Listeners are urged, "Bring your best 'Beat Dallas!' sign and you can win a six pack of club seats!"

I can't wait to see how high the "Worst Owner Ever!" banner will place.

***

Moderators at Dan Snyder's message board, extremeskins.com, no doubt emboldened by the see-no-evil clause their boss invoked while banning signs from FedExField, have a type-no-insult policy in place.

Posters on the site have been warned not to say anything negative about the team in a thread announcing a send-off that's being organized from Redskins Park for the Dallas game.

The warning:

"Be advised: This is not an opinion or debate thread. Please do not use this thread to verbally attack, make fun of, laugh at, or otherwise belittle any of the participating members or Redskins players/coaches/staff or owner. To do so will result in a mandatory ban."

(AFTER THE JUMP: Why would Dan Snyder sanction such censorship? Why is Slate so mean to Sandra Bullock? Why didn't the Redskins draft Michael Oher? Why did John Riggins jump on Joe Theismann when Joe Theismann's leg was broken? Did you just say John Riggins jumped on Joe Theismann when Joe Theismann's leg was broken?)

Before this season, these send-off announcements were posted regularly on Snyder's site. But, the gathering memos were stopped because they only inspired fans to tell the owner just how much they loathe him in follow-up posts.

The situation Snyder has created in this market is unlike anything in all of professional sports.

I've said it before, and I believe it: Even if the Redskins go on a miracle streak and win the Super Bowl this season, when Snyder holds up the Lombardi Trophy at the victory rally, he will be booed.

***

In his Slate review of "The Blind Side," the feature film based on the life of Baltimore Ravens' rookie Michael Oher, friend and hero Josh Levin treats Sandra Bullock as Lawrence Taylor did Joe Theismann.

I only used that simile so I'd have an easy segue into this: I haven't seen "The Blind Side," but I'm told it opens with a clip of one of the most famous plays in Redskins history -- Taylor playing wishbone with Theismann's leg in that 1986 "Monday Night Football" game.

Looking at the gruesome clip this morning, I noticed for the first time that John Riggins for some reason jumps on top of the pile with Theismann and his newly restructured leg at the bottom. Riggins had tossed the ball back to Theismann just before Taylor hit him during the flea-flicker gone wrong.

Perhaps that's why Theismann went after Riggins so hard last week after Riggo piled on Dan Snyder. Or maybe it's because Theismann is employed by Snyder.

In any case, Theismann never played another down of football. But, he lived to talk about it and everything else...a lot. If he was a horse, Theismann would have had a curtain around him within a minute and there'd be one less sportstalk host in the DC market.

***

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But not this Washington. Greg Nickels, the mayor of Seattle, Wash., has officially dedicated today to Baylor.

Baylor was in Seattle for a couple years of college ball. So if he gets a day named after him there, Baylor should have a day named after him in D.C., too. And a street named after him. And a building. Maybe even a neighborhood. Why not the whole town! (Instead, all he's got is Ginuwine -- a D.C. native whose real name is Elgin Baylor Lumpkin.)

Butt seriously: Baylor's the best basketball player this city ever produced -- and that's saying something -- and he remains a legendary figure to an elderly generation of black folks. His lack of any real presence in his hometown is a crime. He's 75 years old now. Because the white media ignored his side of town, Baylor never got his due when he was a schoolboy god at Spingarn and local playgrounds in the early 1950s, though he was literally changing the way the game of basketball was played.

Give Elgin Baylor his due now, D.C.!

Who do I call?

***

More evidence that the Redskins don't have god on their side.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Christians don't turn the other cheek on "redskins"? Dan Steinberg calls off the Kornheiser/Wise war? Without telling me? FIOS is great, unless you're a Caps fan? Chris Webber, down and out, still gets razzed for that timeout?)

The Supreme Court just declined to hear a case filed by a group of American Indians who had argued that the term "redskins" is too offensive to be afforded trademark protections.

A lower federal court ruled that the plaintiffs waited too long to file the suit, because they were of legal age when the Redskins registered their trademarks in 1967. The Supreme Court's refusal to look into that decision means Dan Snyder's marks are safe, for now.

But the various courts of public opinion are now starting to weigh in on the case. And some men and women of the cloth want folks to know that they think "redskins" should go.

This from the Church Report, a newsletter that describes itself as "Christian. Conservative. Concise.":

United Methodist leaders are disappointed the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal challenging the National Football League’s use of the mascot and term “Redskins.”

But they have vowed to continue the church’s struggle opposing team names and symbols that demean and offend Native Americans.

“This is a very disappointing development, but we stand with Native Americans, especially Native American children, across the country who are continually confronted by racially offensive sports mascots,” said Jim Winkler, top executive of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society. “We oppose any and all uses of racial sports mascots as contrary to The United Methodist Church’s position condemning racism and recognizing it as a sin."

The United Methodist Church has denounced the continued use of Native American names as nicknames for sport teams as “racist and dehumanizing,” according to the 2008 Book of Resolutions.

I know Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I'm not up on my Book of Resolutions.

***

The Great Dan Steinberg should go to work for Bob Arum or Don Corleone. Steinberg showed himself this week as the top matchmaker in town, with the power to build up feuds and call 'em off when the spirit moves.

He got the long-simmering Tony Kornheiser/Mike Wise rivalry to boil over on Tuesday with a post Steinographing how Kornheiser had gone after Wise on his WTEM show.

Because of Steinberg's post, Wise was getting hammered by readers and listeners to his WFJK radio show to come back at Kornheiser. And so he did. And Steinberg was there, Steinographing every word!

Then yesterday, just as the Kornheiser/Wise brouhaha was making Redskins/Cowboys look like Regis/Kelly, Steinberg counseled the involved parties and Bog readers that the hottest DC media feud in, well, at least several days wasn't worth it.

"[W]e all basically realize that this is beneath us, and that you, the reader/listener, have better things to worry about," Steinberg wrote.

Cold water!

I didn't get the word that Kornheiser/Wise had been called off in time. So I tried to exploit the feud to talk about me. Uh oh!

***

Turns out some folks who have cable ain't getting all the Caps games. Apparently if you live anywhere in the D.C. market and have cable but don't have FIOS, you get to watch every shot Ovechkin takes. But if you have top-shelf FIOS service in certain parts of Maryland, you don't get to watch every shot. Games are blacked out on FIOS networks, say angry fans.

It's all to techy for me and my rabbit ears. I don't have cable of any sort, so I don't get any Caps games on TV other than the NBC national telecasts. I get my hockey by listening to the great Steve Kolbe on radio or "watching" the games on ESPN's "GameCast."

The tension you get following ANY game on a computer screen -- football, basketball, baseball, and even hockey -- is amazing. Sounds weird, I know, but try it and get back to me.

I never thought anything would top baseball on the radio for me, but GameCast and its brethren services (yahoo, MLB, etc.) are as addictive as Grand Theft Auto.

'Course, I've never played Grand Theft Auto -- I'd have to unplug my rabbit ears to get the game console in. But I hear it's, like, really addictive!

***

Chris Webber's restaurant, Center Court with C-Webb, has closed.

