This morning during his regular spot on the "Mike Wise Show" on WJFK-FM, Portis said that he spent the bye week in Russia.

Host Wise and co-host Holden Kushner expressed disbelief, and pressed the gimpy tailback for details that would confirm that he had really gone that far east. Portis wouldn't play.

"What happens in Russia stays in Russia," Portis drawled.

I'm still not sure if he indeed went to Russia or if he's gonna be back in the lineup for Monday night's game with Philly. But, damn, that was good radio.

*Extreme apologies to The Great Dan Steinberg for filching his Steinography tack. Steinberg, like Bob Wills, is still the king.

My favorite came with Mike Wise’s column on the Hogs, going over the birth of football history's most durable and successful offensive line. I was particularly taken with what the young Skins would bring with them to their Redskins Park post-practice hangout, dubbed The Shed, in the early days.

From the story:

It's where Riggo and friends could down a brew, Russ could chew his Copenhagen and Joe Jacoby could bring back his favorite sandwich from Merino's in Fairfax, two pieces of Sicilian pizza pressed together with chopped beef and white, runny cheese spilling over the sides – the Hog Cheesesteak, named for him.

I'm a product of Northern Virginia, and I'd never heard of Merino's Pizza or the Hog Cheesesteak. But I bet if we jump into the way-back machine, we’d find that Jacoby’s foodstuffs actually came from Marino’s, a carryout outlet in the brief and mostly disastrous attempt to franchise the glorious Mario’s Pizza, the Arlington fixture. (The name was altered during franchising for legal reasons related to too many "Mario's" already being in business, is the story I'd always heard.) And I'd bet the sandwich he describes is Mario's BBQ pizza, where a blob of meat – I've always believed it was pork, but Wise says beef, and I've never had it tested – was thrown on square, but not Sicilian, slices of pizza.

Why is this important? Because Mario's is one of the few institutions in this area that means more to folks than the Redskins. (Full disclosure: My first pizza came from Mario’s, and, my last probably my will, too.) You can still go to the original Mario’s on Wilson Blvd., open all the time, with Lefty Lindsay and Joe Williams serving up subs and square, but not Sicilian, pizza. Last I checked, Lefty and Joe have been there for 45 and 48 years, respectively. Loading up on Mario’s Pizza on Redskins Sundays was a tradition I carried with me after moving into D.C. 24 years ago. I'm not as devoted to either the eatery or the team these days, and that saddens me now that I think about it.

I've never been able to figure out why Mario's franchising was such a debacle. (An outlet in Petworth on Georgia Avenue, the last franchise to open as far as I know, shuttered just months after opening.)

The Hogs beer recollections in the story — Coors and Bud Light are said to be the faves way back when — are probably faulty, too. You couldn’t really get Coors beer east of the Mississippi until the mid-1980s. I know this because I used to bring cases home from Lubbock, Texas, and one of the great tragedies of my life came when a portion of my Coors shipment, already spoken for by friends in NoVa, was stolen by baggage handlers at Dulles. Plus, I've seen "Smokey and the Bandit." And, Bud Light didn’t hit the market until 1982, with Lite from Miller remaining the dominant light beer in football for years afterward, with its NFL-centric media campaigns.

But why quibble about food and beer during such a grand tour. Thanks for the memories.

Albert Haynesworth's bosses ain't the only ones disappointed that he's avoiding the "mandatory" team workouts that begin at Redskins Park today. Haynesworth's absence destroys Mike Wise's Washington Post column on the news value of the team's highest paid player.

The original headline of Wise's piece, as it appeared online last night: "As minicamp approaches, Haynesworth isn't the real story."

Um....

For fans and newsers covering today's mini-camp opening, to paraphrase Vince Lombardi: Haynesworth isn't everything; he's the only thing.

Wise's original lede, as it briefly appeared in Internet versions:

While interviewing London Fletcher last week at a charity event, I spit out the obligatory Haynesworth question — Have you been in communication with Albert?...

But in hindsight, there were two problems with the question. One, it's no one's job but Haynesworth's to make sure he's part of the team....

