna just disappear? Somebody's still kvetching about the El Al/FedExField comparison?)

And what bang have Six Flags investors gotten out of the tens of millions of stockholders' bucks Snyder threw at himself during the 40 percent sale of Dick Clark Productions? Who's looking out for who?

Who knows what the Dick Clark Productions ownership situation will be when this comes out of bankruptcy.

But, again, it looks like Snyder will still be in charge of both Red Zone and Six Flags at that time. Maybe he'll have a chance to buy Dick Clark Productions from himself during the bankruptcy, then sell Dick Clark Productions to himself all over again.

Seriously, in Snyder's world, what do you have to do to lose your job?

***

From our Hyattsville bureau: DeMatha's library will be packed tomorrow to unveil the latest batch of athletes that the sporting powerhouse will send up to the next level.

Among the more notables in the jock octet featured in the scholarship signing ceremony:

Jerian Grant, son of Washington Bullets 1988 first-round pick Harvey Grant, will announce he will attend Notre Dame. That'll make him the first DeMatha basketball player to commit to South Bend since Hall of Famer Adrian Dantley back in 1973.

And, Casey Thrush will be the first DeMatha student to accept an NCAA hockey scholarship while still in high school, representing the Stags' desire to dominate yet another prep sport.

This signing ceremony, which is surely bigger than any signing ceremony any other local high school will have this year, does not include DeMatha football players. DeMatha already sends more folks to the NFL than any school in the country. They're doing something right in Hyattsville.

***

The return of the DC Armor for a second season is looking bleaker and bleaker. This update from oursportcentral.com's Weekly Pro Sports League and Franchise Report:

American Indoor Football Association: The future of the D.C. Armor in the AIFA is in doubt. The team played before very small crowds in its inaugural 2009 AIFA season and it is unknown whether the franchise will attempt to play a 2010 season in another venue or simply be discontinued.

Somebody's gonna miss you, DC Armor.

***

JTA, which describes itself as the "Global News Service of the Jewish People," and a media organization I have long suspected is controlled by Jews, had some fun with Cheap Seats Daily's comparison of the security at FedExField during the Prague Spring for Redskins fans to the security of El Al Airways.

I had gotten a call from a friend before the Eagles game a few Mondays ago, who told me about getting the once over and then some from a guard at the FedEx gate. So I wrote:

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.

That caught the attention of El Al account manager Ron Glickman, who wrote us to say that "the checks that one would go through for an El Al flight are a lot less hands on" than what I wrote about FedEx. El Al, Glickman said, hasn't done done any [body checks] in the past year in the entire United States.”

And Glickman's quotes, in turn, inspired JTA blogger Eric Fingerhut to wonder what entering FedEx would be like like if in fact El Al did take over security:

You'd get to the gate and they'd ask: "So, did you write your sign yourself? Did anyone help you to write your sign? When did you write your sign? Has it been with you since you wrote it?...

That guy's funny!

***

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Above is an ad e-mailed out by the Redskins ticket office this week. As you read this, remember, for chuckles, that just a couple months ago Redskins executive Mitch Gershman was claiming in press releases that the team had a waiting list of "over 200,000."

Sure, the Skins waiting list has long been bogus. But this year it's also become apparent that the NFL's blackout rule is enforced as stringently as its steroids policy.

(AFTER THE BREAK: Where's Chris Cooley in that photo? Clinton Tortoise? Lord Farquaad? Lindsay Czarniak cheers on teams that don't pay her? Is the NY Times reporter on Dan Snyder's payroll, too? Another Have-Nots bowl this week?)

FedExField this Sunday would be a good place and time to test my theory that Dan Snyder has mucked up the Redskins every bit as much as he mucked up Six Flags.

Tickets to Skins games have been overpriced, based on demand, since FedExField opened. I've never been to a game there when tickets couldn't be had for far less than face value. I used to half-joke, based on experience, that if you simply held a $20 bill in the air in the stadium parking lot on game day you'd get mauled by folks trying to unload spare tickets.

But, the bottom is about to fall out of the Skins ticket market, and that could happen this weekend with KC in town: Craigslist had 908 separate ads hawking Skins/Chiefs tickets posted when I checked late last night.

So: Six Flags stock, which sold for $11.92 shortly after Snyder took over the theme park chain in 2005, now goes for 17.2 cents.

I wonder if Skins tickets will be worth any more than that this weekend.

Anybody willing to sell Redskins tickets for 17.2 cents, please e-mail cheapseats@washcp.com.