This from the Sacramento Bee's write-up of the former Washington Bullet's travails:

A recording on the restaurant answering machine said that Chris Webber is calling a time out for his sports bar and restaurant at 3600 N. Freeway Blvd.

He said Webber is "calling a time out!"

Get it?

Maybe Elgin Baylor shouldn't have a restaurant named after him...

***

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“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?)

From a preview of the 2008 sign sweepstakes: "A pair of tickets to the game will be awarded to the winner of the best 'Beat Dallas' sign." The same prizes are used to draw fans to Snyder's event this year.

Bottom line: Dan Snyder used to encourage fans to make those dangerous, eye-poking thingamajigs. Like the Geico sign giveaway promotion Snyder put on during the Monday Night Massacre revealed, if signs put money in Snyder's pocket, he likes 'em.

What a champ.

***

Who's not a coward? Albert Haynesworth.

Outta shape? Sure seems like it. Malingerer? Sure seems like it.

But not a coward. Haynesworth went down in a big heap in the 4th quarter and stayed there.  It's a routine he goes through pretty much every game. The replays didn't show where his injury could have occurred, but he acted like he was in a lot of pain. But, as the cameras showed him being helped off the field yet again, you could see that he was wearing no protective pads in his pants.

"Albert doesn't even appear to be wearing knee pads," Dan Dierdorf, the CBS commentator, commentated.

The pads weigh nothing. Not wearing them seems almost masochistic, or maybe it's intended to send a message of invincibility to opponents. A lot of players these days are sending the same message. But why take up this no-gain, more-pain habit? Especially if you just got paid 42 million large, like Big Al?

***

By gametime yesterday, the Redskins had earned "object of pity" status from some quarters of the Washington Post. The paper's comic books blog, Comic Riffs, had a poll asking readers if Tank McNamara had "crossed the line" of fairness to Dan Snyder in its Friday panels.

The strip in question featured a mythical contract negotiation between Steve Largent, representing Jim Zorn, and Snyder's management team. The debated line-crossing segment had Largent saying all time spent on the Redskins is "garbage time." Forget fairness. I'm more concerned that the strip didn't cross the line from unfunny to funny, yet clearly did cross into "what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about?" territory.

In any case, the recent Tank material is nowhere near as brutal to the Skins owner as when the strip named Snyder its "Sports Jerk of the Year" in 2001.

***

Big news from Saturday's DCIAA semifinals doubleheader, held at Cardozo's beautiful stadium: Dunbar WON'T be in the Turkey Bowl. The dynastic Crimson Tide got walloped by Woodson, knocking Craig Jefferies' squad out of the Thanksgiving Day championship for the first time in a dozen years.

At the "Unsurprising" end of the spectrum: Spingarn, which provides fodder for my Washington City Paper Education Issue column every year, ended the season as the worst team in the city.

In other words, Spingarn's football program enjoyed a typical year: Still another new coach was hired, not enough kids to field a team show up when practice starts in the summer, the Green Wave goes on to lose every game, mostly by blowouts, etc.

Spingarn cemented itself as the bottom of the bottom with last week's 55-0 loss to Woodson. That left Spingarn at 0-8, having been outscored by opponents 378-24.

Wait 'til next year.

***

With Saturday's latest fourth-quarter disappearance against previously nosediving Detroit, the Wizards stuck to the script of their version of "Sleepless in Seattle" --- "Winless in November." The line between fatalist and realist was obliterated years ago among Bullets/Wizards fans. This franchise still wears lousiness just like destiny. Given the past and present, Mike Miller's game-day costume -- from his hair on down, it's an outfit loaded with look-at-me accessorizing --  exudes nothing but silliness. My inner geezer is sure his get-up should go.

***

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But yesterday on WTOP, Riggins sorta explained his harshness. In a prepared statement delivered before his scheduled radio spot, Riggins said what he meant was that Snyder was "a bully," and that bullies have to be called out. While specifics would have again helped, there are already years worth of anecdotes about Snyder's bullying ways -- only an organization run by a dark-hearted bully would treat Jim Zorn the way he's been treated this year, for example.

So the bully explanation made Riggins' judgmentality understandable.

But just when you thought Riggins had found his bearings, he lost 'em again.  The former Redskins star, who will not say "Redskins" when talking about the team -- he usually says something like "the Washington NFL franchise -- compared the plight of Redskins Nation to the plight of the American Indians in the 1800s.

His words, as transcribed by the Great Steinographer:

"I think it's ironic indeed that the name of this franchise, being what it is, is figuratively representative of the long suffering of a proud and noble people. And it's also ironic that the leader of this franchise, not unlike the U.S. government 150 or so years ago, is leading his people on a trail of tears.

Ummm....Did Riggins say that Redskins' owner's conduct is "not unlike" that of the folks behind one of history's worst genocidal rampages?

Hell, yes, he did!

Oh, my. What metaphor didn't make the cut as Riggins was putting together this speech? Were Hitler and slavery thrown on the cutting room floor?

The mind races...

courtesy of D.C. Sports Bog

Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato, the poster children of the Prague Spring for Redskins fans, have been dubbed "Dumb" and "Dumber" in much of the agit prop that Redskins security has worked so hard to keep out of FedExField.

Awesome trivia: In "Dumb and Dumber," 1994 movie that informs the insurgency, there's a character named "Karl Swanson."

Really. You can look it up.

And in real life, as outlined by Paul Farhi in today's Washington Post, there's a Karl Swanson who's the third wheel in the Snyder/Cerrato continuum. (Full disclosure: I'm briefly in the story.) The flesh-and-blood Swanson has been Snyder's spokesperson since before he took over the Redskins. Swanson and Cerrato are the longest-tenured Skins staffers in the Snyder regime. They ride golf carts with the boss, and Swanson drives.

I don't know Karl Swanson much at all, but over the years he has returned a huge percentage of my phone calls and emails, even though long ago he grasped the likelihood was that Snyder wasn't going to come out great in whatever City Paper wrote about him. So I've come to admire Swanson a good bit. He's got the toughest job in Washington.

But dang if I didn't giggle when I Googled upon the "Dumb and Dumber" character  with his name. Makes his voyage to Redskins Park seem like destiny.

Six Flags' reorganization is nowhere near complete, and god only knows what's beneath the surface of this debacle. But from the sound of things, when all's said and done Snyder will still be chairman of Six Flags board of directors when that company comes out of bankruptcy.

How can this be? In Snyder's world, what do you have to do to lose your job?

One small aspect of the fiasco: Would somebody PLEASE explain to me how Snyder was allowed to pay a whopping $175 million for Dick Clark Productions using private equity money from Red Zone Capital, a fund he controls, then turn around and sell 40 percent of Dick Clark Productions to Six Flags, using public equity money, which he also controlled? And Snyder did this deal, remember, in 2007, while Six Flags was on the way to the bottom and he was already blaming the company's woes on its billions of dollars of debt.

Snyder made the Dick Clark Productions sale around the time he made a licensing deal between Johnny Rockets, another Red Zone-owned company and controlled by Snyder, and Six Flags. Again, would SOMEBODY please explain to me how that's allowed?

