Nats de facto general manager Mike Rizzo just made a deal giving an unproven talent the biggest contract a player in his position has ever been given in the history of his sport.

In other words, a deal just like those Redskins de facto GM Vinny Cerrato makes every offseason.

And now it looks like Rizzo's about to be kicked out of his job.

If it were Cerrato who was getting knocked off, Redskins fans would be celebrating his departure the way Italians rallied around Mussolini's swinging carcass.

But in Rizzo's case, Nats followers are upset.

Will that be enough to save his job?

I was in a diner in Delaware this morning killing time before a funeral. An old guy in the booth beside me, who had been rifling through newspapers, started complaining to his wife about not being able to find out "if he signed or not."

I had to know. I turned around and asked, "Who are you talking about?"

"Stephen Strasburg," he said.

Read More "The Lerners Should Thank Scott Boras" »

Stephen Strasburg and the Nationals played chicken, like those hot rodders in "Rebel Without a Cause."

That made for an amazing night to not watch sports, and just refresh this and that web page every few minutes hoping for some Breaking News. Would Strasburg be without a contract? Would the Lerners be without another top draft pick AND a fan base?

My mom's favorite writer, Chico Harlan, was like a political speechwriter on a close election night who has to write both a victory and concession speech, knowing that half his work will be wasted.

In a post made less than an hour before zero hour, Harlan admitted on his Nationals Journal blog that because his own deadlines were approaching he'd had to write two stories, one for the Lerners caving, one for the pitcher caving, before knowing what happened. (Everybody was filing news-free reports 'round midnite. The Associated Press write-up was headlined "Strasburg, other 1st-round picks go to deadline.")

At 12:18 a.m., Chico filed the bulletin report that Strasburg was signed, and attributed the news to Baseball America. Two minutes later, Chico filed one of his fab pre-fab pieces -- headlined "It's Done: Strasburg Signs" -- with the amount of the contract, $15.7 million guaranteed, filled in. The only clue that this was a dummy piece: Chico's story didn't attribute the information to anyone or anything.

Then, within minutes of the climactic posting, Chico changed the headline to "It's Done: Strasburg Agrees."

Which, you know, coulda been the headline for the unused post, too. (Not to go all CSI on Chico, but the link to the updated post, even with the new, CYA headline, still ends with "its_done_strasburg_signs.html")

(AFTER THE JUMP: The fat lady's going to sing at Nats Park? Clemens makes a comeback? Eastern High football makes a comeback? Just like Dick Cheney, Darth Vader's going to throw out a first pitch?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: It’s Not Over ’til the Fat Lady Signs! Or Agrees! Whichever Comes First!" »

The Great Dan Steinberg™ had a fab story over the weekend about former employees of Dan Snyder's ticket office suing the Redskins for overtime pay. The Redskins don't dispute the claim that the staff worked overtime. The team's basis for not paying OT, however, is that the ticket sales office is in the "amusement and recreation" realm, and therefore its workers are not covered by federal wage/hour laws.

Not only is this argument a silly one -- the overtime exemption covers folks like lifeguards and greenskeepers -- but, it's guaranteed to be a loser, too: As Steinberg reports, it's already been litigated at the federal level in a case involving employees of an NBA team.

So Snyder's going to lose here, surely as he lost a wage/hour dispute with his nanny. In that case, Snyder's legal case seemed to be no more complex than that she wasn't paid because he didn't want to.

But even if he weren't gonna get poleaxed legally in the sales staff case, the question remains: If Snyder's really got a waiting list of 200,000 people desperate to buy tickets for his football team, which he says often, why would he have  even one ticket seller, let alone an entire staff of ticket sellers, working overtime?

In any case, good to see that the move from urbane, aware Petworth to rural, la-dee-dah Silver Spring hasn't sapped Steinberg of his special powers.

Yet...

***

The Washington Post's Jason Reid blogs that the Redskins will no longer let anybody but their own employees Twitter from practice anymore.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Will the Twitter ban on non-Redskins employees affect WRC sports staff? How come football Hoyas stink? Lou Dobbs fiddles as the Asian Bias™ in golf comes home to roost? Stephen Strasburg should hold out til tomorrow? The Tom Boswell Curse wasn't real?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: If the Redskins Waiting List Is 200,000 People Long, Why Was Dan Snyder’s Ticket Staff Working So Much OT?" »

Broadcasting from Beaujon Acres this morning, where a cold has laid me out flatter than one of Tim Carman's jokes. But I'm not too sick to link!