***

Interesting thing about that photo the Redskins marketing department is using to move excess tickets this week: Two tight ends are up front, Todd Yoder and Fred Davis. But no Chris Cooley. Sort of like the box score to last weekend's game in Carolina.

Seriously, after spending the summer yelling "Look at me! Look at me!" and hoping to become the face of the franchise through any number of off-field stunts, Cooley's disappeared. Cooley had no catches on Sunday, and only showed up in the highlights because he had mimicked Santana Moss's silly first-down routine after a play.

Cooley's used up most of his attention-getting tricks by now, too. The guy's going to have to burn two cows or show two penises to get noticed.

Or, you know, catch some passes.

***

The Skins' lousy season has produced some giggle-friendly new nicknames. Among them:

"Clinton Tortoise," attributed to WTEM hosts Andy Pollin and Steve Czaban; "Albert Buttersworth," all over sports radio; and, the clubhouse leader by several strokes, "Lord Farquaad," for Dan Snyder, which I first saw two weeks ago on Snyder's own message board, ExtremeSkins.com, and has since caught fire.

Damn, that's funny.

***

The New York Times has been writing a lot about the Redskins these days. The Times' coverage of the Dan Snyder administration is very different from the Washington Post coverage.

While the Post and Snyder go at it behind the scenes and in print, the Times' Skins stories, all from reporter Judy Battista, have sometimes been fawning.

Sometimes, they're just plain fictional. (Double-dare you to match the headline with anything in the story!) Battista referenced that latter story, which insinuated for no apparent reason and with no evidence to support the insinuation that ex-Skins GM Charley Casserly was impressed by Dan Snyder's coolness this season, in one of her pieces this week, saying "Snyder was still feeling patient" a little more than two weeks ago."

Says who?

What is it with Times reporters named Judy getting snowed when they cover D.C. matters?

***

Lindsay Czarniak led off her sports report on WRC-TV's 11 o'clock newscast last night with an incredibly enthusiastic segment on the Wizards three-point win over Detroit, pumping up Gilbert Arenas' stats and Flip Saunders revenge. I'd never seen such fervor for a preseason NBA game.

The excitement was catchy, and seemed totally genuine: Czarniak works for Dan Snyder, but not Abe Pollin, and so she wasn't wearing any Wizards' gear as she gushed.

If you follow sports in Washington, I guess preseason is the best time to get excited, before hopes and dreams get crushed.

***

Update on the Road to 11 Losses: We now know there will be no 0-11 season in local high school football.

Anacostia's chance at having the losingest year in D.C. high school football history got waylaid last Friday, as the Indians beat Eastern 36-0 in a matchup of really down programs.

Anacostia, which went into the game 0-6, has scheduled 11 games this year, one more than the standard 10-game season, and far as I can tell, no D.C. school has ever had an 0-11 record. But Anacostia just couldn't find a way to lose to Eastern, which didn't have a football team at all last year because of a lack of players, and so far is 0-4 in the 2009 season.

Eastern, which only has 8 games listed on its schedule, now has its biggest game of the year this Friday when it hosts Spingarn in the latest Have-Nots Bowl: Together, Eastern and Spingarn have been outscored 397-19 and have an 0-9 record.

Somebody's gotta win!

***

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Here's the opening:

Sonny Jurgensen: You had one offensive touchdown...

Jim Zorn: Thank you.

Sonny Jurgensen: You've got to get into the end zone...

Jim Zorn: Yes.

Uh oh.

Dan Snyder and Jurgensen are cigar smoking buddies. Jurgensen wanted Jeff George. So it's a good bet that in private Snyder's getting everything the Redskins listening audience got from Jurgensen and then some.

(AFTER THE BREAK: Albert Haynesworth don't play that? Folks want to trade in Jim Zorn et al on something with less mileage? Even the all-news station is piling on? Snyder's dastardly deeds have trickled down to 'Bama? Everybody but the Washington Post thinks Michael Jordan's a jerk? ANOTHER blonde DC sportscaster?)

***

Watching Albert Haynesworth take a knee or lying down on the job for no obvious reason, I was reminded about what my hero Boudreaux said in 1999 about Dana Stubblefield, a defensive lineman who went from all-pro to narcoleptic bum after taking Haynesworth-like money from Snyder to come here from San Francisco. Boudreaux's words: “I can hear him saying [to Dan Snyder], ‘Football? You pay me $47 million…and you want me to play football? Mister, a man with that kind of money don’t play football!’"

Boudreaux is a genius.

***

Knowing what we now know, it's time to re-read Erik Wemple's pre-game insider analysis of what was going to take place in the Meadowlands. He nailed it.

Right?