I mean, I make a lot of fun of Lindsay Czarniak and Dan Hellie working for Snyder's Redskins Broadcast Network and WRC News at the same time. And that really does bug me. But Czarniak and Hellie's conflict of interest ain't a hair off the ass of the conflict of interest Dan Snyder had in dealing with himself during Red Zone's sale of a huge chunk of Dick Clark Productions to Six Flags. Let alone the Johnny Rockets deals.

How hard a bargain do you think private-money Dan Snyder drove with public-money Dan Snyder in making these deals?

(AFTER THE JUMP: More on Dan Snyder, Red Zone and Dick Clark? DeMatha sends more jocks to college? Remember Harvey Grant? The DC Armor are gonna just disappear? Somebody's still kvetching about the El Al/FedExField comparison?)

And what bang have Six Flags investors gotten out of the tens of millions of stockholders' bucks Snyder threw at himself during the 40 percent sale of Dick Clark Productions? Who's looking out for who?

Who knows what the Dick Clark Productions ownership situation will be when this comes out of bankruptcy.

But, again, it looks like Snyder will still be in charge of both Red Zone and Six Flags at that time. Maybe he'll have a chance to buy Dick Clark Productions from himself during the bankruptcy, then sell Dick Clark Productions to himself all over again.

Seriously, in Snyder's world, what do you have to do to lose your job?

***

From our Hyattsville bureau: DeMatha's library will be packed tomorrow to unveil the latest batch of athletes that the sporting powerhouse will send up to the next level.

Among the more notables in the jock octet featured in the scholarship signing ceremony:

Jerian Grant, son of Washington Bullets 1988 first-round pick Harvey Grant, will announce he will attend Notre Dame. That'll make him the first DeMatha basketball player to commit to South Bend since Hall of Famer Adrian Dantley back in 1973.

And, Casey Thrush will be the first DeMatha student to accept an NCAA hockey scholarship while still in high school, representing the Stags' desire to dominate yet another prep sport.

This signing ceremony, which is surely bigger than any signing ceremony any other local high school will have this year, does not include DeMatha football players. DeMatha already sends more folks to the NFL than any school in the country. They're doing something right in Hyattsville.

***

The return of the DC Armor for a second season is looking bleaker and bleaker. This update from oursportcentral.com's Weekly Pro Sports League and Franchise Report:

American Indoor Football Association: The future of the D.C. Armor in the AIFA is in doubt. The team played before very small crowds in its inaugural 2009 AIFA season and it is unknown whether the franchise will attempt to play a 2010 season in another venue or simply be discontinued.

Somebody's gonna miss you, DC Armor.

***

JTA, which describes itself as the "Global News Service of the Jewish People," and a media organization I have long suspected is controlled by Jews, had some fun with Cheap Seats Daily's comparison of the security at FedExField during the Prague Spring for Redskins fans to the security of El Al Airways.

I had gotten a call from a friend before the Eagles game a few Mondays ago, who told me about getting the once over and then some from a guard at the FedEx gate. So I wrote:

The only first-person account I got was from a friend who called me from FedExField just after being searched at the gate like he was boarding an El Al flight.

He asked the frisker, “Are you looking for anti-Snyder paraphernalia?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” the guard told him.

That caught the attention of El Al account manager Ron Glickman, who wrote us to say that "the checks that one would go through for an El Al flight are a lot less hands on" than what I wrote about FedEx. El Al, Glickman said, hasn't done done any [body checks] in the past year in the entire United States.”

And Glickman's quotes, in turn, inspired JTA blogger Eric Fingerhut to wonder what entering FedEx would be like like if in fact El Al did take over security:

You'd get to the gate and they'd ask: "So, did you write your sign yourself? Did anyone help you to write your sign? When did you write your sign? Has it been with you since you wrote it?...

That guy's funny!

***

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For years, messages about the wheres and whens of the pep rallies/wakes were posted each week on Dan Snyder's message board, extremeskins.com, so fans could celebrate with or lift the spirits of Skins players and coaches as they returned from the road. The gatherings have long been put together by the renowned husband-and-wife superfan tandem known as Pez and Huly.

But, starting with yesterday's game in Atlanta, the couple's announcements will no longer be made public. Turns out that there's just too much hate in the community to let everybody in on the soirees without inspiring fan-on-fan ridicule.

A memo about the shift was posted on the Redskins official message board yesterday:

"Extremeskins Members: Huly and I and other members will continue to hold the Send Off and Welcome Home events at Redskins park. For the rest of this season, we are (tentatively) NOT going to post a thread for it, because we believe that the fans who still want to sincerely attend and support their team should not be attacked within the thread for doing so. We will contact the typical members who normally attend with meet-up times. However, if you would like to attend, please contact Huly or myself.Thanks,Pez

(Pez and Huly happen to be the couple also behind the all-points bulletin for Stephette Hogette, the bogus Hogette, a few weeks ago.)

(AFTER THE JUMP: Skins fans flock to FedUpField South, take advantage of First Amendmentish freedoms denied by Dan Snyder? Will Dan Snyder have the brains to reverse the signs ban at FedEx this week? Will Ron Nolan, an early victim of Dan Snyder's dickishness, return the disfavor? Sam Huff spews the painful truth, and Larry Michael surrenders? Brett Haber has crisis PR advice for Dan Snyder?)

***

The Georgia Dome turned into FedUpField South for the Redskins/Falcons game, as a lot of visitors fans showed up just to vent about Dan Snyder in ways that the owner has banned from his stadium.

The Great Dan Steinberg once again traveled with the insurgency and got a lot of photos of folks with their posters.

***

The animosity thrown at Dan Snyder has waned a bit since John Riggins went from offbeat to ugly with his "dark heart" riff.

Snyder could stem the hemorrhaging even more by pulling the disastrous Redskins sign ban this week, as Denver comes to town, and going back to the old allowances for home games.

What would it cost him? Snyder should have learned by now that the networks limit shots of the Snyder-bashing signs on national broadcasts, since the NFL doesn't want any more harm to come to one of its cornerstone franchises. (How else to explain how few shots of Redskins fans' discontent showed up on "Monday Night Football" two weeks ago or during the FOX network broadcast from Atlanta yesterday? One of the few that made the airwaves from the Georgia Dome: "Skins need a stimulus plan!")

My sense is even the local media is just about burned out on the sign-ban story. From a competition standpoint, Redskins games are already worthless, with half a season to go.

If Snyder doesn't loosen up, the rest of the year will turn into a "How can we humiliate Dan Snyder and get away with it?" contest in the grandstand, both on the road and, especially, at home.

I'm no Eric Dezenhall, but from a crisis PR standpoint, lifting the FedExField sign ban would be the easy and smart thing to do. Snyder's put a world of hurt on his business this season through one tone-deaf move after another.

We've been told since 1999 that Snyder's a marketing genius, with zero proof to back up that reputation. Let's see how he handles this.

***

Not all those who've been screwed over by Dan Snyder will be in the stands this weekend: Denver defensive coordinator Ron Mike Nolan, who held that same position with the Redskins from 1997 to 1999, was among the first guys to whom Snyder revealed his prick side.