The version that showed up on my doorstep:

"But in hindsight, especially after The Post's Jason Reid reported Tuesday night that Haynesworth won't show for mandatory minicamp and wants out of Washington for good, there were two problems with the question."

Problem number two, of course: All of Wise's and the headline writer's words were moot before the digital ink was dry.

Wise isn't the only who has to eat some words.

Redskins GM Bruce Allen is being used by Dan Snyder to host gatherings at which he shmoozes and eats finger foods with potential premium ticket buyers before the sales staff moves in for the kill. Attendees to one event at FedExField, called "An Evening with Bruce Allen," assured folks at the Tupperware Party that fans had nothing to worry about with Haynesworth. One recount of Allen's presentation, posted on Snyder's message board last week: "He said Albert will absolutely be there at the mandatory workouts next week."

As Wise might say: There are two problems with Allen's sales pitch...

Get me refunds!

Mike Wise

I figured it was just a bit. But then Ted Leonsis, at yesterday's press conference to officially announce his takeover of the Washington Wizards, recognized Wise in front of all gathered as a guy about to be married.

Wise has gone public with the personal stuff before. His column about his own serial sexual improprieties after Tiger Woods' bangage spree came out ("I am Tiger Woods!" Wise declared again and again in print) could be filed under Too Much TMI™.

Some heartless souls mocked the columnist for his confessional.

Yet now, just a few months after telling the world he's medically incapable of fidelity, he's pledging to stay the course, through sickness and health and business trips to Vegas? Because he lost a bet with others at the station about who would lose the most weight?

Yup.

"It's real. He's getting married this weekend," says Chris Kinard, WJFK's program director.

Geez Louise.

Wise didn't return an email for comment. Guess he's busy. Kinard says he'll be back at work on Monday.

As you may recall, Arenas and Crittenton will be forever linked as really awesome guys to have in a locker room.

Crittenton apparently has pled guilty to the misdemeanor charge. Legal Times' blog has a full breakdown of the plea and Crittenton's lawyer's statement.

5 p.m. update: After Crittenton entered his plea, Senior Judge Bruce Beaudin sentenced him to one-year unsupervised probation, and required him to perform community service with the NBA's Haiti project as well as some local children's organizations.

The big news: Crittenton's claims that he believed Arenas intended to harm him.

After the jump: Prosecutors' narrative of events and counter WaPo's now-famous account of the incident in one significant way—Crittenton's gun was not loaded during the locker room incident!

The U.S. Attorney's Office press release provides a narrative regarding pre-Christmas fight between Crittenton and Arenas. On December 21, Crittenton arrived at the Verizon Center at 9 a.m. to receive medical treatment and to attend the Wizards' practice. The prosecutor's office writes:

"According to Crittenton, before he left his home in Virginia for practice that day, Crittenton had placed a lawfully owned, unloaded handgun into his backpack because he believed Arenas would carry out his threat to shoot him that day."

When Crittenton found Arenas' handguns in his locker and a sign that read "pick 1," he asked Arenas: "What is this?" and asked Arenas to get the guns off his chair. He then picked up one of the guns and threw it along the floor. The prosecutor's office goes on to state:

"According to Crittenton, he feared for his own safety, so he told Arenas he had his own gun. Crittenton took his handgun out of his backpack and, without pointing it anyone, showed it to Arenas, holding it below his waist pointed downward."

Prosecutors point out that there is no evidence that Crittenton's gun was loaded or that he ever loaded the gun. "There also is no evidence that Crittenton ever chambered a round, pulled back the hammer, raised or pointed the firearm, or otherwise brandished the firearm in a threatening manner at any time during this incident," the U.S. Attorney's Office writes.

This directly contradicts WaPo's Mike Wise's amazing story on the incident in which sources told him that Crittenton had chambered a round.

Later, Crittenton arranged to surrender his firearm used in the incident. His gun of choice: An unloaded silver-and-black nine millimeter semi-automatic Taurus with magazine. Crittenton had no criminal record.