• Does anyone else find this kinda poignant and sad? Also kinda related: Post computers drive tech writer to cloud.
• Ruth Samuelson corner: 1) Now that's "getting" Results! 2) Madness in Capitol Hill: Is it Acker Place NE or Acker Street NE? Please help us out if you can. Amanda Hess corner: CP sex columnist accidentally sets Coeur d'Alene ablaze on her way out.
• Doing more with less: famous people reduce cup sizes.
• Throwing a hot dog down Middle America's hall: "Hipster Grifter" Law & Order episode planned?
• My wife is British, and her family members complain, often justifiably, all the time about the NHS. It is a royal (fnar) pain in the ass, you have to schedule OB/GYN visits a year in advance, you don't get private rooms in hospital. BUT: I for instance pay about $800/month for my employer-"provided" health care. And when my kid got sick last time we were over, they treated him no questions asked. Health care, like roads, is basic infrastructure stuff, one of the few things government can do well. So I'm with the Brit Twits here.
• Nats lose. And Redskins prepare to embark on another wacky season. Hey, why's there a Michael Vick Skins jersey for sale? It's the curse!

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.

***

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?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Did Friedgen Ever Give Back the Weight-Loss Money?" »

The Washington Nationals are setting aside a day for kids with peanut allergies this weekend. Tickets to the game and special peanut-free zone are $30.

$30?

For generational reasons, I'm still skeptical of peanut allergies, though the concept of paying $30 for a Nats ticket to keep a kid away from peanuts makes me feel disoriented and clammy.  (Full disclosure: I brought a huge bag of Safeway bulk peanuts into last Saturday's game at Nationals Park. My row looked like a Superfund site by the fifth inning, there was so much legume-ish debris.)

***

DC United used some of its Real Madrid money to buy newspaper ads pumping up the championship match of the U.S. Open Cup.

Kevin Payne, United's president and CEO, signed a letter that took up a full-page of the Washington Post and was also posted on the web at wewintrophies.com, a site registered and created in July by DC United.

Payne builds up the tournament, which he calls "prestigious," and demonizes the opposition, the expansion Seattle Sounders, while challenging local fans to show up.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Who's betting on D.C. United? Team USA 100-1 in World Cup? Was Gov. Sanford hiking in Iraq? Brandon Snyder is playing like Brandon Snyder?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Getting All Outdoorsy Along the Iraq/Iran Border?" »

Former Redskins great Gary Clark has just issued another party promo:

A GRIDIRON AFFAIR

In a time when some doubt the DOMINANCE of the BURGUNDY and GOLD, we must remember where the fear and the Dominance of the Burgundy & Gold came... It has been 17years since our mighty Burgundy and Gold Donned the Phrase... "SUPERBOWLCHAMPION."

Well, sometimes in Supporting the Present you first have to understand and Celebrate your Past, because in your past, you find the compos that guides your future.  Inspiration comes from Greatness and Greatness come from Inspiration… In December … Greatness is coming back to the Washington, DC metropolitan area... At the place where it all started...

This isn't the first time Clark has put out a party invitation, or used the sort of punctuation generally found on ransom notes. One difference from previous Clark invites: There's no specific date on this one. Or specific time. Or specific venue. Just "where it all started."

Vagueness can be a virtue.

Last month, Clark started advertising and offering tickets for what was billed as "The Ultimate Tailgate" party and Super Bowl gala. There would be a battle of the bands, the invitation promised, plus a massive video-game tournament with Chris Cooley participating, Joe Gibbs and Dan Snyder speeches, a Monte Carlo Night extravaganza and appearances by every player on every Redskins Super Bowl team. The dreamy all-day event, according to the promos, was going to be held on August 29 at RFK Stadium.

One of the many problems here: Nobody told RFK Stadium.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Who's on crack? LaVar Arrington goes deep? LaVar let you take a turn bashing Dan Snyder? Juwan Howard is still in the NBA? The Nats are still playing?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Gary Clark’s Party’s On AGAIN?" »

• CP alum John Cloud breaks it to middlebrow America: That snack you're having after your workout? Kinda canceling out the work you did: "After we exercise, we often crave sugary calories like those in muffins or in "sports" drinks like Gatorade. A standard 20-oz. bottle of Gatorade contains 130 calories. If you're hot and thirsty after a 20-minute run in summer heat, it's easy to guzzle that bottle in 20 seconds, in which case the caloric expenditure and the caloric intake are probably a wash. From a weight-loss perspective, you would have been better off sitting on the sofa knitting."