***

The fans around here aren't happy with what they saw. Over at Dan Snyder's web site, extremeskins.com, one of the smarties proposed a "Coach for Clunkers" program, to trade in the same ol' coaches and players and give newbies a shot.

WTOP this morning offered listeners a chance to join the mob. "If you'd like to jump on the pile, call us!"

The only thing boring about the Redskins are the games!

***

What kind of flash point is Dan Snyder? Well, the Birmingham News ran a column about him as a pariah and a symbol of everything that's wrong with everything over the weekend.

The Birmingham News!

***

So Michael Jordan's still getting coddled by the Washington Post? Well, check out the write-up of Jordan's Hall of Fame speech that ran in Saturday's Post, and the write-up in Yahoo Sports.

The commenters to Michael Lee's Post story all echo the Yahoo version, which was basically that Jordan is a troubled meanie.

It got so bad that Michael Wilbon came in to try to soften the damage from the Yahoo piece a day later, with a column praising Jordan's bizarre bullying — he flew in a high school classmate to help make the old varsity coach look bad — for its "unvarnished" qualities.

Ok. In any case, after reading elsewhere about what a jerk he was, go watch this Jordan dunk over Patrick Ewing from back in the day. Still chilling after all these years. He wasn't human on the court, so why expect him to be humane off it?

And, Jordan ain't the only one holding grudges: Abe Pollin has never let go of the bitterness from his alliance with Jordan.

***

This is what diversity looks like: Former George Michael intern Lindsay Murphy joins Fox-5's Redskins wrap-up show, joining former George Michael protege Lindsay Czarniak on WRC and Sara Walsh at WUSA in DC's blonde sportscaster corps.

Get with the program, WJLA!

***

The Washington Post ran three photos of Woodson's win over Lake Braddock in the sports page on Saturday. The section named a Woodson player its star of the day. That's fine. As long as sports sections name high school stars of the day, there'll be a market for newspapers. (Really!)

But the other two shots had caption writers humiliating specific Lake Braddock players. One caption had the Lake Braddock QB throwing "an incompletion" and another photo of a Woodson running back as he "runs over" a Lake Braddock defender. Both Lake Braddock players were named in the captions for no good reason.

Whoever wrote these captions went out of his or her way to embarrass kids. This is the sports journalism equivalent of child abuse. Not nice!

***

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While some team lawyer nobody ever heard of named David Donovan did radio and print interviews attempting to counter James Grimaldi's well-told tales of ticketing malfeasance, Snyder stayed quiet in some undisclosed secure location.

Snyder's refusal to personally rebut the awful press reminded me of a conversation I had a few months ago with crisis PR guru Eric Dezenhall. I asked Dezenhall what, if Snyder were a client, he'd do to improve the Skins owner's public image among the locals.

But Dezenhall, who worked on image rehab for Enron's Jeff Skilling and alleged-molester-era Michael Jackson, guessed that Snyder might not want any such help from him or anybody else.

“Some people may like to be liked by the community," Dezenhall told me, "some people just like to be liked by fellow billionaires."

Sure seems the latter's the case here.

***

Will all the talk about the Redskins waiting list please stop?

In the instant-classic Washington Post series, there were frequent references from the team that the list was "160,000" strong.

Yet earlier this year, the Redskins put out a press release with Mitch Gershman, the team's chief operating officer, offering a much bigger number.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Lying about demand for tickets isn't consumer fraud? Lindsay Czarniak doesn't have to take off her Redskins logo any more? The Skins PR staff knows what goes on at Redskins Park? That deadbeat grandmother's got the real Dream Seat? Did fan love save Colt and chase Chase? The Redskins still have a white guy on defense? Williamses and Hoyas take a beating on Cutdown Day? DeMatha has how many guys in the NFL? The Nats lose when I leave town?)

“We work hard to hold the line on price increases," Gershman said in the release, "and are obviously sensitive to the economic realities faced by our fans. We have fantastic fan support as evidenced by the more than 200,000 people on our waiting list for season tickets."

The 160,000 figure is just as phony as Gershman's "more than 200,000."

There is no waiting list the Redskins follow when selling tickets.

The Redskins were sending junk mail during the offseason offering anybody who wants tickets — general admission seats, not club seats — the chance to buy them. And, anybody who thinks ANY Redskins games sell out: Just go to the damn box office at FedExField on game day, see all the tickets for sale, and get back to me.

From the Post stories, it's clear the only ticket waiting list the Redskins have is a list of fans the team is waiting to serve with subpoenas for not keeping up with the payment schedule in premium seat contracts.

On a related note: How can the Redskins get away with using these fictional waiting list figures while marketing the club seats? Doesn't that distort the demand for their product?