There's nothing new about Tony Kornheiser hammering Mike Wise on his ESPN 980 radio show. Local browser histories groan under the weight of blog posts about their on-air jousts (e.g.: 1, 2, 3, 4), with the most recent chapters concerning Wise's coverage of Gilbert Arenas' fall.

At issue are two questions:
1) How good was Gilbert Arenas' birthday party, anyway?
2) Was Gilbert Arenas Mike Wise's source for his account of the Gilbert Arenas-Javaris Crittenton confrontation?

The first point seems a bit trite, but Kornheiser, who competes against Wise's show on WJFK-FM, has been prosecuting it with characteristic passion, using it to make the point over and again that Wise is a carpetbagger with no sense of perspective about D.C. sports history. His evidence? Passages such as this one, in Wise's Jan. 6 open letter to Arenas.

Remember three years ago? The hottest ticket in town was that black American Express envelope, the one that contained an invitation to your 25th birthday party at Love, the club where Sean Combs and other hip-hop glitterati attended. Diddy came to Northeast for you.

Kornheiser has ever since battled the notion that Arenas' party was of any import. From his Jan. 19 show (though you could have heard something like this most other days this week):

Kornheiser: Now to begin today's show, I had a lot of time to think last night as I lay around being ill all day yesterday and probably still to some degree today. So I thought about what really mattered most. And what really mattered most to me was the appreciation that Gilbert Arenas had that party, and that famous rappers came to town, and, and, that created a buzz in Washington that has never before and never again will be seen or felt like that particular party at that club, whenever that was. Kevin, you were here.
Kevin Stanfield: Yeah I was here. I didn't get the invite. I was crushed, too, man, because I told you I was at Allen Iverson's party, at that point, that was the biggest thing that ever happened in Washington.
Kornheiser: Much bigger than the burning of the White House many years ago."

The second one is a bit more serious, at least as intra-journalist spats go. Wise's Jan. 7 article "Wizards' Arenas suspended indefinitely as new details emerge in gun incident" provided a remarkably complete account of the Joke That Ate the Wizards. "Two of the five people in the room" ran them down for Wise.

On his Jan. 7 show, Kornheiser read extensively from Wise's piece and, on reading that Wise's sources had told him "Arenas had originally not disclosed Crittenton's action to protect the little-used guard from prosecution and had told Crittenton he would assume full responsibility for the actions of both players that day," said:

"That shines a very nice light on Gilbert Arenas. If two of the people in that room, if there were five, and two of them are being quoted on background and anonymity, one of them is Gilbert Arenas, because this story is very, very complimentary to Gilbert Arenas."

Word-problem skills would seem to indicate Kornheiser is correct. Following Wise's narrative, the spotlight shines ever brighter on Arenas.

"Walking into the locker room two days after the dispute on the team plane, according to two witnesses, Arenas laid out the guns in Crittenton's locker. Two other teammates eventually sauntered in and, while Arenas was writing the note in front of Crittenton's cubicle, in walked Crittenton, according to their account."

That's six people: Arenas, the two witnesses, the two other teammates, and Crittenton. But since Crittenton contests the account and we've already heard that there were five people present, unless one of the people in the room left, one of the two witnesses speaking to Wise has to be Arenas.

Not the case, says Wise. "If I relied on Gilbert Arenas for all my information I'm not a very good reporter," Wise says. He says Arenas wasn't one of the witnesses quoted. I take him through my math, subjecting him to a reading of the diagrams I've made of the room. In this particular grassy knoll, there appears to be a third saunterer.

"That was a screwup," Wise says after my third attempt to explain my reasoning. There were only ever five people in the room. No one left.

And here's why I believe him.

Look at this sentence: "Walking into the locker room two days after the dispute on the team plane, according to two witnesses, Arenas laid out the guns in Crittenton's locker."

"Walking into the locker room" modifies "Arenas" ("according to two witnesses" is a parenthetical). But Wise says Arenas was in the room before the two witnesses. The next sentence begins "Two other teammates eventually sauntered in." So the correct sequence of people entering the room should be:

1. Arenas
2. Witness 1
3. Witness 2
4. Witness 3
5. Crittenton

If the "Walking in..." sentence is one of those "small but unremitting" errors bedeviling Wise's employer, then there are three people who could have talked to Wise, excluding Arenas.

