Posts Tagged ‘MICHAEL VICK’
Cheap Seats Daily: It’s 9/11! Did You Pay $23.99 Plus Shipping for Dan Snyder’s Commemorative Hat?
Great Moments in Capitalism™, Special 9/11 Edition
On this date in 2005: Get your Tragedy Hats!
None of the Redskins marketing endeavors under Dan Snyder dropped the jaw faster than the "Redskins Flag Hat" that went on sale on the team's web site and at FedExField at the beginning of the 2005 season.
For $23.99 plus shipping where applicable, Snyder would sell you a Redskin baseball cap with a red, white and blue Pentagon stitched on the side to tug the heart strings and stir more nationalism at a time when the country was already crippled by an oversupply. The hats were a great way, according to the radio ads that ran on the sports stations owned by Snyder, to "commemorate Sept. 11."
The punch line: The proceeds weren't earmarked for any charity or cause. Unless you consider the owner's wallet a charity or cause.
Genius!
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(AFTER THE JUMP: Bankers going for Michael Vick haters? Bob McDonnell, you lie? Boswell basking in the afterglow of his Snyder bashing? DC Divas become video stars? A bump in the Nats' Road to 100 Losses? Jaycee Dugard jokes?)
Cheap Seats Daily: Special Non-Pullout Football Preview Section!
The NFL season starts tonight. The only must-read of all the pre-kickoff previews: Erik Wemple's take on Sunday's Redskins/Giants game. His post attracted a group of meatheads to the comments section the way a roach motel does roaches. It's a meathead motel, is what I'm sayin'. Don't miss it.
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A near-miss must-read: "A Decade of Snyder the Decider," an interactive piece that came out this week on the Washington Post's site. An amazing amount of work and brainpower went into the feature. Everything you want to know about Dan Snyder's reign is right there in a few squared inches. You just have to click and click and click and click to get it.
But in the end this delivery system is totally unsatisfying to any football fan who likes to read about the game in a real sports page. It's the difference between listening to the White Album on vinyl through a tube amp while holding the double-LP's sleeve and fingering through all the sleeve-candy, or listening to the White Album through headphones and an iPod (if it were available on iTunes, that is).
(AFTER THE JUMP: Vick Chew Toy giveaway is real? Marv Throneberry trumps Cal? The Felds run Monster Trucks, too? Harvey Grant's kid follows in Adrian Dantley's footsteps? Mark Brunell's the Bill Graham of Christian rock? Nats countdown update?)
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Mourning Roundup
The most amazing thing about Ted Kennedy's death: There are no commemorative newspapers for sale. The Boston Globe is running a special 12-page section today, but so far no Michael Jackson- or Obama-style tributes. This is a slap in the face to the American way of mourning, second stage of which involves opening your wallet and buying something that you'll have no place for later. Seriously, what are you gonna do with a commemorative newspaper? A framed front page, sure, I can see that, but a whole newspaper---where's that gonna go? I'll tell you: into a shopping bag, then eventually into the bottom of a box that your kids will someday empty after you die. They will glance at the newspaper, wonder what it is, then put it in the tube that shoots garbage out to space.
If you really want to remember Ted with your credit card number, you can donate money to this vaguely defined foundation. Though these might be going cheaper.
After the jump: convenience, tragic irony, more
Read More "Mourning Roundup" »
Morning Roundup: Sick as a Dog Edition
Broadcasting from Beaujon Acres this morning, where a cold has laid me out flatter than one of Tim Carman's jokes. But I'm not too sick to link!
- Does anyone else find this kinda poignant and sad? Also kinda related: Post computers drive tech writer to cloud.
- Ruth Samuelson corner: 1) Now that's "getting" Results! 2) Madness in Capitol Hill: Is it Acker Place NE or Acker Street NE? Please help us out if you can. Amanda Hess corner: CP sex columnist accidentally sets Coeur d'Alene ablaze on her way out.
- Doing more with less: famous people reduce cup sizes.
- Throwing a hot dog down Middle America's hall: "Hipster Grifter" Law & Order episode planned?
- My wife is British, and her family members complain, often justifiably, all the time about the NHS. It is a royal (fnar) pain in the ass, you have to schedule OB/GYN visits a year in advance, you don't get private rooms in hospital. BUT: I for instance pay about $800/month for my employer-"provided" health care. And when my kid got sick last time we were over, they treated him no questions asked. Health care, like roads, is basic infrastructure stuff, one of the few things government can do well. So I'm with the Brit Twits here.