If that ain't fraud, what is?

***

I have a hard time feeling sorry for Pat Hill, the deadbeat grandma that got the legal ground-and-pound from Dan Snyder.

I mean, have you seen the photo of Hill's living room that ran alongside her story on the front page of the Washington Post?

Why would Hill or anybody else pay money to leave that couch?

Forget club seats at FedExField. I want to sign a long-term, high-dollar contract for a spot on Hill's couch, just to watch Skins games on television.

That's my dream seat!

***

Other than ticket scams, the Skins' roster cuts were the big news. A non-cut, of Colt Brennan, might be the biggest of these stories. Tough to think that the lovefest between the backup-QB wannabe and the fans didn't factor into the team's decision not to release Brennan.

Brennan had a quarterback rating of 49.5 during the preseason games. That's awful. But "The Cult of Colt," a thread in his honor on Dan Snyder's message board, extremeskins.com, has received 398,119 hits and had 11,282 comments appended, making it the most popular live thread on the board by about tenfold.

So Brennan sticks around on injured reserve while rival Chase Daniel gets cut.

Daniel, remember, registered a QB rating of 115. But his personal extremeskins.com thread, "The Church of Chase," had only about 20,000 hits as of this morning.

The moral: If you're going to ride Snyder's bench, you gotta sell jerseys.

***

Reed Doughty shrugged off back injuries from last season that threatened his career last year and made the team.

So...the white safety streak lives on!

Plainly, for years and years paleskins just haven't played defense for the Redskins — except at safety. You can look it up. The only white defenders to crack the lineup in this century have been safeties.

Doughty is the latest in a string of white boys — Curtis Jordan, Brad Edwards, Pat Eilers, Matt Stevens, Matt Bowen and, ahem, Adam Archuleta before him — to white man the Skins last line of defense.

I'm intrigued!

***

An actual bulletin on the front page of Redskins.com over the weekend: "Larry Weisman has learned the team plans to put Colt Brennan on injured reserve."

Larry Weisman is a Dan Snyder staffer who does PR for the team. So, the bulletin could just have easily read: "The team has learned the team plans to put Colt Brennan on injured reserve."

Which, now that I think about it, could be newsworthy this week, at least to those folks who think Dan Snyder didn't know his team was selling thousands and thousands and thousands of tickets to a couple scalpers, and didn't know that his team was suing grandmothers and other fans into bankruptcy.

***

Speaking of Dan Snyder's news operations...

WRC has dropped the phoniness: Redskins' worker-bee/WRC sportscaster Lindsay Czarniak delivered her sports report during last Thursday's 11 p.m. newscast wearing the same licensed Redskins shirt she wears when she moonlights for Dan Snyder's Redskins Broadcasting Network.

In previous post-game newscasts this preseason, Czarniak had changed into something without a colorful Redskins logo, better to camouflage her relationship with the team, and to hide the sort of conflict of interest that news organizations used to regard as poisonous.

But, based on the logoed attire she sported after the Skins/Jacksonsville game, WRC management no longer minds if the world knows its news department is in bed with Dan Snyder.

Tom Sherwood? Jim Vance? You guys OK with that?

***

Eddie Williams got released, bringing the number of Guys Named Williams cut this preseason to a team record three, or two less than the team record (five) for number of Guys Named Williams signed this preseason. The survivors on the main roster: offensive linemen Edwin Williams from Maryland and Mike "Biggest Loser" Williams.

Mike Williams hung on by the skin of his waist, which is actually substantial, as he's dropped 100 and some pounds by dieting and exercising. Speaking of lost LBs: Biggest Loser couldn't pick up rushing linebackers or anybody else in pass protection this preseason.

If he didn't have such a great backstory, he'd have been dropped.

***

Real life imitates Madden Football: The human Alex Buzbee got cut over the weekend, a couple weeks after Madden '10 dropped the digital Alex Buzbee from its video game roster.

This means Georgetown's half-century-long streak of not having any players in the NFL will continue.

Big Jim Ricca, who signed with the Redskins in 1951, was the last Hoya footballer.

***

From our Hyattsville bureau: At least six DeMatha alums stuck around in the NFL as of cut day — Brian Westbrook, of course, stays with the Philadelphia Eagles; little brother Byron Westbrook and Edwin Williams make the Redskins active roster; Seattle keeps John Owens and Josh Wilson; and the Atlanta Falcons have Quinn Qjianaka.

Think about it: Six guys from one high school football program — DeMatha's — are in the NFL this season; yet no player from one college football program — Georgetown's — has been in the NFL in MORE THAN FIFTY SEASONS.