Moreover, the prosecutors' description of the incident closely follows Wise's. "I can tell you the Post and myself feel very vindicated with my reporting after we read the prosecutor's report," Wise says.

This does not clear up the matter of the party.

"I wish I could tell you it was one of the greatest things that happened in D.C.," Wise says. "I wasn't there. I heard it was a great event."

"If Tony would like to participate in journalism again," Wise adds, "I'd love to have the discussion with him."

Photograph of Wise by Darrow Montgomery

Today Gilbert Arenas could prance through Chinatown wearing nothing but a bandolier and smile, and there would be no one to cover it. For today, every member of the District Sports Media Elite will be at the National Cathedral for the memorial service of George Michael, not the singer.

If you are from D.C. that appositive will not be necessary. But a lot of people move here from other places!

Tony Kornheiser: He will be there. I heard him say it on his radio show. (No radio show from TK today; you'll have to make your own obsessive jokes about Arenas' birthday party.) Joe Gibbs: He will be there too. Maybe he will refrain from any Brit Hume moments, at least this time! Maybe he will try to freeze the pallbearers. These are hard things to know in advance.

Which is why I will go to this service. Maybe while there I will see Dan Steinberg. True story: Last week my son came bounding out of school thrilled because he'd seen a picture of me in the newspaper. He drew from his pocket a carefully folded piece of the Washington Post with Steinberg's woodcut portrait. Baldism: It's never too early to start.

fig. a

fig. b

This has been a great couple of months for D.C. sports news. Shanahan. Agent Zero. The Washington Times massacre. The invention of HDTV. Wise vs. Kornheiser! Campbell vs. Portis! Riggo vs. Snyder! McKenna vs. Cal Ripken's publicist! Washington may have only one team that can win anything, but storylines we got.

In this space yesterday, I sorta blasted Wise for the piece, minus the "sorta." But, being a good guy — him, not me — Wise talked to me anyway last night about the kiss-and-kiss-and-kiss-and-tell-and-tell-and-tell column.

He says he wrote it because he's tried to craft an identity at the Washington Post as the "heart on your sleeve" columnist. That path led him to "follow around' the mother of Baylor basketball player Carlton Dotson as she dealt with her son murdering his friend and teammate, and to coax hired goon Donald Brashear to open up about the brutal childhood that led him to throw fists for a living. And to, well, confess to some sort of personal sexual derring do in a column.

"That's who I always want to be," Wise says of being a heart-on-your-sleeve writer. "Sometimes it would cost me logic in my columns, sometimes friends, but that was going to be me."

So when he couldn't come up with anything to write about Tiger Woods' sexual derring do, he just kept looking at his sleeve.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Did Wise get any dates out of his column? George Michael and Ric Flair go live? George Michael's feuds with John Riggins? And Frank Herzog? And everybody?)

"When an opportunity like Tiger comes up to write about," he says, "and I'm struggling inside about why I haven't come up with a funny column or a thoughtful column, and I'm national columnist, well, I start thinking: What am I doing? Why is the post paying me if all I'm doing is going to Redskins games and saying if Jim Zorn is a fruit loop or not?"

The response has been shocking, Wise says.

"I figured I'd get a couple nice emails and couple people would go off on my and then the caravan would pass and that would be it," he says. "But I've never gotten more personal emails for a column ever, even for coming out against the Redskins nickname. On the comments section, I get people with keyboard courage who don't put their names and say things like,'Don't ever compare yourself to anybody!' But people who wrote to me personally at my Post email account were like 95 percent supportive, just unbelievably supportive."

Wise says some of the support was a little too graphic.

"People say, 'Bravo, you've allowed me to confront some things about myself!' and those are great, but then I got a lot of intensely personal emails about how they threw their family away or their marriage away or a guy who said his wife needed to be validated by men all the time. These are strangers. Obviously, I put myself out there and so I'm flattered by it, I guess, but it blew me away."