During the 1999 season, shortly after taking over the team, Snyder repeatedly delivered vanilla ice cream to Nolan’s office at Redskins Park as a supremely dickish way to say he thought the defensive scheme was too bland. Though involved parties kept that story hushed for years, by now it has become among the most infamous examples of Snyder's mean and horribly unsuccessful managing style.

Nolan's Broncos are 6-1. Snyder's Skins are 2-6. Denver's defense has given up an NFL-low 96 points this season.

If this were pro wrestling, Nolan would ship a pallate of Rocky Road to Snyder's box before the game.

***

Hints of the horribleness from yesterday's various Redskins broadcasts:

*Repartee between Sam Huff and Larry Michael, very early in the second quarter during the official broadcast of the Skins/Falcons game on the Redskins Broadcast Network:

Huff: "I think we're in a heap of trouble."

Michael: "Yeah, we are."

(When Larry Michael lets even the most honest slam of the team go unchallenged, things are bad all over.)

*Al Galdi on the team's postgame show he hosts on Dan Snyder's sportstalker, WTEM: "This season is a necessary evil. There are basic things about this franchise that need to change."

Galdi then quickly added "I'm not breaking any news by saying that."

*WUSA's Brett Haber offered some basic crisis PR advice for Dan Snyder during last night's 11 o'clock news telecast: "Dan: Smile, like once a year!"

It's ugly out there.

***

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Redskins and Giants: They're looking more and more like NFC East twins. One squad can't move the ball yet shows a little life out there on the field; and hey, so does the other. With the same results: Another loss. On the Giants front, this fourth straight defeat comes just before their bye week. So that means that the team's beat writers---with, of course, nothing more to write about---will spend a week and a half talking about the psychology of going into the bye week with a loss. You know, how it lingers and on and on. Deadly.

Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander hops on one of my pet peeves this week. The topic of his column is the paper's over-reliance on anonymous sourcing. That's a tired story in American journalism, but he's the ombo, so fine. But after you drill into his column a touch, you get to this gripe:

When they must be used, The Post doesn't do a good enough job of explaining why.

The Post's internal policies say: "We must strive to tell our readers as much as we can about why our unnamed sources deserve our confidence." That means offering enough description so readers can evaluate the quality of the source. Did they actually see or hear what took place? Do they have first-hand knowledge?

A review of anonymous-source usage over the past month shows that readers often got only bare-bones attribution. Of roughly 100 Post news stories using unnamed sources, fully a third provided no meaningful description. Typically, they referred vaguely to "sources," "officials," a "State Department official" or a "Democratic official."

And to all that, I say, hey, who really gives? I mean, readers know that when anonymous sources winds up in the paper, those sources don't want readers---anyone---to figure out who supplied the information. In other words, they want no identifying information in there. Not a trace. Yet people like Alexander, not to mention the Post's internal handbook, insist on as much identifying information as possible.

The result? We get a lot of bullshit qualifiers: "a source close to the negotiations," "a source who has seen the document but didn't want to be identified because he stands to be fired if he is outed." Well, I've never seen that last one, but you get the notion: These attempts to assure the reader that the source is bona fide never amount to anything. It's just wasted characters. The bottom line is this: The information has to be sound, whether it's supported by anonymous sources or not.

A senseless death: Two men rob a liquor store on upper Georgia Avenue, according to an account in the Washington Post: "Based on the account of at least one other employee in the store, investigators believe that two men, one armed with a handgun, entered the business and demanded money from [employee Rufina] Hernandez. Hernandez 'was cooperating and was fully complying with all the demands,' [MPD Sgt. John] Johnson said, but one of the suspects 'shot her anyway.' The two suspects fled on foot, Johnson said."

I'm in awe. For real.

***

Saying the Redskins PR machine is screwed up is pointless at this point. It's operating now exactly as it has operated for 10 years. So it's likely that machine is operating just as somebody at Redskins Park wants it to operate.

But stuff still comes out of that place that boggles the mind. Any sane man would say the Redskins response to John Riggins' characterization of Dan Snyder as "a bad guy" who has "a dark heart" was just plain wacko. Riggins is a pundit. The more outlandish the things he says, the more he is rewarded.  A big boy or wise man would have just taken Riggins' slings and arrows and shut the hell up. There's no way to rebut Riggins' charges without looking dumb or guilty.

So what does Dan Snyder's organization do? It trots out Silent Greg Blache to rebut Riggins charges. Blache, who just a couple weeks ago said he would no longer talk to the media, talked to the media about how Snyder doesn't have a dark heart.

And to make everybody but Riggins look stupider, the Redskins PR office then produced a press release with Blache's silly comments transcribed. A press release! Wha?

(AFTER THE JUMP: Redskins put out how many documents saying "Dan Snyder Does Not Have a Dark Heart?" Mark Rypien comes back to DC? Can he suit up? He only got sacked how many times? DC Divas hold tryouts? The Divas GM used to be on "Inside the Squared Circle"? Is that fab or what?)

And then the PR office puts out a faux news story that treats Blache's "Dan Snyder Does Not Have a Dark Heart!" statement as a newsworthy event, and throws in quotes from the guy who the world knows Snyder has treated horribly: interim head coach Jim Zorn.

Check out Zorn's words, as compiled by the Skins PR staff:

"I would concur," Zorn replied. "Dan Snyder is a guy that absolutely cares about other people and he does not have that kind of attitude. I haven't been here all that long, and I haven't been here as long as Greg has been here, but I have seen time and again Dan reach out to anybody in this program and even in the secondary parts of the program and help in any way he can when there's a need. I've seen it.

"I would concur with what Greg had to say about Dan really caring about winning. Some of the words that said are just so harsh. Gosh, it's just all the time, it seems like everybody is down. Part of that is on me because we're losing, and that creates issues."

Geez. If anybody says that Jim Zorn will leave Redskins Park looking more foolish than he did when he came, I would concur.

Riggins, by the way, will appear on WTOP today to discuss dark-hearted matters.

***

When things were good, they were real good: Mark Rypien, the guy who proved that a great offensive line can put a mediocre quarterback in front of the world screaming "I'm going to Disneyland!", is coming back to DC for a day.

Rypien will meet with injured soldiers at Walter Reed on Tuesday as part of a Veterans Day event to promote Fisher House. The event is sponsored by Uno pizza.

Awesome trivia about Rypien: During the 1991 season, which ended with his being awarded Super Bowl M.V.P., Rypien was sacked nine times. That's all year.

Jason Campbell was sacked six times on Monday night.

***

The DC Divas are looking for a few good women, to join all the real good women they've already got.

Undefeated regular seasons are the norm for the Divas. They were in the championship mix again last season, but ended up bridesmaids, losing to Kansas City in the 2009 IWFL Sup-Her Bowl. As the squad reloads for another title run, managment will hold final player tryouts for the 2010 season this Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Prince George’s Sports and Learning Complex in Landover.