- Nats lose. And Redskins prepare to embark on another wacky season. Hey, why's there a Michael Vick Skins jersey for sale? It's the curse!
Cheap Seats Daily: Did Friedgen Ever Give Back the Weight-Loss Money?
Ralph Friedgen is getting more attention than any of his Maryland players this preseason, all because he lost weight. Friedgen dropped a reported 105 pounds time around.
Good for him.
But these Friedgen-Lost-Weight stories are threatening to be like the Michael-Westbrook-Is-Finally-Focused articles that used to run around here every year at this time. Friedgen, remember, got just as much notice for dropping weight in 2002.
Friedgen had announced he was losing 100 pounds, and coerced Terp boosters to donate $1,000 per pound toward the building fund for the Gossett Team House, a facility for athletes. Whatever lbs. he lost while fundraising he got back real quick, with interest.
I always wondered if Friedgen gave the money back.
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The Washington Post won't run Tank McNamara's Michael Vick story line.
Michael Cavna, on the Post's Comic Riffs blog, says Managing Editor Raju Narisetti decided the panels were "inappropriate."
The Post didn't censor McNamara during the 2000 football season, when the strip ripped Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder repeatedly, and honored him with its annual "Sports Jerk of the Year" award.
In a 2004 Q&A on washingtonpost.com, "Tank McNamara" creator Jeff Millar explained how and why Snyder got the nod:
(AFTER THE JUMP: Why's Snyder a jerk? In local sports radio, Ed Bradley lives on? Tom Boswell jinxes the Nats, too?)
Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Did Friedgen Ever Give Back the Weight-Loss Money?" »
Cheap Seats Daily: Washington Warriors Won’t Ever Play in the AFL?
The Arena Football League ain't ever coming to DC after all.
Sports leagues, like romantic relationships, can't survive taking a break. Last year AFL owners thought they were different, announcing that while they'd be spending the 2009 season apart, they weren't breaking up.
Again: Just need some space. Just taking some time off from each other before getting back together.
Well, this week, several AFL owners leaked to the press the date that they'll be getting back together: The 12th....OF NEVER!
The AFL is dead.
The disbanding means, alas, Dan Snyder won't ever bring us the AFL team he promised back in 1999.
(AFTER THE JUMP: MMA is the next arena football? How many Redskins blogs are out there? Dan Steinberg marvels at whose muscles? The Washington Times toasts Bruce Smith? Michael Vick is partying where? The Nats are still playing?)
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Cheap Seats Daily: Snyder’s PR Hire Calls Redskins ‘a Mediocre Team’?
Redskins training camp opened yesterday without Stephen Strasburg Brian Orakpo or Michael Vick. There was, however, a group of fans calling for the team to bring Vick in. Spurned ex-Redskin LaVar Arrington wondered on his WJFK radio show whether the Vick clique was hired by Dan Snyder as a "guerilla marketing campaign" to prepare the rest of the fan base for actually signing history's most athletic dog killer.
I like his thinking. Arrington's, that is.
Orakpo signed last night and will be dressed out today. The Sporting News ranked the Redskins as the best fit for Vick.
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The Vick influence, meanwhile, remains profound. Ultimate fighting opponents for years have tried to keep states from sanctioning MMA by calling it "human cockfighting," a term made famous by Sen. John McCain. But McCain's tag did nothing to stop the spread of the cage matches. So, New York legislators opposed to seeing the sport, or whatever you want to call it, sanctioned in their state have adopted "human dogfighting" as their catch phrase.
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Speaking of guerilla marketing: Larry Weisman looks more like a brilliant hire for Dan Snyder every day.
(AFTER THE JUMP:New Skins PR official calls team "mediocre"?)
Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Snyder’s PR Hire Calls Redskins ‘a Mediocre Team’?" »
Cheap Seats Daily: Michael Vick Is the New Justin Timberlake?
I wrote a column this week about one of the bizarrest happenings in local prep ball history, and a game I'd been hearing about for years: The 1970 summer league matchup between John Thompson's St. Anthony's squad and the Morgan Wootten-coached DeMatha.
They were the two best teams in the city back then, and played before a huge crowd on a little outdoor court at Jelleff.