He hasn't gotten any proposals from women yet, Wise said. He didn't sound unhappy about that.

He'd write the column all over again.

***

Also yesterday, I mulled the sellout portions of George Michael's legacy. But I ran out of digital column inches before following through on my plan to say nice things about Michael for doing more for pro wrestling around here than anybody since Vince McMahon. To make up, here is Michael interviewing Ric Flair during his WRC newscast hours before a 1992 show at the Capital Centre.

No other sportscaster in America would have put the Nature Boy or any other wrestler on the air in character, live or not.

***

Last night I came across "The Unexpected George Michael: The Sportscaster Who Invented Himself, and His Past & Furious Pursuit of Success," an amazing Washington Post profile of George Michael that ran in October 1986. What a story!

The piece, which clocks in at 5368 words, was written by Stephanie Mansfield for the Style section. It goes deep into Michael's disavowing of his own childhood, spent in St. Louis with the name George Gimpel.

It reminded me that there really were two Michaels during his long run at WRC: There was the bitter, paranoid Michael who always felt inadequate compared to rival Glenn Brenner over at Channel 9, and the less uptight entertainer Michael who got comfortable with himself and dominated DC sportscasting after Brenner's death. (Michael gave an amazing live, on-air tribute when Brenner died, in which he cried along with the whole city — even President George Bush issued a memorial statement.)

The bitter, paranoid Michael was in charge when Mansfield's piece came out. He squabbled with everybody.

Here's a passage that goes over a feud Michael was having at the time with John Riggins:

Bring up the name John Riggins and George Michael's face clouds over. His relationship with the former Redskins star, he says, was "one of the least enjoyable aspects" of his time in Washington. Riggins never liked him, he says, because of his friendship with Joe Theismann.

In fact, the two had an argument not long ago at Chadwick's, witnessed by Riggins' attorney and a local television director. Riggins wanted to know why Michael was the only sportscaster who didn't interview him the night he was released from the Redskins. Michael says he couldn't find him. Riggins called Michael a liar, then told the sportscaster to "put on his worm shoes and get out of here."

Michael describes the confrontation in detail, saying "it was fairly hot." Another witness says the story is exaggerated. "John embarrassed him," Riggins' attorney Douglas Woloshin says. "He wasn't in control of the situation."

For the record, the lawyer says, "John never mentioned he doesn't like George because of Joe Theismann. He just doesn't like George."

And George also didn't mind trashing Frank Herzog, the Redskins play-by-play announcer and, at the time, the Channel 7 sportscaster:

And don't seat Frank Herzog next to Michael at the next rubber chicken dinner. "I'd tell him to go to hell," Michael says. "I have no use for him."

Four years ago in New Orleans, he says, WRC weekend sports anchor Scott Clark was ejected from a Georgetown University NCAA basketball game for not having the proper credentials. According to Michael, it was Frank Herzog who blew the whistle. (Herzog denies it.)

"He had him thrown in jail!" Michael booms dramatically. "One day, Frank Herzog and I will meet, somewhere privately where no one will ever know about it. I will carry that grudge for life."

NCAA rules stipulate that credentials to cover the Final Four are given only to members of the press who cover those teams from the beginning of the tournament. Clark, who is leaving the station next month amid rumors of professional friction between himself and Michael, now admits "we were in the wrong on a technicality" when he tried to use another station's credentials. "I didn't go to jail," Clark says.

"That was a such a petty thing," Herzog says, unaware of any feud. Michael, he says, has always been "very cordial." "Besides, that was four years ago."

Says Michael, "Things like that I don't forget."

The story is also a reminder of when sportscasters had real clout in this town, and when newspapers thought it was OK to put the time and effort into stories that could hit you like a train.

The Michael profile does that. Sadly, it is only available through the Washington Post archives. If you have access, use it to retrieve Mansfield's work. Thank me later.

***

The second EagleBank Bowl kicks off today at RFK Stadium at 4:30 p.m. My sense is this year's game got far less advance coverage than last year's, and not just because Navy was in the 2008 Bowl. I'm far more intrigued about how many people show up today, and how EagleBank will spend my TARP money this year, than by whether Temple or UCLA wins.