That's amazing.

***

Nats’ record with Tom Boswell on vacation: 14-6

Nats record with me on vacation: 2-9.

We now return you to football season...

***

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Even the announcers and sideline reporters were in on the act. Everyone was decked out in Redskins-logo shirts (shame on Channel 4 sports anchor Lindsay Czarniak and Comcast Sportsnet reporter Kelli Johnson, who apparently are now employed part-time by the Redskins as sideline reporters; isn't that a conflict of interest?).

That was the scene, anyway, at last Saturday's 'Skins-Steelers tilt. McKenna cited the same infractions at the previous preseason 'Skins outing:

Lindsay Czarniak showed up during the game broadcast and the post-game show wearing a licensed Redskins shirt, logo and all. That makes sense, since she was working for the Redskins Broadcasting Network, owned by Dan Snyder.

But Czarniak was carrying a WRC microphone. She took off the Redskins costume and put on a blue fluffy top for her 11 o’clock news segment from Baltimore, so clearly her superiors have some inkling about the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Why is this dual role allowed? Czarniak works for the news department of an NBC affiliate. But she works for Dan Snyder, too. For the ethics police, other than the import of the subject matter, what’s the difference between Czarniak’s Redskins deal and Armstrong Williams taking money from the Bush White House?

There's something about TV, I guess. People's expectations of local TV news broadcast have been so abused, so debased, for so long, that the notion of holding these folks to any standard of conduct is just too much for the public to pull off.

"Nah, it ain't enjoyable," Haynesworth said.

Which means one thing: Big Al didn't bet the Cheap Seats Daily Double™!

Because had he followed Cheap Seats Daily's Tout #1 and bet this month's mortgage on the Ravens, laying three points, he would have won. And if he'd have followed Cheap Seats Daily's Tout #2 and bet next month's mortgage on the under (31 1/2), he'd have won that, too.

Haynesworth would be rich!

***

Lindsay Czarniak showed up during the game broadcast and the post-game show wearing a licensed Redskins shirt, logo and all. That makes sense, since she was working for the Redskins Broadcasting Network, owned by Dan Snyder.

But Czarniak was carrying a WRC microphone. She took off the Redskins costume and put on a blue fluffy top for her 11 o'clock news segment from Baltimore, so clearly her superiors have some inkling about the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Why is this dual role allowed? Czarniak works for the news department of an NBC affiliate. But she works for Dan Snyder, too. For the ethics police, other than the import of the subject matter, what's the difference between Czarniak's Redskins deal and Armstrong Williams taking money from the Bush White House?

(AFTER THE JUMP: Why not have Redskins salons? Joe Theismann, musicologist? Will Ladell Bettis ever get over it? What's Cora Masters Barry trying to get away with now? Karl Swanson writes in? The Tom Boswell Curse lives on?)

If the Washington Post hosted a salon where it promised sports reporters and Redskins would be available to anybody who ponied up big money, would that bother anybody?

Ain't sports news news?

***

Jim Zorn, talking with Czarniak's co-worker Larry Michael of the Redskins Broadcasting Network about fumbles and penalties and assorted miscues after his team's shutout loss: "All these things were like bullets hitting me in the chest."

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This morning, early in the debut of "The Joe Theismann Show" on Dan Snyder's WTEM, host Theismann came out of commercial with a song from what he called "one of my favorite bands in the world, Journey." As the music faded he advised fans, "Don't stop believing!"

Later, also coming out of a break to Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog," Theismann said, "I love music. Elvis, Michael Jackson. The next one to be in that [class] is going to be Justin Timberlake. Justin is such an amazing talent. As was Brian Orakpo last night."

Smooove...

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Prediction: The Bettis jersey debacle will be referenced much more than any play in last night's game, and remembered much longer.

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Redskins and Dan Snyder spokesman Karl Swanson wrote in to dispute wording I used here yesterday when describing Snyder's sneaky parking surcharge at concerts and other non-Redskins events held at FedExField, which he owns. While all other venues in the area include parking charges in the advertised price of the ticket, Snyder adds it as a line item on the invoice on top of the advertised price. This scheme can mean an extra $700,000 for Snyder for U2's show next month. I wrote: "And this is with zero overhead."

Swanson, via email, responded:

Regarding your City Desk post of today, contrary to your claim "this is with zero overhead" there is significant overhead in the form of parking attendants, security, police, and post-event cleaning.

What I wrote was not clear. I meant that adding a line-item on an invoice costs Snyder nothing, not that operating a parking service has no overhead.

