Posts Tagged ‘TED LEONSIS’
Cheap Seats Daily: How Bad Is Dan Snyder Pimping the Redskins Cheerleaders?

"How would you like to see the Redskins take on the Cowboys? --- AND have the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders soap up and scrub down your car???"
Well? How would you like that?
Check out that ad!
It appears on the Web site for WTEM, Dan Snyder's sports talk station, to promote the latest listener contest. Top prize will bring the Redskins cheerleaders over to wash your car.
Kinda yucky?
The radio ads are just as outrageous, with panting males and all sorts of breathy talk of scrubbing and rubbing. The campaign is also just the latest evidence of Snyder's thing for cheerleaders. He took over the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders shortly after buying the team, and has increased their role in his global marketing scheme ever since.
The car wash campaign marks a new level of subservience for the Redskins Cheerleaders, and cheerleaders in general. The message is: "Put down your pom poms and grab a sponge!" That tells the world that Snyder can force his troupe to put on something skimpy and service Joe Sixpack.
Basically, Snyder's pushing a Madonna/Whore image for his cheerleaders.
Well, minus the Madonna.
(AFTER THE JUMP: More on the Redskins cheerleaders? Snyder is being called "Lord Farquaad"? PhotoGate update: Snyder really did censor Dan Steinberg? Isn't the Leonsis worship getting outta hand? Guaranteed Win Night proves AGAIN that it's a sure thing? Remember "The Sure Thing"?)
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Cheap Seats Daily: Leonsis Says Caps Bigger Than Jesus?
Sally Jenkins goes after Dan Snyder like she'd invested in Six Flags. Her latest column reviews Snyder's historic star-struckitude and avoidance of personal accountability, and every paragraph is great and dead-on and brutal.
A sampling:
This is Snyder's team; he was intimately involved in assembling it. He keeps his favorite players on speed dial, watches practices on the sidelines and demands face time and explanations from the coaches he personally hired. Whatever you think of Zorn, he is Snyder's own selection. It was Snyder who told Joe Gibbs, "He would make a great head coach." He is personally responsible for naming Vinny Cerrato, a proven failure, executive vice president of football operations, for the Redskins' lack of core strength, for their inability to power the ball in the red zone, which is thanks to his decade of neglect of the interior lines in favor of big free agent signings.
But no sampling can do the column justice. It's all wondrous.
(AFTER THE JUMP: Reading recommendations? Nats give fans an unforgettable "Bang! Zoom!" when down to last strike? Thom Loverro says forget "Bang! Zoom!" Ted Leonsis says Caps better than Jesus? When's the wake for Hoop Dreams? Say it ain't so, Susie Kay?)
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Cheap Seats Daily: Caps Announcer Blows Off High School Reunion to Be With the Fans!
For the print edition of City Paper, I wrote yet another column about Charles Mann and Art Monk's debacle in Anacostia. The former Redskins spent a decade promising that community a job training center, and then sold the proposed site for more than 10 times what they paid the city to obtain it.
One fascinating (to me) part of the story that I didn't get into for space reasons: While sitting on the Anacostia building over the years, Monk and Mann, joined by Darrell Green, lobbied the residents of Sursum Corda, a low-income housing development off North Capitol Street NW, to turn control of that woeful development over to them. The ex-teammates made their pitch to redevelop the property right after the murder of 14 year-old Jahkema Princess Hansen. They did not get the job.
For both the Anacostia and Sursum Corda projects, Monk and Mann used the Bennett Group, a DC-based development firm headed by LuAnn Bennett, wife of a longtime Congressman, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.).
Congress gave the Good Samaritan Foundation at least $775,000 in grants for the training center project.
The Bennett Group's slogan, which pops up every now and then on the firm's web site: "The bottom line for Bennett Group is value. For us, that means delivering projects on time and on budget, without compromising on quality."
That adage doesn't really jibe with what went on at the Carver Theatre site.
***
(AFTER THE JUMP: Capitals announcer blows off Falls Church High School Reunion for Fan Fest? Anacostia High has chance at Worst Season in DC High School History? Will Eastern and Spingarn keep Anacostia from their date with destiny? The Nats no longer need to consult Mapquest on the Road to 100 Losses?)
