On May 25, 1999, Dan Snyder won unanimous approval from the National Football League to buy the Washington Redskins from the estate of Jack Kent Cooke. The purchase cost $800 million.
"Persistence pays off," Snyder told WUSA-TV after the sale was approved. "We're going to be that persistent when it comes to winning on the field."
The [...]
With the players' union disbanded and bargaining turned into litigation, the football lawyers and journalists and Drew Brees-es, who for a few sorta-exciting recent days hung out among us downtown, have gone their separate ways.
That's left the fans here and everywhere time to dwell on basketball, and hockey, and bitterness.
Here's a representative example of the [...]
Video Killed the Radio Star: The bad news continues for National Public Radio, as another hidden-camera tape by right-wing provocateur James O'Keefe shows executives were aware of the phony gift O'Keefe's stunt was pretending to pass along to the network. With the federal budget what it is (which is to say, bad, if not quite [...]
Blackouts are the talk of the town!
Clearly, our nation's power brokers were moved by last week's Cheap Seats column on the history of the NFL's blackout rule: Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is now urging Commissioner Roger Goodell to suspend enforcement of his league's rule, which prevents (wink wink) games not sold out 72 hours before [...]
Michael Vaughn, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates whose campaign bio bogusly claimed that he had played "3 years" for the Dallas Cowboys, told me earlier this week that I "didn't dig deep enough" into his football career.
Well, nobody can accuse Vaughn of under-digging lately. The hole he's dug for himself gets deeper [...]
There goes the NFL!
Sure, the league is flying higher than ever now — TV coverage of the NFL draft drew a bigger audience than the NBA playoffs this spring. But mark down July 28, 2010 as the day everything started rolling downhill.
That's the day the reports surfaced that the NFL has brought in Dan Snyder [...]
It sure looks like the Washington Redskins won't sell out their games this year.
The team hasn't sold out its games since moving to Raljon in 1997, actually: The premium seats have never sold out since FedExField opened. But the team and the NFL invoke a common-senseless technicality that holds that since the more than 20,000 [...]
In the battle for celebrity endorsements, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty struck first, with a go-go concert celebrating his campaign. And now Council Chairman Vincent Gray is getting into the act, too.
Tonight, at Ozio, Gray will mingle with "young professionals" and NFL tight end Vernon Davis—a Dunbar graduate who also played basketball and competed in track [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
For the Titanic platform (or maybe not!) of the latest City Paper, I wrote about Dan Snyder's newest parking scheme.
Snyder now adds a parking surcharge to the cost of every ticket sold at non-football events at FedExField. All other venues around town put parking charges, if there are any, in the advertised price of the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
To a weekly contract, following his release by the Dallas Cowboys.
I am sure that such a short-term deal wouldn't jibe with the contract that the NFL has negotiated with the NFLPA, but there should be a clause for a guy like Terrell Owens: If you've acted like a jackass for your entire career yet [...]