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Cora Masters Barry got an eviction notice yesterday from the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center because, according to the Washington Post, the corporate registration of her organization, the Recreation Wish List Committee, had lapsed. She's got 30 days to vacate the building, according to reports.

In a puffy WRC interview aired last night, Masters Barry, who only talks to the media when she needs 'em, acted like she was crying.

And Masters Barry, who's as good an actor as her husband and has as many lives, whined to the Washington Post, "This has been my life's work!"

That's not really true. Her life's work also includes a stint as commissioner of DC's Boxing and Wrestling Commission. At the time, she was known as Cora Wilds.

In that job, which former members of the commission say she got only because of her relationship to her future husband, then-Mayor Marion Barry, Masters Barry made the DC boxing scene a national laughingstock. Her only accomplishment came in earning a federal conviction for defrauding the city and its residents.

Masters Barry was boxing commissioner from 1980 to 1987. A 1987 investigation by the Washington Post showed that while on the job Masters Barry had taken 25 trips around the globe, to spots such as Venice and Aruba, to watch championship fights. She flew first class despite city regulations that required coach for business travel. Masters said her back hurt too much to fly coach.

But Masters Barry couldn't explain away all the receipts that showed she'd been illegally double-billing both the DC government and the boxing commission for all her travels. She was convicted in federal court in 1988 for the fraud.

In her seven years as commissioner, for all the championship bouts she flew to abroad on our dime times two, Masters Barry never brought a single title fight to DC.

The one big match that was scheduled during Masters Barry's reign, a bout between Michael Spinks and Eddie Mustafa Muhammad for Spinks’ undisputed light heavyweight crown in July 1983, was cancelled hours before the bell was to ring because of, depending on who you believe, either Muhammad's weight or a problem with the scales used at the weigh-in, which were provided by Masters Barry.

York Van Nixon, a DC boxing commissioner before and during Masters Barry's reign, told me last year: “Boxing still hasn’t come back here from what she did to it. It never will.”

***

Update on the The Tom Boswell Curse:

Nats get crushed in Cincinnati. No runs, two hits.

Nats' record with Boswell on vacation: 14-6.

Nats' record since Boswell returned from vacation: 0-3.

Good thing it's betting football season!

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The Redskins cut free agent receiver Jaison Williams yesterday, reducing their supply of Guys Named Williams to a mere four — Eddie, Edwin, Mike and Roydell — and stealing from me the option of filling many more digital column inches with posts about Five Guys Named Williams.

And the girth of the Williams clan ain't what it once was, either: Redskins.com has comebacker OT Mike Williams down to a mere 337 pounds after a severe weight-reduction program. If so, he's lost about a Williams since signing with the Skins this spring.

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The end of another era: The Streak of '09 is over.

AFTER THE JUMP: "Thunderation" meets thunderation? Guaranteed Win Night wasn't really guaranteed? No free will if you want Van Pelt bobblehead? Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams, and Lindsay Czarniak?

Jim Riggleman's high school cheer, "Thunderation," met Mother Nature's old school thunderation and got its fanny paddled. The result: Nats lose to the Cardinals, 4-1, in a rain shortened game.

If you messed up and followed Cheap Seats Daily's advice to let your grubstake from Guaranteed Win Nights I & II ride on Guaranteed Win Night III, you're as busted as our nation's health care system.

But hold all betting slips.

The game went seven innings. We're appealing to the Hague to try to get out of honoring our promise that if Guaranteed Win Night III didn't come in, you'd get the rest of the year free. Our guarantee only applied to whole games.

Read the fine print next time you gamble!

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Speaking of fine print: Bowie Baysox, you're sneaky, but we love you!

Here's a cut-and-paste from the Baysox most recent online promo for Sunday's Scott Van Pelt Bobblehead Night:

This is a night no sports fan will want to miss! Join ESPN's and Maryland's own SCOTT VAN PELT as the Baysox welcome him home for this special event! The first 1,000 fans ages 6 & up* will get a limited edition Scott Van Pelt bobble head collectible presented by Madison Interiors.
(* Limit one (1) bobble head collectible per person ages 6 & up. There will be a no exit policy in effect at the stadium from 5:00 – 6:00 pm or sooner if all of the bobble heads have been distributed)

Check out the small type! Fascism is alive and kicking in Bowie!

The no-exit policy was not a part of previous announcements about Van Pelt's big night. But Cheap Seats Daily lobbied hard for Bowie management to reinstate restrictions on civil liberties for bobblehead nights to ward off doll-hoarding creeps. And it looks like our lobbying paid off! Hooray for us!