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Cheap Seats Daily: Marbury a Wizard? Can You Party AND Maintain House Ethics? Wake Up Call for Hoop Dreams? Letterman Loses Pride, Battle With Palinites?
As he was heading off the air, I'm pretty sure I heard Dave Feldman at Fox-5 report last night that the Wizards are going to work out Stephon Marbury today.
Did anybody tell Abe Pollin?
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Lebron's come and gone. But we only have to wait a week for the next celeb sports doc extravaganza: Luis Tiant will be at the E Street Cinema downtown on June 22 for red-carpet screening of "The Lost Son of Havana," a film about the ex-Indian- Twin-Red Sock-Yankee-Pirate-Angel's trip back to the Cuban capital, which is his Akron.
After the screening the movie's producers will throw a bash across the street from the theater at the ESPN Zone. But don't expect much. In the invitation the party's organizers just sent out, they're promising that: "Light refreshments will be served in accordance with House Ethics rules."
House ethics used to lead to the wildest parties in town. Jack Abramoff mussed up everything.
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Sign of the times or the Times? Despite a big write-up in Sunday's Washington Times, the Hoop Dreams Scholarship fund had to cancel its next big fundraising event for lack of interest.
Cheap Seats Daily: The End of Days
Around 6:45 p.m. EST, Ryan Zimmerman grounded into a fielders choice in his fifth and final hitless plate appearance in San Francisco. His hitting streak, the best of the few reasons to pay attention to the Nationals this season, was done at 30 games.
A little after 7:30 p.m., a shot from Pittsburgh's Sergei Gonchar goes off bodies in front of the net and Sidney Crosby pushes the loose puck in. Eight seconds of playing time later, Penguin Craig Adams scores his first career playoff goal. It's 2-0, but the game, series and season feel over.
In one rotten hour, what had been a fab month in local sports was over.
When's Redskins camp open?
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Ted Leonsis always talks about the "10-step plan" that the Caps have been following. He means the rebuilding scheme that got them to verge of a conference final for the first time in 11 years.
But last night, an early victim of his plan came back to bite him.
Cheap Seats Daily: Best Owner List Shocker: Leonsis Left Off! Worst Owner List Non-Shocker: Snyder, Lerners Left On!
Sports Illustrated released Top 5 best/worst owners lists for all the major sports. Our town's fabulously represented, though only on the dark side.
First off: Ted Leonsis somehow wasn't included among hockey's best. If there's ever been a more beloved sports owner in this town than Leonsis circa 2009, I can't remember him.
Hard to believe it's only been five years since Leonsis was brawling with home fans at Caps game, eh?
But he was. Days after he unloaded Jaromir Jagr and his $11 million salary to the Rangers in January 2004 in the midst of a talent purge, a 20-year-old season ticket holder named Jason Hammer brought a sign to the then-MCI Center that said "Caps Hockey, AOL Stock -- See a Pattern?"
Hammer sat among a group of fans heckling the owner, and waved the placard at Leonsis throughout the game. Leonsis got so incited he went after the kid in the concourse after the final horn. The account of the incident in the Washington Post said Leonsis "grabbed [Hammer] by the neck and threw him to the ground."
When the Washington Capitals Needed to Be Saved…
For my column this week I traveled back to the darkest and funniest era in the history of the Washington Capitals: The Summer of '82.
Given how everything's coming up cherry blossoms for the Caps this season, it's hard to imagine the franchise being in the near-death state it was back then.
But the team headed into the 1982 offseason having not made the playoffs for the eighth straight year -- meaning the Capitals had yet to play a single postseason game in their history -- at a time when 16 of 21 NHL teams qualified for the playoffs each season.
And then Abe Pollin sort of lost his mind.
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Caps Walking On the Beaten Path?
Today's Washington Post finds Capitals owner Ted Leonsis mulling over starting a waiting list for season tickets.
What next? Is Leonsis going to ban folks from walking into the Verizon Center?
Or maybe crater an amusement park chain?
Or, oh geez, just start losing?





