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?)

It didn't take long for signs of the Michael Vick influence on the football season to show up. The first commercial coming out of the first pregame show on NBC this season was for Wachovia. It featured a woman and her car full of dogs, and had her talking about how she needs to save money at the bank so she can make sure her dogs are cared for.

Coincidence? Heck no!

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Sticking with notable commercials: Virginia governor wannabe Bob McDonnell ran his new campaign spot again and again on WRC after the Steelers/Titans broadcast.

In the commercial, McDonnell is seen walking down a suburban street while being followed by a cameraman as he lists a litany of political goals for the Commonwealth. To capture the football crowd that would be watching the spots, at one point in the ad McDonnell's son interrupts the boilerplatitudes by throwing the candidate a football and asking with a big smile and an excited shriek, "Dad, how 'bout a game?"

McDonnell answers, "You're on!"

But then he keeps walking down the street and talking politics! The commercial ends with McDonnell and his family standing together at the end of the street for no good reason.

Bottom line: There is no game!

If you tell your son, Game on!, and then there is no game, how can you expect Virginia voters to trust anything you say, Mr. McDonnell? How?

Answer the question!

Butt seriously: You've never seen a lower-aiming, dumbassier ad than this one.

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Tom Boswell came off the top rope and landed on Snyder earlier this week. In his washingtonpost.com chat yesterday, Boswell told readers, "I've never had such near-universal positive reaction to a tough column."

Pretty soon, you could hold a convention of Snyder's supporters on a golf cart. Oh, wait. Maybe you already can.

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Albert Haynesworth seems like a real funny tough guy. In an interview that aired yesterday on WTEM, the Redskins' only major offseason acquisition was asked if the size of Giants' running back Brandon Jacobs worries him. It doesn't.

“What is he, 250 [lbs.]?" Haynesworth said. "I weighed 250 when I was in the 10th grade.”

But here's Jacobs dominating Skins' safety Laron Landry last year. "That's getting run over!"  yells John Madden about the hit, which is far more brutal than when Bo Jackson's famously gelded Brian Bosworth in a "Monday Night Football" game. Jacobs' hit was enough to get writers of the NBC TV show "Friday Night Lights" to reference it in a script last season. In a scene where some characters are watching the highlight tape Dillon High fullback Tim Riggins sent to U of Oklahoma scouts, the guys all agree he looks like "Brandon Jacobs running over Laron Landry." (God, I miss that show! Come back soon!)

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In case you missed it: The most viral sports column of the year, on so many levels, comes from Mark Whicker of the OC Register, perhaps the only employed writer on the planet who found inspiration for giggles in the Jaycee Dugard kidnap/rape/impregnancy/enslavement.

Read his non-apology, too. And the comments! It'll take all day, but it's worth the time.

Funny is hard, and damn if I don't hear a time bomb ticking every time I try to get chuckles here, what with New Media's typing demands and aversion to paying gatekeepers. But how many folks had to sign off on Whicker's words before they actually showed up in print?

***

I was in Delaware for vacation recently.

Few states like gambling the way Delaware likes gambling. There are casinos at the fairgrounds in Harrington and at Dover Downs, where there's also horse racing.

All the talk while I was there was about the feds siding with the NFL to crush Delaware's attempt to bring in single-game football betting.

Scads of evidence of the local love for wagering were available at Kupchick's, a nice, low-key restaurant in Lewes, Del. On the bulletin board, the results of the recent Travers Stakes from Saratoga were written in magic marker above the daily dining specials. There were stacks of fliers on the counter with instructions on how to enter the deli's Suicide Pool for this NFL season, entry fee and all.

So I asked the guy behind the counter what he thought of the appeals court's ruling that stopped the state's gambling pursuits. I guessed he would.

"Somebody made a phone call," he says. "They had to help Vegas."

I'm with him. No other explanation makes sense.

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The DC Divas lost the Sup-Her Bowl, but the First Ladies of Women's Football* are featured in a new video I discovered on youtube. It ain't ever gonna be Soulja Girls — I was the only one to have seen the video according to the Youtube counter last night, and as of this morning the count was up to just six views — but, I gotta say, the song's catchy. Sing with me: "I like football..I like it a lot...I like girls that play...and even when they're not."