After the jump: more things that happened yesterday, but with bullet points!

Read More "Morning Roundup: Go Ahead, Have the Doughnut Edition" »

Dan Snyder is still getting crushed because of the Paul McCartney debacle.

Traffic to and parking at his stadium were hideouser than usual. For some reason, the official FedExField web site is still pumping up the public transportation option as a way to arrive, and indicates that shuttles would be running from closest Metro stops to the stadium "every 15 minutes."

Alas: Snyder stopped the shuttle service for his stadium events a year ago. So anybody who believed what they read on the FedExField site got stranded.

Those who made it to the show found that bathrooms were shut down, since plumbing to big chunks of the stadium went out in the early evening.

But food vendors continued selling food even though the ability to keep things clean largely went away when running water disappeared. Ewwwww!

Just another day at the office for Snyder.

The comments section for the Washington Post's story about the debacle makes for some fabulous reading. A couple tidbits:

thefrontpage1 wrote: Why on earth does everything having to do with Dan Snyder and FedEx Field end up being over-priced, under-organized, a pain in the neck to people, handled poorly, organized poorly, managed poorly, and a rip-off for consumers? Why does everything associated with Dan Snyder work out so poorly? It's a viable question.

jbtjbtjbt wrote: Our pal at the Redskins office apologized "for the inconvenience". That's nice. How about refunding some of those "convenience" and "facilities" fees?? Welcome to your nation's capital. Toilets were backed up BEFORE the concert.

And, rletra wrote: As I waited for my wife to come out of one of the few working bathrooms, I mentioned to a Redskins' sales guy that in the men's room the toilet flushed but the sinks were dry. He said, "No big deal, guys don't wash their hands anyway."

Yuckety yuck yuck!

Snyder should just sign Michael Vick now.

AFTER THE JUMP: Chris Cooley's new app? DC United has a Real foe? Rabbit ears will get you the United/Real game? Would we stoop so low as to use Pablo Dean's free throw championship to hype the Eddie Dean/Tim McGraw Feud? The Nationals won? It's still baseball season?

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Still More from Chris Cooley™?" »

Redskins training camp opened yesterday without Stephen Strasburg Brian Orakpo or Michael Vick. There was, however, a group of fans calling for the team to bring Vick in. Spurned ex-Redskin LaVar Arrington wondered on his WJFK radio show whether the Vick clique was hired by Dan Snyder as a "guerilla marketing campaign" to prepare the rest of the fan base for actually signing history's most athletic dog killer.

I like his thinking. Arrington's, that is.

Orakpo signed last night and will be dressed out today. The Sporting News ranked the Redskins as the best fit for Vick.

***

The Vick influence, meanwhile, remains profound. Ultimate fighting opponents for years have tried to keep states from sanctioning MMA by calling it "human cockfighting," a term made famous by Sen. John McCain. But McCain's tag did nothing to stop the spread of the cage matches. So, New York legislators opposed to seeing the sport, or whatever you want to call it, sanctioned in their state have adopted "human dogfighting" as their catch phrase.

***

Speaking of guerilla marketing: Larry Weisman looks more like a brilliant hire for Dan Snyder every day.

(AFTER THE JUMP:New Skins PR official calls team "mediocre"?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Snyder’s PR Hire Calls Redskins ‘a Mediocre Team’?" »

Brett Favre's gone, so Michael Vick talk dominates.

Vinny Cerrato yesterday told the Washington Post that the Redskins will not pursue Vick, doggedly or otherwise. But Cerrato has fibbed so many times about personnel matters, most blatantly while acquiring Jason Taylor from Miami last summer, that his credibility in these situations is less than zero. So over at Dan Snyder's message board, extremeskins.com, the should-we-or-shouldn't-we talk raged on. Vick has a surprising amount of support among the Skins fan base, probably from a combination of loyalty from Virginia Tech alums and Jason Campbell's lack of a strong following.