Sure, it's the same time as the Redskins kickoff. That's not the big deal right now that it once was. For info about the tryouts, contact Divas GM (and, equally fabulous, founding panelist of Inside the Squared Circle) Rich Daniel at 301-573-4260 or divasgm@gmail.com.

For all his media hatred, Dan Snyder stuffs his staff with media people. Karl Swanson was in newspapers. Larry Michael was a radio executive. Even Vinny Cerrato came back to the team after a stint at ESPN, where he spent a season in exile after being banished by Marty Schottenheimer (who looks more like Vince Lombardi every season for what he accomplished here.)

Turns out the latest attack dog added to Snyder's pack, David Donovan, fits the pattern. Donovan's complete lack of respect for the media or the truth or both comes out every time he talks to a reporter these days. For but one example of Donovan's outlook: He's the guy who told the Washington Post a couple weeks ago that Redskins officials "don't see any difference" in "the way our actual fans are behaving" this season.

But, there was a time when Donovan was way into newspapering. It was all spelled out in a 2007 feature story in the Daily Times Herald of Carroll, Iowa, his hometown, to honor the local boy made good when he took the job as General Counsel with the Redskins.

Make that the local paperboy made good.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Iowa State gave DC David Donovan AND Vinny Cerrato? What did DC ever do to Iowa State to deserve that? Why did David Donovan join the dark side leave journalism? Snyder's media appearance starting to smell fishy? Ripken statue stolen by guy named Stoneburner who hangs out with a bunch of stoneburners?)

"As a youth David worked as a paperboy here at the Daily Times Herald and also spent time in this newspaper's circulation department," we're told.

And then we learn that Donovan was editor of The Charger, the student newspaper at Kuemper Catholic High School in Carroll.

And that at Iowa State University, his alma mater (and also Vinny Cerrato's alma mater, hmmmm), Donovan got his degree in journalism. And when his college schedule allowed, Donovan interned at the Daily Times Herald "covering general news and sports under the tutelage of former Sports Editor Dennis O'Grady."

He was dead set on being a newspaper man.

After ISU, Donovan headed to Florida with no assurances of landing a job, and no firm prospects.

"I moved to St. Petersburg and went to every newspaper in the area," Donovan said.

Only hours away from having to scuttle his journalistic plans and work in a warehouse so he could eat, Donovan talked his way into a copy-editing job at the St. Petersburg Times - widely regarded today as one of the best newspapers in the nation.  Soon, at only age 22, Donovan moved to the Sarasota Journal, a small, 6,000-circulation afternoon paper affiliated with a larger daily.

Then Donovan married a newspaperwoman. And when he got accepted to Georgetown University Law School, he enrolled, but only because he thought a J.D. would help his newspaper career!

He said that during law school it was his intent to use the legal education to further a journalism career.

"I went to law school without any expectations of practicing law," Donovan said.

But, alas, Donovan was a good law student. And during his early days as a practicing attorney, we learn from the story, Donovan had the epiphany that caused to him to give up journalism, and, from the sound of things lately, lose all respect for those who practice it.

"As a reporter, when you call people, they can hang up," Donovan told the Carroll Daily Times Herald. "When you're a lawyer and someone doesn't talk, you can send a subpoena."

What a line! Kinda removes the mystery about who at Redskins Park was behind suing the grandmother.

***

That "rare in-season" media appearance by Dan Snyder on Tuesday at a team-organized charity event is starting to smell.

The only TV person on the scene was Lindsay Czarniak. She's with WRC-4.

Here's a list, taken from a transcript of what Snyder said that was printed on Snyder's website, of all the questions Czarniak asked, in order:

1)What does this mean to you, to be able to be out here?

2)Does it mean something special to get the cheers out there? Is it a refreshing feeling for once?

3)One thing I wanted to ask you, Dan, is about some of the negativity that has been around this team. When you look at things like the ticket controversy and then the signs being banned, does it feel like being out here and getting a chance to turn things around, where do you stand on that stuff?

4)You're human. How does it impact you?

5)People look at you and see the uber-Redskins fan. What are your thoughts about what's going on with this team?

7)What do you need from here on out? What's the next step for you?

Good golly. "You're human!" "People look at you and see the uber Redskins fan"? "What do you need?"

These are the sort of questions you'd think only somebody on the payroll would ask! I mean, only somebody who would wear licensed Redskins shirts on the air would say that!

Oh, wait! Czarniak is an employee of Snyder's Redskins Broadcast Network who talks about the Redskins while wearing licensed Redskins shirts on WRC's news broadcasts! Coincidence?

And now Pro Football Talk reports that the announcement the Redskins put out about the team's charity event, held at a Maryland high school, didn't mention that Snyder would be talking.

So all the newspaper people stayed away, except AP's Joseph White, who didn't get any questions in. And all the local TV reporters stayed away, except Czarniak. And Snyder only talked to Czarniak, who's on Snyder's payroll! And who asks how's he feeling and tells him he's "human" and the "uber-Redskins fan!"

Wow. 'Course, if it wasn't for Czarniak's Redskins employment and licensed wardrobe, nobody's suspect a thing.

***

One of Cal Ripken's statuenappers 'fessed up and was sentenced. Jason Stoneburner, who from the sound of things is a real stoneburner, got a suspended two years jail term and restitution to the Baltimore Orioles of about a thousand bucks. Seems fair.

Now he'll surely have to go state's evidence against the three other stoneburners (including Gary Parker, pictured above) who allegedly helped him rip Ripken's statue  -- which, contrary to his reputation as an Iron Man, was made of aluminum -- from its moorings at Camden Yards one September night.

The crew, all in their upper teens, threw Ripken in the back of their pickup before heading over to Patterson Park for one last round of, you know, stoneburning before lawmen got involved and saved Baltimore's favorite son.

***

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"We feel frustration and we feel sorry for our fans," Snyder told a crowd at an event the Redskins organized. He was standing at a podium in front of a gang of players in jerseys and behind a placard that said "Children Come First." As I noticed during a shot of the owner's box in last week's Monday Night Football broadcast, Snyder looks smaller these days than he ever did. (Seriously: Check out this video from WUSA.) Reminds me of what happened to Rev. Dimmesdale in the Cliff's Notes version of The Scarlet Letter.

(AFTER THE JUMP: 2% of WRC viewers are "Thrilled!" by Dan Snyder's mini-contrition? The Bathroom Diaries are looking for a few good places to squat? Have they considered FedExField's beer-friendly head? The EagleBank Bowl adds a conference? Wes Unseld gets a street named after him? Will it be clogged in the middle at all times?)

After leaving the stage, Snyder talked briefly with reporters, but Brett Haber reports for WUSA-TV that the owner refused to answer any questions about the treatment of the fans he feels sorry for, the ones he's taken signs from and ejected for yelling anti-management slogans or wearing anti-Snyder shirts.

Still, just in case this press stop signaled the dawning of a new era of glasnost at Redskins Park, I contacted the team to request a turn at interviewing Snyder.

Longtime Snyder spokesman Karl Swanson, who hasn't been as available to me as he once was, wrote back quickly, just like the old days.

"I’m not sure I’d call being stopped on a sidewalk by a couple of reporters an interview," Swanson said, "but in any event he does not plan on any formal interviews during the season."