The back story: Turns out a handful of weirdos would show up early for every giveaway game, buy tons of tickets and fill up shopping bags with dolls and then go home. The greedy few ruined Pat Sajak and Lindsay Czarniak bobblehead nights, forcing management's hand. So, for Matt Wieters Collectible Figurine Night last month, ticketholders had to agree to forego freedom of movement in order to get their doll, to make sure the hoarders couldn't keep walking through the turnstiles and collecting Little Matts. But then all the Wieters dolls weren't given away. So the no-exit restriction wasn't put in place for Van Pelt. Glad to see it's back. Again, we're very against restricting civil liberties....except where Bobblehead Freaks are involved!

Turns out there is a huge financial upside to doll hoarding. Some d-bag's hawking a Wieters figurine on eBay now for $58.99 with postage. One eBay seller has made more than $190 selling four Wieters dolls in the last month. Another sold a Wieters doll for $80 last week.

One of the same 'baggers profiteering off the Wieters figurine is offering a Czarniak doll from the Baysox for $69.94 with postage. (Czarniak's bobblehead currently commands as much as the Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams,  and Rob Dibble 'Heads on eBay.)

The most expensive bobblehead I could find on the internet auction house: Tom Brokaw, with a "Buy It Now" plus postage price of $264.24 (even though the mini-Brokaw looks more like Sam Donaldson). The most expensive sports related doll: Warren Buffet's Omaha Royals bobblehead, for $249.99 plus $9.95.

Who's paying these prices?

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The punchline here is that the new site was founded by some of the very same folks who used to make extremeskins.com run, only to become disenfranchised after selling out to Snyder in 2005. (For the un-obsessed: Snyder made the Redskins the first pro sports team to acquire an existing fan site with the extremeskins move, one of many firsts during the Redskins owner's campaign to Control the Message.)

AFTER THE JUMP: Barry Sanders kid is BGObsessed? Extremeskins goes toe-to-toe with its founder's new website? The Great Dan Steinberg™ Some bozo bet on the Nats BEFORE Guaranteed Win Night? DC United crushes the Real Madrid of a Small Section of Northwestern New York? Still no mention of the Washington Kastles? Sports Radio mulls Erin Andrews AND lactation?

The main force behind BGO is Mark "Om" Steven, an extremeskins architect and longtime Snyder toadie who I've done my best to abuse for his toadiness in this very space. Gotta say, tho: A whole lot of work clearly went into the BGO launch. For Snyder obsessives, the competition between BGO and extremeskins.com will be at least as interesting as that between WJFK and WTEM.

It'll also be interesting to see how many Skins sites this market can support. Especially in July in a preseason not teeming with the blind optimism of the past preseasons.

***

Somebody likes the Redskins. Via The Big Lead: Barry Sanders Jr. says the Detroit Lions, the team that superfunded his trust fund, ain't his favorite NFL squad: "I’m a Redskins fan because I like Clinton Portis. They also have Jason Campell and that defense," the littler Sanders said.

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Back to us: Yesterday, in this space, Cheap Seats Daily adopted and then led a group singalong of the Nats unofficial official cheer, Thunderation.

And we guaranteed a Nats win.

And the Nats won.

Do the math: WE'RE RESPONSIBLE!

And, since it was on us to end Jim Riggleman's Nats'-managerial-career-spanning four-game winless streak, as threatened promised, we're going to repeat the cheer here, again and again, and declare that tonight is another...you know it's coming...GUARANTEED WIN NIGHT!

You know the words! Sing with us:

Thunder, Thunder, Thunderation
We’re the Rockets Delegation
When we fight with determination
We create a soul sensation!

Be like REO Speedwagon and don't fight this feeling anymore! Together, we can re-create a Soul Sensation!

***

Now that the Nats are streaking, the Great Dan Steinberg™ somebody should double the money they lost in Vegas on tonight's game. Remember: It's Guaranteed Win Night! If the bet doesn't come in, the rest of the year is on us! And TGDS™ somebody can, you know, write about losing again and write off the loss again.

***

D.C. United survived the Real Madrid of Rochester, the Rochester Rhinos, 2-1, at the Wembley Stadium of Boyds, Md., the Maryland SoccerPlex, to advance to the finals of the World Cup of Irrelevant Soccer Tourneys, the U.S. Open Cup.

Now it's onto the U.S. Open Cup final for United, where they'll doubtless take on the Bad News Bears or Durham Bulls or somesuch in a high school gym or a cow pasture or somesuch.

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The dwindling influence of Big Media, or maybe just Leonard Shapiro...Yesterday, the Post's veteran sports media critic went after the Sports Junkies during his review of the new WJFK.

