The lede:

In 1989, when he was a 9-year-old from Virginia Beach, Norris Adams had a feverish love for the Washington Redskins.

At a Redskins home game that season, he persuaded his parents to put him on the waiting list to buy season tickets.

Twenty years later, Adams is a 29-year-old lawyer in Charlotte. He recently received a burgundy envelope with the word "CONGRATULATIONS" in golden type.

Adams had made it to the top of the Redskins' list. According to the team, more than 200,000 people are behind him.

According to the story, Adams talked his wife into letting him buy the tickets by telling her "this season ticket opportunity is a once-in-a-lifetime thing and it's going to change our lives forever."

In the Carolinas in 2009, getting Skins tickets is not only newsworthy, but a life-changer?

So the legend of the waiting list still has clout 400 miles away from Raljon.

Up here, not so much.

Mr. Adams apparently hasn't heard that in the DC area the Redskins are so short of customers they're sending offers to buy season tickets to folks who never signed up for any waiting list.

Yet by the end of the story, we learn that even Adams, despite all his burgundy and gold delirium, can kinda sense desperation in the Redskins ticket operation.

The kicker:

Adams hadn't even kept the Redskins apprised of his address or contact information, and he has no idea how they found him. He's just glad they did.

"I don't know what voodoo the Redskins used to hunt me down after all these years, but I sure hope they use some of that witchcraft come this fall," Adams said. "Their newest season ticket holder is counting on it."

In the comments section for the story, other readers of the Raleigh paper step forward to say that they, too, have gotten offers for Redskins tickets.

Again, these folks are hundreds of miles away.

Why is Skins management blanketing such a remote market?

All the strange behaviors are enough to make one wonder about those layoffs in the Redskins ticket office a few months back, where workers who reportedly worked "in general admission sales" were let go.

At the time, the firings were portrayed as signs of the bad U.S. economy.

But on the Redskins- owned message board, extremeskins.com, there have been postings that the entire staff of the ticket office has been replaced.

Could it be that Dan Snyder turned over the staff because he was worried that up here, he can't sell enough tickets to fill his stadium?

Can Cody Glenn save the day?