Hey, informal's cool with me, Dan! Have you seen my wardrobe? Informal's pretty much the only game I can play!

But I'm guessing Swanson's telling me my request has been denied.

WRC-TV posted some video of Snyder's comments on its Web site last night, along with a "Sound Off" function where viewers could rate what they watched.

The scoring, as of this morning:

Thrilled: 2%
Sad:  3%
Intrigued: 4%
Bored: 8 %
Laughing: 17 %, and, the big winner,
Furious: 66%

***

The Bathroom Diaries, which bills itself as "The World's Largest Database of Restroom Locations," is now taking nominations for the 2009-2010 Golden Plunger Awards. These honors go annually to the best restrooms around the globe.

I think the FedExField bathrooms deserve serious consideration.

The Bathroom Diaries Web site lists past winners of the Plunger. Sure, they all look less viral than Snyder's loo. But, far as I can tell, no previous Plunger honoree had guys with big tubs of Bud Light waiting for you as you flush.

And as both my readers know: FedEx is the home of BeerInTheBathroomsGate.

(Check out the mission statement from The Bathroom Diaries, a site founded in 2000 by Lynchburg, Va.'s Mary Ann Racin that now lists over 12,000 places to do your business: "Few would visit a country without some advanced information, yet our tender bits are exposed to uncharted territories with no help or assistance.  At our most vulnerable, we are blind. Well, no more.")

***

The EagleBank Bowl has broadened its horizons. Organizers have announced they will accept schools from the Big 12 Conference beginning next year.

The game was originally designed to feature one of the service academies against an ACC squad each year. But that setup relied on the military schools fielding bowl-eligible football teams. Navy did its part last season, winning enough games in the regular season to earn a matchup with Wake Forest at RFK in the inaugural tilt. Air Force is a member of the Mountain West Conference, and its obligations to the MWC, which include mandatory appearances in bowls which that conference has contracts with, have proven more cumbersome than EagleBank Bowl planners counted on.

And then there's Army, which just isn't bowl material most seasons. Army is supposed to be the academy invitee to this year's EagleBank Bowl. But Army's on the bubble, at best, for bowl eligibility. Six wins are required. Army is now 3-5, and will lose this weekend at Air Force.

Army could well beat VMI and North Texas later this month. That would put the team at 5-6 heading into the season finale.

That'll mean its bowl eligibility, and a lot of EagleBank Bowl dollars, will be decided against Navy. Army will be a massive underdog going into that game.

The new deal with the Big 12 will take some pressure off organizers to find eligible teams. And Navy can still play every third year.

(The Big 12 pact doesn't kick in until next season. If Army loses out and things get really rough this year, the EagleBank folks can always add a Gary Clark Party to the agenda to get local folks really interested.)

***

Wes Unseld, known during his NBA days for clogging thoroughfares, now has one named after him. Baltimore officials announced that the 200 block of what was once known as Hilton Street will now be called Unselds Way.

From the street-renaming announcement, I learned a couple things about Unseld that I probably should have known. First, he and his wife have operated a private school in Baltimore, the Unselds School, since the late 1970s. Also, Unseld has lived in Baltimore since coming to the Bullets in 1968, having stayed there even after Abe Pollin moved the team to Landover in 1973.

So for all the years Wes Unseld was a fixture in this market, he never lived around here.

***

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There's only one quote from the media-hatin' Redskins owner in White's dispatch: "We've let everyone down, including ourselves," Snyder said, "and we know that and we're just apologetic."

More to come?

The piece takes a photo of a poster taken by FedExField security guards before the Eagles/Skins game that says "Hi to my huband in Afghanistan," and runs with it. The Great Dan Steinberg made that poster famous after fishing it out of the trash near the stadium entrance.

To be fair, Snyder has shown support for our National Defense. Well, he put out a Commemorative Sept. 11 Redskins hat that had a red-white-and-blue Pentagon stitched on to the side in 2005.

And he sold that hat for only $23.99. Plus shipping. And he kept the money. But still. Bottom line: When Military.com lowers the boom on you, something's gotta give.

And everybody's favorite magazine geared toward an audience of corporate counsel people, Corporate Counsel magazine, also jumps in this week with "Not Exactly a Banner Season for the Washington Redskins."

The publication interviews new Redskins COO and total BS'er David Donovan about the new policies at FedExField prohibiting signs and banning interviews in the parking lot, and he was also asked about fans at the Eagles game having to remove their t-shirts if the message on the garments was anti-Snyder.

"We're not trying to limit what anyone wants to say or chant or wear," Donovan told Corporate Counsel.

Wow. Thus continues Donovan's awe-inspiring streak of just saying stuff so dishonest that not even he could believe it.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Not even Corporate Counsel magazine can stomach David Donovan's whoppers? David Donovan and Dan Snyder, adrenaline rush buddies? How does a Redskins win compare to a class action lawsuit? Skins are only the third-worst team in the NFL? Bono had a hand in Cooley's wounding? D.C. United coach bails?)

Though you'd think a trade publication would be a kind audience, the tone of the Corporate Counsel piece clearly shows the writer had little trust in what Donovan was spewing about the rules changes,  as the story contains clauses like "Donovan can't account for the discrepancy," and "Donovan remains vague."

"Donovan remains full of crap" is the gist of the piece, basically.

Bottom line: When Corporate Counsel magazine lowers the boom on you, something's gotta give.

***

The Web site of DC law firm Wilmer Hale has a big write up of David Donovan's path to the Redskins.

The highlight for me was an anecdote about Donovan's first game as Redskins general counsel. That came in the comeback game in Dallas in 2005 that featured two Mark Brunell/Santana Moss bombs,  and gave the team easily its biggest win in the Dan Snyder era.

Donovan was in the visiting owners box with Dan Snyder. When the Skins came back, the story goes, "the two men enjoyed the rush of adrenaline," and Snyder "grabbed Donovan by his jacket" and yelled “This beats asbestos lawsuits, doesn’t it?”

***

Everybody agrees this year's Redskins are bottom feeders. The Sagarin poll now puts the Skins as the 30th best team in the NFL. The only squads ranked lower are Tampa Bay and St. Louis, the only teams Washington has beaten this season. The two teams just above the Skins in the poll are Detroit (29) and Kansas City (28), each of whom beat Washington for their only victories.

The Redskins schedule thus far, says Sagarin, ranks as the easiest in the league.

***

Redskins fans have thrown out an interesting theory about the injury: Bono broke Chris Cooley's leg! Had Dan Snyder not thrown a midseason concert at FedExField, the theory goes, the field would have been in finer shape and Cooley's foot wouldn't have hit whatever caused it to roll over.

The turf at FedEx during the Eagles game sure did look faded and sandy, nearly a month after the U2 concert there drew 80,000 or so. (Watch the sand fly off everybody's feet here during DeShawn Jackson's long run for a TD.)

As for motive: I was at a U2 show in 1987 at the Redskins former home, RFK Stadium, where Bono separated his shoulder during a fall. Hmmm.