***

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

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

Aldridge sat across the table from Wise, but spent the half-hour staring at another panelist, Doc Walker, so as to avoid eye contact with Wise, who on his own WJFK show all but said he wanted to whup Aldridge's ass after the Kornheiser flap. If I were concocting an Uncoziest TV Shows of the Decade list, this'd make it.

But then things got really got wacky for Wise. For Saturday's Post he wrote a column that was sorta about philandering. You gotta read it to believe it, but, in short, Wise kept repeating "I am Tiger Woods!" while insinuating again and again that he gets more tail than a toilet seat. But Wise mucked it all up by continually advising readers that it's just not right to bang bang bang bang bang, as he does. Note to kids: Don't grow up to be like me, pounding everything with a pulse!

The whole story's a feast, but my fave Wise sentence: "I am Tiger Woods, and I understand why the scent of a woman is unbeaten in 2009 and beyond."

I mean, as long as he's got that 2009 qualifier in there, me and Wise are on the same page. But, while we're all confessing stupid shit, there have been years — 2004-2006 come to mind — when the scent of a Cinnabon totally made a run for the top spot. Maybe that's just me.

Wise also gets silly when he talks about Tiger's enablers in his being complicit in the golfer's becoming a public embarrassment. From Wise's version of "Five Easy Pieces":

I am Tiger Woods, and just as Charles Barkley stood up for him during his weakest moments, I had friends lend support, telling others not to judge.

And while their efforts were appreciated, most of these people turned out to be enablers from the fraternity of arrested development, where boys must be boys because authentic men aren't allowed to join. I knew I couldn't change until my circle of "friends" changed.

Well, I don't know if Wise's enablers helped him get more tail than a toilet seat. But, I am worried more for Wise about the enablers at his workplace who ok'd that boast/confessional/piece of crap. It takes a village for something that bizarre to make it to print.

Were I concocting a Most Misguided Stories of the Decade list, Wise's story wouldn't be on it. Like they used to say about fill-in-the-blank-party-school whenever Playboy's Best Party Schools poll would come out, it wouldn't be fair to include professionals with amateurs.

***

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.)

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

But not this Washington. Greg Nickels, the mayor of Seattle, Wash., has officially dedicated today to Baylor.

Baylor was in Seattle for a couple years of college ball. So if he gets a day named after him there, Baylor should have a day named after him in D.C., too. And a street named after him. And a building. Maybe even a neighborhood. Why not the whole town! (Instead, all he's got is Ginuwine — a D.C. native whose real name is Elgin Baylor Lumpkin.)

Butt seriously: Baylor's the best basketball player this city ever produced — and that's saying something — and he remains a legendary figure to an elderly generation of black folks. His lack of any real presence in his hometown is a crime. He's 75 years old now. Because the white media ignored his side of town, Baylor never got his due when he was a schoolboy god at Spingarn and local playgrounds in the early 1950s, though he was literally changing the way the game of basketball was played.

Give Elgin Baylor his due now, D.C.!

Who do I call?

***

More evidence that the Redskins don't have god on their side.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Christians don't turn the other cheek on "redskins"? Dan Steinberg calls off the Kornheiser/Wise war? Without telling me? FIOS is great, unless you're a Caps fan? Chris Webber, down and out, still gets razzed for that timeout?)

The Supreme Court just declined to hear a case filed by a group of American Indians who had argued that the term "redskins" is too offensive to be afforded trademark protections.

A lower federal court ruled that the plaintiffs waited too long to file the suit, because they were of legal age when the Redskins registered their trademarks in 1967. The Supreme Court's refusal to look into that decision means Dan Snyder's marks are safe, for now.

But the various courts of public opinion are now starting to weigh in on the case. And some men and women of the cloth want folks to know that they think "redskins" should go.

This from the Church Report, a newsletter that describes itself as "Christian. Conservative. Concise.":

United Methodist leaders are disappointed the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal challenging the National Football League’s use of the mascot and term “Redskins.”