Well, they sort of played. Thompson made the evening memorable, though for wholly unsporting reasons. He kept his star-stocked lineup, full of future NCAA Division 1 players, on the bench, and instead sent in a ringer squad of non-basketball players to face DeMatha. The Stags took no pity on the replacements, crushing the kids in St. Anthony's uniforms, 108-26.
DeMatha players and the hoop-crazy fans who believed the hype and took the trouble that hot summer night to get to Jelleff, a boys club off Wisconsin Avenue, are still peeved at Thompson for making a mockery of the matchup.
But at the time the future Georgetown legend was anything but contrite.
(AFTER THE JUMP: Thompson ducked Wootten for Ducking Thompson? Nats win a video replay battle, lose the war? Larry Weisman practices the real new journalism? Michael Vick is the new Justin Timberlake? Greyhounds have friends?)
Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Michael Vick Is the New Justin Timberlake?" »
Cheap Seats Daily: Michael Vick Inspired ‘Whale Wars’?
Brett Favre's gone, so Michael Vick talk dominates.
Vinny Cerrato yesterday told the Washington Post that the Redskins will not pursue Vick, doggedly or otherwise. But Cerrato has fibbed so many times about personnel matters, most blatantly while acquiring Jason Taylor from Miami last summer, that his credibility in these situations is less than zero. So over at Dan Snyder's message board, extremeskins.com, the should-we-or-shouldn't-we talk raged on. Vick has a surprising amount of support among the Skins fan base, probably from a combination of loyalty from Virginia Tech alums and Jason Campbell's lack of a strong following.
But the anti-Vick crowd around here is much more passionate. The poster Bostic Hog spoke for a bunch of folks when he wrote: "Do you think Danny will offer us a refund on our season tickets if he signs Vick? Kind of like a breach of contract thing, or maybe a morals clause, like the players have."
I'm guessing the chances of Vick signing with the Redskins are better than the chances that Snyder will offer refunds to fans if he does. And no matter who Vick plays for, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell should make him wear jersey #K9.
(AFTER THE JUMP: Vick programs cable TV? Nats feel more thunder? Weequahic High School was a bunch of losers?)
Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Michael Vick Inspired ‘Whale Wars’?" »
Cheap Seats Daily: Who’ll Let the Dog In?
Michael Vick was "conditionally reinstated" by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell yesterday. So the Vick-to-Redskins barkers got louder.
I know from dumbass arguments, and here's one of the dumbassiest on why Vick could fit in here as training camp opens this week: Signing the free agent, says the Sporting News, "would give Vick an opportunity to play close to his home state of Virginia." Good point! The Skins play closest to where Vick did his best animal slaughtering, too!
Dan Snyder wouldn't. Would he?
I mean, sure, he tried hiring Pepper Rodgers, traded for Brandon Lloyd, and founded a chain of boutique kiddie barber shops for a theme park chain just before it went bankrupt.
But, he wouldn't.
Would he?
Gosh, I hope so!
(After the Jump: Snyder makes a good deal? Billick makes case for not signing Vick without mentioning Vick? Nats have more grand slams than your local Denny's? Divas finish on top after all? No Tasering for Scott Van Pelt giveaway?)
Cheap Seats Daily: Swooning for Ted Leonsis, DeAngelo Hall; Free Preakness Tout Service!
A day after the crushingest defeat of his Capitals ownership, Ted Leonsis went on "The Sports Reporters" on WTEM-980.
He was awesome.
Hosts Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin brought up the rumored but unspecified injuries to Alex Ovechkin and Mike Green, giving Leonsis an opportunity to blame his team's ouster from the Stanley Cup playoffs on mitigating factors.
He wouldn't take it.
"All teams are banged up," Leonsis said.
Leonsis thanked the fans and sounded sorry for letting them down. He said he's capped the number of season tickets at 13,000 for next year so folks who have been loyal for years but can't afford to buy for every game can still get in.
Not that the cap will hurt his wallet: He said he expects all games in the 2009-10 season will still sell out anyway.
Why do fans like him so?
Leonsis said it's because his organization is "transparent" and "honest" with the fans.
The Leonsis interview will be repeated on WTEM on "The John Thompson Show."
On a related note: WTEM is owned by Dan Snyder. If I'm not mistaken, Snyder has NEVER been interviewed by Pollin and Czaban, hosts of the best and top-rated show produced by the station, which runs in afternoon drive time.
Leonsis: Honest, transparent, beloved.
Snyder: Meh. Nah. Bah humbug.