***

DC United Coach Tom Soehn won't be coming back. United just put out a press release saying it was all Soehn's decision to leave the team when his contract runs out after this season.

The release:

Tom Soehn removes name from consideration for Head Coach of D.C. United

Process for finding United’s next head coach will begin immediately

Washington, D.C. (November 3, 2009) - D.C. United announced today Head Coach Tom Soehn has removed his name from consideration for United’s head coaching position ahead of his contract expiring at the end of the calendar year.  Soehn served the Black-and-Red as an assistant from 2004-2006, before leading the club to two major trophies, a Supporters’ Shield in 2007 and a U.S. Open Cup in 2008, in three seasons as head coach.   The process for finding United’s next head coach will begin immediately.

“Tommy has done an outstanding job at D.C. United, first as an assistant and then as our head coach,” said United President and CEO Kevin Payne.  “Over the past three seasons, Tommy has faced greater challenges than any other Major League Soccer coach.  His record in all competitions this season was outstanding and he should not be judged on the basis of missing the MLS Cup Playoffs.  Tommy is a fine young coach and I know we will face him in the future in MLS play.  I wish him all of the luck in the world.”

Soehn was named Head Coach of D.C. United on December 21, 2006.  The Black-and-Red won the 2007 Supporters’ Shield and the 2008 U.S. Open Cup under his guidance.  In all competitions, Soehn posted a career mark of 55-48-31.  United was 36-30-24 in League play in his three seasons at the helm.

“My family and I have spent a lot of time in reaching this very difficult decision,” said Soehn.  “I've been fortunate to spend the last six seasons with this organization.  I'd like to thank the staff and fans for their support throughout my tenure.  In particular, I'd like to thank Kevin Payne, Dave Kasper, Chad Ashton, Mark Simpson, Francisco Tobar, Brian Goodstein, David Brauzer and the entire technical staff.  When you're in this business, the experiences you face together forge special bonds and friendships that will always remain.  My appreciation also extends to the players.  We accomplished a lot together since I arrived in 2004 and I thank them for their dedication and wish them the best in the seasons ahead.”

Soehn joined Peter Nowak’s coaching staff prior to the 2004 campaign.  In three seasons as an assistant coach, United won two major titles, the 2004 MLS Cup and the 2006 Supporters’ Shield.

“I want to thank Tommy for his six years of great service at D.C. United,” said United General Manager Dave Kasper.  “He is a terrific friend and colleague, and he played a major role in the club winning four trophies during his time here.  He is a bright young coach who has a big career ahead of him.  I wish him continued success with his next coaching position and his family the best of luck always.”

***

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Sure, the Nats season ended a while ago. But it makes sense that the Lerners would reach out while local sports fans are planning their sports ticket budgets and deleting Dan Snyder and Redskins.

But this Nationals ad is horrible.

After an all-glowing recap of the 2009 season -- two of these three made the cut: Zimmerman/Dunn had big homer totals, Stephen Stasburg signed, and the Nats had THE WORST RECORD IN ALL OF BASEBALL -- the ad copy climaxes with "[W]e can all see why Washington, DC is truly becoming the home of the National Pastime in the Nation's Capital."

Washington, DC is the home of baseball in the Nation's Capital? Who knew?

And who wrote that?

***

WUSA is also kicking the Redskins when they're down.  Advertisements for the local CBS affiliate that ran during the Ravens game yesterday urged Skins fans to "sound off " about the team.

"We won't throw away your signs!" said the voiceover.

Ouchie wouchie! Didn't you WUSA guys used to be covert "partners" with Snyder and help him out with all his infomercials? Guess the contract's up.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Reebok boasts of its butt-enhancement powers? Shannon Sharpe goes after the Redskins? Dan Marino goes after the Redskins? 66 percent of CBS viewers go after the Redskins? Dan Marino says Bill Cowher ain't gonna go for the Redskins? Heath Shuler has MVP award taken away from him by Politico? Ethics panel still gunning for Shuler? Chest bumping on the sidelines can get you suspended?)

***

Another commercial during the Ravens broadcast that showed the decline of Western Civilization came from Reebok, which is trying now to sell shoes using the motto: "Better legs and a better butt with every step."

***

The national folks got into the Skins-kicking swing of things, too: CBS pre-game show panelist Shannon Sharpe showed up on the set wearing a bag over his head, and carrying a sign that said "Fire Dan, In Bill We Trust" with an arrow pointing at fellow panelist and likely target of Dan Snyder affection Bill Cowher.

Sharpe's get up inspired another CBS pundit, Dan Marino, to jump in that because of the disastrous managment in Washington, the Skins won't be able to sign a "big time" coach.

Marino didn't mention Cowher by name, but the implication was clear. Given the high stakes, Marino wouldn't have said that without consulting Cowher. Cowher just smiled after Marino spoke.

Guess that means The Countdown to Cowher™ won't ever make me rich.

Also, 66 percent of the respondents to a CBS poll about what ails the Redskins said the biggest problem is the owner.

***

Heath Shuler almost had a good week. On Tuesday, Shuler (D-NC) led the Congressional football team to an overtime win over the Capitol Police squad in a charity football game at the DC Armory. Shuler was 29-45 with five TDs.

"It kind of brings back old times,"  Shuler told the Asheville Citizen-Times, his hometown paper. By "old times," he means his days playing QB with the Swain County High School Maroon Devils, not the Redskins.

For his performance, the Citizen-Times reported, Shuler was named the game's MVP.

But maybe the lawmen will laugh last. While Shuler was celebrating his finest football moments in DC, the Washington Post reported that investigators with a House of Representatives ethics panel are still looking into a land deal Shuler was involved in back in Knoxville, where he was once a superstar with the University of Tennessee and later a real estate honcho.

From the Post piece:

Before he was elected to Congress in 2006, Shuler invested in a real estate development called the Cove at Blackberry Ridge near Knoxville. The investment is worth from $5 million to $25 million, according to his financial disclosure reports. In August 2008, the [Knoxville] News-Sentinel reported that the TVA gave the Cove waterfront rights to build a boat dock in exchange for other land the real estate venture owned. The swap was made while Shuler sat on a House transportation subcommittee that oversaw the operations of the TVA, an entity chartered by Congress to manage the Tennessee Valley and its resources.

Worse yet, the Post originally misspelled his name ("Schuler") in the story's headline, and closed out the story with: "A call to Schuler seeking comment was not returned."

But the harshest blow came in Politico, which reported that Rep. Anthony Wiener (D-NY), and not Shuler, was actually named the charity football game's most valuable player.

And, yes, Politico also misspelled his name. From Politico's game write-up: “Heath Schuler has the offense humming after a sluggish beginning,” an announcer at the game said.

(More bad news on the Shuler beat late last week, Benjie Shuler, Heath Shuler's brother and former business partner in Heath Shuler Real Estate, what was once a powerhouse Knoxville agency, declared bankruptcy. In court filings, Benjie Shuler, who also was a reciever at the University of Tennessee while Heath was QB, listed assets of $265,000 and liabilities of over $10 million.)