But the anti-Vick crowd around here is much more passionate. The poster Bostic Hog spoke for a bunch of folks when he wrote: "Do you think Danny will offer us a refund on our season tickets if he signs Vick? Kind of like a breach of contract thing, or maybe a morals clause, like the players have."

I'm guessing the chances of Vick signing with the Redskins are better than the chances that Snyder will offer refunds to fans if he does. And no matter who Vick plays for, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell should make him wear jersey #K9.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Vick programs cable TV? Nats feel more thunder? Weequahic High School was a bunch of losers?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Michael Vick Inspired ‘Whale Wars’?" »

In the end, our DC Divas were only bridesmaids.

In Saturday's IWFL Sup-Her Bowl in Austin, Texas, the Kansas City Tribe beat DC, 21-18, to win the women's tackle football national title, 21-18.

The Divas end the season at 10-1.

The sunset of Rachelle Pecovsky-Bentley's career wasn't as rapturous as it could have been. Pecovsky-Bentley, a 10th-year running back, only played after sundown this season due to her observation of the Sabbath for Seventh Day Adventists. She's set to retire now, and in her last game was available in the second half. She rushed for a touchdown with less than three minutes left in the game to bring the Divas within three points. But, the Tribe held from there.

I'm no William Morris, but I gotta say, from a public relations standpoint, the IWFL just blows. As of this morning, nobody from the league had even updated the website to say anything about the game, other than one sentence congratulating the winner. Not even a box score? I tried since pretty late Saturday to get ANY news or numbers about the championship, but there wasn't anything out there. If I owned an IWFL team and was paying one dime to be in this league, I'd be steamed about the lack of outreach. If the main office ain't publicizing the championship, odds are it ain' t doing anything.

***

The Nats have won two series in a week.

Back to me: Don't Mock the R²D²!

(AFTER THE JUMP: Is R²D² is the new Total Average? Is Mike Wise the new Sally Jenkins? Can lacrosse solve our homeless problem?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Divas Fall in the Forest…" »

image courtesy of ultimatecheerleaders.com

Dan Snyder talked to the Associated Press about his 10 years as an NFL owner.

We've heard most of it before: Snyder was young when he got the team, which is the only reason he made mistakes (charging for training camp, hiring Steve Spurrier) that everybody else would have made, too. But he's learned and now it's all good.

But the blah-blah-blah ends when Snyder moans that all the good deeds he's done as Skins owner have "been overlooked, absolutely." And we're told he's really a great human being, the proof being that Snyder "received the Community MVP Award at the Washington Football Legends for Charity banquet."

Hmmm. I'd never heard of that award or group before. But with a little surfing, it turns out "Washington Football Legends for Charity"does exist, and that the "Platinum Sponsor" of the organization, meaning a provider in the top tier of funding for the Football Legends' one and only function, the very one where Snyder was confirmed as a local Gandhi, was the Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation.

Wait! I know THAT group! It's headed by....Dan Snyder!

AFTER THE JUMP: Guaranteed Win Night II comes in? Will there be a Guaranteed Win Night III? Sure, Michael Vick's rotten, but would he spit on his mom? Thom Loverro crowns the King? DC Armor is looking for a few good women?

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Snyder-Funded Group Names Snyder ‘MVP’!" »

Competition's coming at Dan Snyder from all sides. Just as his monopoly on sports radio went all to crap with WJFK morphing from guy talk to an all-sports station ("The Fan"?....geez), now comes a rival to Snyder's fan site, extremeskins.com: Burgundy and Gold Obsession, or BGObsession for short, has gone live.

The punchline here is that the new site was founded by some of the very same folks who used to make extremeskins.com run, only to become disenfranchised after selling out to Snyder in 2005. (For the un-obsessed: Snyder made the Redskins the first pro sports team to acquire an existing fan site with the extremeskins move, one of many firsts during the Redskins owner's campaign to Control the Message.)

AFTER THE JUMP: Barry Sanders kid is BGObsessed? Extremeskins goes toe-to-toe with its founder's new website? The Great Dan Steinberg™ Some bozo bet on the Nats BEFORE Guaranteed Win Night? DC United crushes the Real Madrid of a Small Section of Northwestern New York? Still no mention of the Washington Kastles? Sports Radio mulls Erin Andrews AND lactation?

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Bet on the Nationals NOW!" »