But they have vowed to continue the church’s struggle opposing team names and symbols that demean and offend Native Americans.

“This is a very disappointing development, but we stand with Native Americans, especially Native American children, across the country who are continually confronted by racially offensive sports mascots,” said Jim Winkler, top executive of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society. “We oppose any and all uses of racial sports mascots as contrary to The United Methodist Church’s position condemning racism and recognizing it as a sin."

The United Methodist Church has denounced the continued use of Native American names as nicknames for sport teams as “racist and dehumanizing,” according to the 2008 Book of Resolutions.

I know Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I'm not up on my Book of Resolutions.

***

The Great Dan Steinberg should go to work for Bob Arum or Don Corleone. Steinberg showed himself this week as the top matchmaker in town, with the power to build up feuds and call 'em off when the spirit moves.

He got the long-simmering Tony Kornheiser/Mike Wise rivalry to boil over on Tuesday with a post Steinographing how Kornheiser had gone after Wise on his WTEM show.

Because of Steinberg's post, Wise was getting hammered by readers and listeners to his WFJK radio show to come back at Kornheiser. And so he did. And Steinberg was there, Steinographing every word!

Then yesterday, just as the Kornheiser/Wise brouhaha was making Redskins/Cowboys look like Regis/Kelly, Steinberg counseled the involved parties and Bog readers that the hottest DC media feud in, well, at least several days wasn't worth it.

"[W]e all basically realize that this is beneath us, and that you, the reader/listener, have better things to worry about," Steinberg wrote.

Cold water!

I didn't get the word that Kornheiser/Wise had been called off in time. So I tried to exploit the feud to talk about me. Uh oh!

***

Turns out some folks who have cable ain't getting all the Caps games. Apparently if you live anywhere in the D.C. market and have cable but don't have FIOS, you get to watch every shot Ovechkin takes. But if you have top-shelf FIOS service in certain parts of Maryland, you don't get to watch every shot. Games are blacked out on FIOS networks, say angry fans.

It's all to techy for me and my rabbit ears. I don't have cable of any sort, so I don't get any Caps games on TV other than the NBC national telecasts. I get my hockey by listening to the great Steve Kolbe on radio or "watching" the games on ESPN's "GameCast."

The tension you get following ANY game on a computer screen — football, basketball, baseball, and even hockey — is amazing. Sounds weird, I know, but try it and get back to me.

I never thought anything would top baseball on the radio for me, but GameCast and its brethren services (yahoo, MLB, etc.) are as addictive as Grand Theft Auto.

'Course, I've never played Grand Theft Auto — I'd have to unplug my rabbit ears to get the game console in. But I hear it's, like, really addictive!

***

Chris Webber's restaurant, Center Court with C-Webb, has closed.

This from the Sacramento Bee's write-up of the former Washington Bullet's travails:

A recording on the restaurant answering machine said that Chris Webber is calling a time out for his sports bar and restaurant at 3600 N. Freeway Blvd.

He said Webber is "calling a time out!"

Get it?

Maybe Elgin Baylor shouldn't have a restaurant named after him...

***

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Kornheiser, of course, really didn't give a rip about Wise's column. He just wanted to rip Wise.

Full disclosure: I think Kornheiser's a bad guy with a dark heart.

'Course, I only met him once, for about 10 minutes about 10 years ago at a Washington Post holiday party. It's one of my favorite party stories, right up there with having Alan Greenspan wonder if he'd shown up at the wrong event after encountering me and my thrift-store wardrobe at a book party, and getting attacked by Buddy Holly's shop teacher during a night out in Lubbock.

Tell the Kornheiser-and-me one again? Sure!

Kornheiser had gotten a Post editor who now makes appearances on his radio show to invite me to the party, so he could attack me for something I'd written that he didn't like. When I arrived he cornered me and pulled an old column of mine out of his coat pocket that he'd been carrying around for a while and waved it in the air while yelling that I'd "never write for a real newspaper." I could tell from the way his co-workers acted after he finished yelling that they'd seen his bizarre act before.