***

Sunday's Washington Post has a maddening story about a superstar running back from Broad Run High School facing a suspension from an upcoming playoff game for chest bumping teammates after touchdowns. One of the chest bumps occurred on the sideline, the Post reported. Any player who gets two personal foul calls has to sit out a game. Broad Run's next game will come in the playoffs. Broad Run coaches have appealed the suspension, and Northern Virginia athletic officials have the opportunity to reverse the call.

Perhaps some facts have been twisted as the tale made its way from the sideline to the Sunday paper.

But if that story's legit, if a chest bump on the sidelines after a touchdown will indeed ruin a player's season, whoever made that call should never be allowed to work with kids again.

***

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And he won. But it took eight years before Stewart was told by the courts he could carry his sign into the stadium here.

Times and venues have changed. It's unclear if Rockin' Rollen's case will help victims of the Redskins latest purge. Will somebody who had their poster taken please sue Dan Snyder so we can find out?

***

Also, for the eating-disorder-looking print edition, I squeezed BeerInTheBathroomsGate™ for a few more drops. Completists will want this umpteenth revisitation upon the same story so they can see the only appearance of "oral-fecal" in a sentence. Kind of like getting the repackaged Elvis Costello's Greatest Hits every three years, just for the remixed-again version of "Mystery Dance."

***

David Alperin checks in with some more Dan Snyder weirdness.

Alperin was the first guy to tell me that Snyder changed the sign policy at FedExField. Before the Tampa Bay game, stadium guards confiscated a sign he made saying "Love the Redskins, Hate the Owner."

(AFTER THE JUMP: Fake cheering at FedEx? You're going to use "Douchewellian" again? AND the trademark sign? El Al disputes charges that its security is as Douchewellian as Dan Snyder's? You're going to promote the Great Dan Steinberg again? GEICO signs good, Snyder Sucks signs bad? Why would anybody go to Snyder's "Night of the Quarterbacks"? Brett Haber plays the feud with his former boss?)

Before making the sign, Alperin had checked on Redskins.com, Snyder's own site, to make sure that it was within the rules to bring it to the game. It was. When Alperin told the confiscators he had looked at the team's own rule book, the guards told Alperin that the rules had been changed "last night" and took his sign anyway.

Alperin now says that while attending the Eagles game he noticed that Snyder's message control efforts go way beyond that latter-day book burning.

"The crowd noise after DeSean Jackson scored and for the remainder of the game was fake," Alperin reports. "It was pumped in over the speakers to create the illusion of excited fans.  I looked around and the majority of the crowd looked like someone just killed their puppy.  There was no energy.  The only cheering I did was to boo Campbell, Snyder & Cerrato."

When will the Douchewellian™ tactics cease?

(Alperin, by the way, says he will not be renewing his season tickets after this season.)

***

The other day Cheap Seats Daily mentioned how a friend was given a total body frisk by a guard looking for anti-Snyder signs at the gate before the Eagles game, and threw in a line that the security checks were tougher to get into FedExField than to "board an El Al flight."

That prompted the following response from Ron Glickman, account manager for El Al Israel Airlines Ltd:

"Enjoyed reading your comments about the security checks at FedExField, but I must assure you, the checks that one would go through for an El Al flight are a lot less hands on as your article suggests. All of our checks are first to screen the passengers and provide them with a sterile environment as they check in and on the aircraft. If anyone is ever searched, it is always a last resort and we rarely do a body search. In fact, I don’t think that we have done any in the past year in the entire United States."

Glickman then plugged El Al's "code share flights" with American Airlines from DC to Tel Aviv.

***

The Great Dan Steinberg, who has chronicled the Prague Spring of Redskins Nation like nobody's business, had another golden nugget yesterday: The Skins gave away Geico signs at the gate of the Redskins/Eagles game, while confiscating and destroying all other signs.

I guess this means David "Yeah, That's the Ticket!" Donovan, the Redskins chief operating officer and neo-Karl Swanson, was caught lying again? Donovan's been on a spree all week -- saying Philly fans weren't in FedExField, that only a few posters were confiscated at the Monday game, that Redskins fans aren't acting any different this season, etc. And during his own personal WhopperFest, Donovan has also asserted that the Redskins have a policy against all signs, for safety reasons.

Now come tales of Monday's Geico banner giveaway by the team Donovan chiefly operates. To find out that what Donovan has been saying wasn't true is just, well, business as usual.

Nobody ever heard of Donovan until the Washington Post's ticket scandal investigation broke, when he came out to say the team doesn't really sell to scalpers and doesn't really sue its season ticket holders -- both big, bad fibs.

And ever since that coming out party he's kept up a pace for fibbery that's just awe-inspiring. I can't ever remember a public figure being caught in so many lies in such a short period of time. If untruthiness were an Olympic sport, well, Donovan'd be on a podium and they'd be playing our anthem. Sorry, Gov. Sanford, you'll have to settle for the silver medal. (For a different take on the guy, the commenter on the fan message board Hogs Haven says he was once a neighbor of Donovan's, and remembers him being "of good character." Then the ex-neighbor adds, Donovan "knows who signs his paycheck.")

(I had heard Geico commercials on Snyder's sportstalk station, WTEM, in the days leading up to the Eagles game saying that the "first 10,000 fans" to show up at FedEx would get a "free gift" from Geico. But they never mentioned what the gift was. Now we know why.)

***

Another victim of the Skins crisis: Snyder is running commercials for the Redskins party he's throwing next Tuesday, dubbed "Night of Quarterbacks" and featuring speeches from Sonny Jurgensen, Joe Theismann and Jason Campbell, at a pace that seems desperate.

Pretty much every break on his radio sportstalker, WTEM, includes another spot for the party. So every 10 minutes or so, you hear: "Space is limited!"

Tickets are $106.50. On the invitation, suggested dress is "casual business attire." I wonder if Snyder will admit couples who show up wearing "Dumb" and "Dumber" shirts.

Actually, I wonder if anybody will show up.

***

But, there are some winners in the Skins soap opera: Rich Tandler tells me his RealRedskins blog has never been more popular.

"They say that Redskins TV ratings are down and that team merchandise sales are down," Tandler says. "But the hits are booming at my website. I’m on pace for a 30% + increase in unique visitors to RealRedskins.com for October compared to September. Page views already are up 30% and there are five days to go in the month."

Why?

"It seems that giving fans a place to vent is good for business," Tandler says.

Now Brett Haber, who used to work for Dan Snyder, wants a piece of that. Haber is now touting a message board to bash the Redskins owner. It's been accepting viewer harangues since yesterday afternoon.

Haber recently found out that his former boss at the Redskins Broadcast Network has banned him and Channel 9 and allegedly everybody with a camera from interviewing patrons in FedExField's official parking lot. Haber's peeved at Snyder. Snyder learned how to control the media while putting WUSA news employees on the payroll to run his infomercials and preseason game telecasts, a situation that the CBS affiliate always concealed. Just as WRC now tries to deny that its news employees, even the ones wearing licensed Redskins shirts on the air and carrying "Redskins Broadcast Network" microphones, are working for Snyder.

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(Full disclosure: I freelance music reviews for the Washington Post.)

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