This thing deserves double figures in views!

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Nats win! Countdown to 100 Losses™ stalled at 8!

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*Dan Snyder really did trademark "First Ladies of Football" for his cheerleaders, a clear affront not only to women's football players, but also to the guy cheerleaders in his troupe. But not surprising. Snyder's amusement park chain, Six Flags, has also tried trademarking "Daycation" and "You Are Here." He likes claiming ownership of things™.

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

Anytime "Dan Snyder" and "won't raise prices" can be used on the same page, it's news.

But in making the announcement, Skins management again boasted about the size of the fan base.

Mitch Gershman, the team’s chief operating officer, was quoted thusly in the press release: “We have fantastic fan support as evidenced by the more than 200,000 people on our waiting list for season tickets."

Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.

After the debacle of the "Monday Night Football" tilt with the Pittsburgh Steelers, in which a national television audience saw a stadium that looked at least half-full of fans rooting for the visiting team and waving Terrible Towels, and the debacle of the Skins' final home game of the season against Philly, where fans went to Snyder's own message board to complain about not even being able to give away tickets, you still have the stones to throw out that "200,000 people on our waiting list" claim?

Not even readers of your team's own blog want to read that.

Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.

The press release also said "The team’s season tickets have been sold out since 1966."

That's a hilariously false claim, given that anybody who calls the ticket office even today will begin to get hounded by salespeople trying to unload the massive number of high-dollar, and so-called "premium seats" at FedExField that are now unsold.

The emptiness of the club level is the cause of so much yellow showing up on your TV screen during broadcasts of a Redskins home game.

But, apparently, there some folks who still believe there's a waiting list for Redskins tickets.

As one 2007 premium ticket buyer by the name of "Slug," who said he's still obligated for several more years of club seat payments, commented on the Redskins blog after admitting he fell for the waiting-list sales pitch: "Paint me a sucker."

Turns out that since Dan Snyder started calling the shots around here, letting the Redskins beat you has become a surer way to get your hands on a Lombardi Trophy than having Tom Brady as your quarterback.

Snyder took control of the team in the summer of 1999, too late to have any influence until the millennium.

The Redskins have had only two winning seasons in this century.

Yet five times since 2000, a team the Skins beat went on to win the Big Game® that season. (Brady, who came into the league the same year, only has brought Bill Belichick three Lombardis.)

Before winning Super Bowl XXXV in 2000, for example, the Baltimore Ravens were shamed by the Skins, 10-3.

The Redskins then beat future Super Bowl XVII champs Tampa Bay, 40-10, in the 2002 preseason. A year later, Brady and the New England Patriots fell to the Redskins, 20-17, at FedEx before going on to win Super Bowl XXXVIII. The Redskins topped the Pittsburgh Steelers, 17-10, in a 2005 preseason game at home; Pittsburgh used the humiliation to whup the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL. And a year ago, the Skins beat the Giants, 22-10, late in the season at the Meadowlands. The Giants used their self-disgust to shock the world by beating the undefeated Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.

Over the weekend, the Anti-Curse™ proved itself scary strong.

The Philadelphia Eagles, embarrassed twice by the Redskins this year, beat the favored and rested Giants, who had whupped the Skins twice in the 2008 regular season. And, the Arizona Cardinals, beaten by the Skins early in the season in Raljon, crushed the NFC's #2 seed, the Carolina Panthers, a team that beat Washington, 47-3, in the preseason.

The Philly and Cards wins guarantee a huge test for the Anti-Curse™ in the Big Game® : Both Baltimore and Pittsburgh destroyed the Redskins in regular season contests.

So the Big Game® is now sure to feature a matchup of Skins Vanquishers vs. Vanquished.

Anybody who followed last week's tout to put a paycheck on Florida and lay the points, and then followed City Desk's orders to put the mortgage on the Eagles and Cardinals straight up, now has two paychecks and four mortgages (parlay implied!) to play with.

This week's giveaway: No sense bothering with a bet on the Cards/Eagles matchup, since they both have Redskins defeats going for them. No, instead let it all ride on a futures bet on the NFC in the Big Game®.

You can't afford not to.