Just before game time yesterday, Dan Snyder, following Cheap Seats Daily's pro bono crisis PR counsel, dropped the FedExField sign ban. Snyder had just as quietly and cowardly put the ban in place before the Tampa Bay game a few weeks ago to keep fans from showing how much they hate him.

“We have no intention of trying to control our fans’ varied ways of expressing their views on the Redskins organization and the team’s performance,” former newspaperboy turned Redskins COO  David "Yeah, That's the Ticket!" Donovan said in the very brief ban-lifting statement.

“We’ve disappointed our fans so far this season, and I’m as disappointed as they are,” added Dan Snyder. “I understand that some fans want to express their feelings with signs and they should do so, as long as they stay within the boundaries of good taste and don’t block the view of other fans.”

This gives the "He's learning as an owner" crowd something to throw out as they perpetuate that myth.

The "He's a D-bag!" set, meanwhile, gets plenty to work with here, too.

The timing of Snyder's lifting of the sign ban was grotesque, since it was announced too late for anybody going to the Denver game to even get word. Much worse: The announcement also surely has something to do with the fact that Snyder's sponsoring a fan sign contest this Friday with his sportstalker, WTEM, at Dave & Busters at White Flint Mall as part of a Redskins pep rally.

Snyder's station sponsored the same sign contest at the same venue before last year's home game against Dallas.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Sign policies show Dan Snyder's a hypocrite? Dan Snyder ran the same sign promotion at Dave & Busters last year? Dan Snyder likes signs? You can call Albert Haynesworth lazy, but not cowardly? Tank McNamara's neither fair nor funny? Dunbar's season ends atypically? Spingarn's season ends typically? Will somebody tell Mike Miller to stop dressing funny until his damn team wins?)

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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?)

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