"This is supposed to be a sports talk station," wrote Shapiro, "so why did one junky segment in the 8 o'clock hour have to focus on one of the hosts relating how his toddler son kept pulling the hair of his little sister and how he had to be placed in time out? I don't need parenting lessons at that hour."

Shapiro has never liked the Sports Junkies. But a few years ago, when Shapiro's work appeared in the paper version of the paper, the Junks might have tweaked their topics for a couple days to keep the critic quiet. But today, the first show after Shapiro's slams, the boys talked about the difficulty of getting infants to take a bottle, and lactating wives.

At least the discussion wasn't about getting Lindsay Czarniak to take a bottle or lactating Erin Andrews.

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This just in: Our Amazin' Nats are a national punchline. First the Wall Street Journal used the team's woes in the lede of its Sonia Sotomayor hearings coverage, comparing the hopelessness of being a Republican senator with the hopelessness of being a Nat.

Then President Barack Obama, in the broadcast booth during the All-Star telecast, told the country that because of parity fans of all teams still remained hopeful that this season would turn out OK. Then he threw in a caveat: Except fans of the Nationals.

Obama clearly enjoyed his Nats takedown, smiling and looking around the booth for support.

But Fox announcer Tim McCarver reacted as if POTUS had told another Special Olympics joke. McCarver stayed stonefaced and silent and stared straight ahead. It was fabulous TV for everybody.

Except, you know, for fans of the Nationals.

AFTER THE JUMP: Czarniak and Rieger pile on? Tim Lincecum = Mitch Kramer? All-Star Do-Gooder Still Never a Bullet? Beer is bad at parties? Fight, fight in the comments section? Joe Gibbs Comes Back to D.C.?

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The locals got in on the slam act, too. Last night's WRC-TV sports report ended with Lindsay Czarniak pointing out that the National League hasn't won an All-Star Game since 1996.

"Must be something about the name 'National,'" said anchorwoman Wendy Rieger with a big laugh.

And as the show cut to commercial, Czarniak could be heard saying "Good one!"

Fifteen yards, piling on!

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It can't be said enough: National League starter Tim Lincecum looks just like Mitch Kramer, the ballplaying kid from Dazed and Confused. He's my favorite pitcher of all time.

Mitch, that is.

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O what a tangled web we weave...A story from GateHouse News Service in Braintree, Mass., about the pregame All-Star ceremony, in which all living U.S. presidents honored folks who won a People magazine poll about our nation's most charitable folks, identified honoree Rob Dixon as a "former Washington Bullets guard who left the NBA in 1983."

Oh, really? The Wizards organization, keepers of the Washington Bullets records, says there is no record that Rob Dixon ever played for the Bullets.

But Dixon, who runs a group that puts disadvantaged kids in college, added some run with the Bullets to his bio while trying to get voted in by People readers.

This sort of resume puffery really makes me mad, since I've so rarely mentioned my stints as goalie for the Washington Capitals or my tours as a Beatle.

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Brad Young, a high school softball coach in Walkersville, Md., has been canned by county officials because a kid's parent brought beer to a postseason team party, and another parent ratted on him to the county.

From the WTTG-TV report:

It was a cookout around Brad Young's backyard swimming pool on June 11 celebrating the end of a winning season.

"And one parent brought some beers to the party. A couple of people had those– probably no more than five or six," said Young. "No kid was uncomfortable. No kid had access to it. No kid drank. No parent got more than probably one or two beers. I did not drink."

But another parent called the Frederick County School Board, which tells FOX 5, "The incident in question took place at what is considered an official team function."

In my day, a coach's job would only be in jeopardy if he threw a team party and didn't have enough beer — for kids and parents.

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Fighter Jimmy Lange, profiled in last week's Cheap Seats column, is getting called out in the comments section of Boxing Along the Beltway, a fabulous local boxing site. Fans and handlers of fellow light middleweight George Rivera are talking up Rivera and talking down Lange in hopes of forcing a fight between the two.

Lange, the most popular fighter in the D.C. market by way of his appearance on the NBC reality show, The Contender, and his well-attended and -received shows at the Patriot Center, needs a fight, now that North Carolina boxing regulators refused to sanction his scheduled July 25 bout with Jimmy LeBlanc (record: 12–16–4, with 10 of the losses coming in his last 12 fights).

I'd never heard of George Rivera before this. But the back and forth between the Rivera side and the Lange side is enough to make me wanna see these guys go at it.

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Not just a thought, a sermon: Joe Gibbs will appear at Lon Solomon's McLean Bible Church to promote his faith and his latest book, Game Plan for Life.

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