And not long after that party Kornheiser got me fired from a $75-a-week freelance job with the Washington Post's sports section because of something else I wrote for Washington City Paper.

Kornheiser got me canned for writing about a February 1981 story he wrote for the Style section of the Washington Post called "Ken Beatrice: Facts and Fears on the Airwaves."

Beatrice was a beloved oddball back then, with a popular nightly sportstalk radio show. Kornheiser was much newer to D.C. than Mike Wise is now, and, to use the angle Kornheiser used during his rants against Wise, didn't understand what Beatrice meant to this town.

But Kornheiser had learned that Beatrice had fibbed about his college football career, and that Beatrice's PhD was from an unaccredited university, and used those tidbits to write 4,000 of the meanest words to ever appear in the Post. Beatrice weighed less then Karen Carpenter, and on good days looked more frail than the average intensive care ward patient, yet Kornheiser spent much of the story reveling in how much distress he caused Beatrice during "at least eight hours" of interviews. Even if he'd never gotten weird on me at a holiday party or gotten me fired, his Beatrice story was enough by itself to leave me believing Kornheiser's a bad guy with a dark heart.

One passage of Kornheiser's piece:

[Beatrice] was not looking well.

Pale. So pale and waxy that he could have been on exhibit at Madame Tussaud's.

And gaunt, like he hadn't eaten in weeks.

Nervously, he wiped his right hand hard across his forehead and through his dark hair, matting it. There were white flecks at the corners of his mouth. When he went to light his pipe his hands trembled. He took in great gulps of air. It seemed like he was drowning.

In fact, he seemed terrified.

About the prospect of this story.

Kornheiser was trying to hurt Beatrice, and he succeeded. Beatrice had a nervous breakdown after Kornheiser's story ran and had to leave the airwaves for a while to convalesce.

Listeners begged Beatrice to come back to his radio show, and he eventually did.

Despite knowing he'd caused Beatrice physical harm, Kornheiser never backed off Beatrice. When Kornheiser got a show of his own on WTEM a decade later, he used it to continue to bully Beatrice.

I listened to Kornheiser's radio show on Monday, and he sounded pretty frail himself. He sure seemed hurt while talking about Jon Gruden, his replacement on "Monday Night Football," being re-signed to a long ESPN contract, the deal Kornheiser was never offered. So he tried to work out his wounds by going after Mike Wise, who he's been saying mean, unfunny things about for years. Just like he did Beatrice back in the day. But now Kornheiser sounds too weak to even be a good bully anymore. He just comes off as sad.

Back to me: Over the years, because of his multi-media successes, I've probably been asked more about getting fired because of Tony Kornheiser than about anything I've ever written.

So I don't like seeing him falling like this. Pretty soon nobody's going to want me to retell the story of me and Tony Kornheiser.

Oh, well. The one about me and Buddy Holly's shop teacher's more fun, anyway.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Kent Cookes! The landed gentry of Middleburg, Va., by way of a Canadian encyclopedia salesman made a United States citizen by an act of congress! They had a town named after them, and then they didn't! Late-night rides through Georgetown with a boy-toy clinging to the hood of a Jaguar! Throwing shoes at cops! Angry wills! John Kent Cooke was supposed to run the Redskins, and then he wasn't!

You can blame Dan Snyder for a lot of things. But foremost has to be depriving us of this family through his "appalling" use of the same free market system that brought them to us.

Other stuff is happening, too. Korean exorcisms, for instance. (Joe Eaton, where are you on this?) The country's least consequential gubernatorial race (1) (2)! MoDos in Crystal City! Booty walls! Check out the Web this morning, it has a ton of great stuff!

BIKE COMMUTING CORNER. Cars try to hit bicycles. They often succeed! Commuters try to defend themselves with high-visibility clothing. But sometimes a blindingly yellow jacket is not la chose juste. Dude. Get yourself some neon stickers. A couple on your helmet, one on your fender, maybe on your bag? You can provide just enough visibility to have a case in your lawsuit.

Dang! Out of time! I'm bounceville! Follow me on Twitter!

***

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...

***

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