"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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Over the years, there aren't many things I've written about more than Monk and Mann's training center.

For a decade, the beloved former Redskins said the Carver Theatre building was going to be rebuilt by their non-profit organization, called the Good Samaritan Foundation, and promised that the building would become an epicenter of goodwill in a neighborhood historically lacking in it.

It never happened. But every time I wrote that the training center still wasn't open — almost like "Saturday Night Live"'s repeating that Francisco Franco was "still dead" in every fake newscast — officials of the organization continued insisting that their actions would soon back up Monk and Mann's words.

It's not like they didn't use Good Samaritan Foundation to make themselves look good. Monk's son even spoke of the organization in the speech he gave during Dad's Hall of Fame induction in August 2008.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Still more on the neverending story? Karl Swanson holds no grudge against the Washington Post? Roger Phegley DIDN'T mess up the Bullets forever and ever? Clearing on the Road to 100 Losses?)

And, of course, they used the promise of a job training center on the other side of the river to raise money, literally millions of dollars in federal grants and through gala dinners and celebrity golf tournaments. Congress kicked in at least $775,000 in the 2003 and 2004 federal budgets, which, according to bill granting the sum, would be used “to acquire and renovate a building to expand outreach and mentoring services to at-risk District of Columbia youths.”

Now, we know there won't be a training center.

A charter school bought the property from Monk and Mann's organization and opened it up as a middle school. There isn't even a Good Samaritan Foundation anymore.

To learn yesterday that the training center won't ever happen, after all that talk from such major local figures, and all that money they collected from well-wishers to accomplish their allegedly noble goal, is just amazing. I can't say I didn't see this sort of bailout coming. But I'm stunned.

I hope they come up with a decent explanation for what went wrong.

In the meantime. I'm gonna have to go dig out my copy of the 1988 Super Bowl, with Monk and Mann making huge plays as the Skins crushed the Broncos and gave me the greatest day of my sports fan life. Good god, they were awesome football players.

***

Cleaning out some sports pages:

From Sunday's Post: Karl Swanson still talks to the Washington Post! Who knew?

And, J. Freedom du Lac provides an oral history of the Bullets 1979 trip to China.

The highlight of the proceedings for me comes with du Lac dusting off Roger Phegley.

Phegley, then a first-year forward with the Bullets, delivers period-piece quotes about the voyage, among them: "You'd take a picture of the huge crowd with a Polaroid, and that baby would develop right in front of their faces and the Chinese would just freak out."

Dig!

The story made me reconsider Phegley's local legacy. I've always thought the beginning of the end of the Bullets dynasty — Awesome Trivia: the team made four NBA finals appearance in the same decade a feat matched by only the Celtics and Lakers — came when the Bullets used a 1978 first round pick on the unknown from Bradley.

I mean, Phegley really was a bust with the Bullets.

But, looking back at the detritus chosen shortly after him, and it's tough to make a case that then-Bullets GM Bob Ferry screwed up by picking Phegley. Marty Byrnes, anybody? Frankie Sanders? Buster Matheney?

Sure, it had Larry Bird, but the Class of '78 was for the dogs.

(Here's a photo from the story of Phegley, Abe Pollin, Wes Unseld, Jerry Sachs...and some woman who doesn't rate a mention. If that's Irene Pollin, you know the Post got at least one phone call about the omission.)

Nice to see du Lac getting back to basketball. Back when he was at the Sacramento Bee, du Lac famously broke the news that Chris Webber  was rubbing naughty bits with Tyra Banks. The story got the Kings' serial underaccomplisher to, as Phegley would say, freak out on the media in general and du Lac in particular.

(Full disclosure: When du Lac was the Post's rock critic, he let me review a Jonas Brothers show for the paper, and we've since become friendly enough that he lets me call him "Josh.")

***

Nationals get blanked in Philadelphia.

Now at 50-94, the Nats' Road to 100 Losses starts looking like a driveway.

With the shutout/blowout, the Nats also re-took the Major League lead in Worst Run Differential, having been outscored by opponents by 131 runs on the season.

***

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The most interesting reading in the 14-page pullout comes in one of its few advertisements. Main Line Animal Rescue, a Philadelphia group that apparently specializes in saving "Bully Breeds" of dogs, bought space in the section.

The ad copy, placed alongside a photo of what I assume is a pit bull:

Attention Football Fans: Philadelphia is playing Washington on October 26.

Every time Michael Vick is tackled during the game, Main Line Animal Rescue will donate 5 bags of dog food to your local animal shelter.

"Because there are no second chances on an empty stomach."

Consider volunteering at your local shelter on the day of the game. Spend some time walking, or brushing, or bathing, or hugging a homeless Pit Bull.

Not exactly the bounty on players' heads that led to the famous "Body Bag Game" between the Skins and Eagles in 1990, but, still.

My sense is the outrage against Vick has waned so much and so fast that by the time the Eagles get to DC, there'll be a lot more talk about the wildcat offense than dog killing.

(By the way: The other ads in the Post's football section are: four small spots for imported car dealers, one for a job fair, and a half-pager, the biggest in the section) announcing a blowout chain saw sale. Men! Men! Men!)

***

(AFTER THE JUMP: Wilbon already blames Snyder for lousy season? Kornheiser speaks no Snyder? Unseld whupped Yao's dad? The Asian Bias™ in golf affects White House visit? The Nats Countdown to 100 Losses starts now? Pedro Martinez already has more wins than most Nats?)

***

Back in the regular sports section, the Post runs a column, headlined "Hot Topic," that has  Michael Wilbon downgrading his record forecast for the 2009 Skins from 11-5 to 8-8. Wilbon says he ordered the recount because of his paper's fabulous series on the Redskins selling tickets to scalpers and suing down-on-their-luck grannies.

But where the heck did 11-5 come from in the first place?

***

Wilbon's PTI partner Tony Kornheiser restarted his radio show yesterday. I listened to most of the two-hour broadcast, but didn't hear any discussion of Dan Snyder's ticket issues. Far as I and Wilbon can tell, those are still the hottest topics in town. Kornheiser now works at WTEM-AM, owned by Snyder.

After Kornheiser's show, I flipped to rival sportstalker WJFK-FM, for Washington Post columnist Mike Wise's program, in time to hear Wise's sidekick say, "Call us if you hate the owner!"

WJFK isn't owned by Snyder.

***

The Bullets/Wizards are in China again. A delegation led by Wes Unseld, Gheorghe Muresan, Caron Butler and Randy Foye (a newcomer who is only less familiar in the provinces than in DC) showed up in Beijing to remember a pioneering barnstorming tour of the Far East arranged 30 years ago by Abe Pollin.

No team had ever been to China before the Bullets. Awesome trivia from Unseld: The former Great Wall of the Bullets' front line remembers playing all those years ago in Shanghai against Yao Ming's dad, a year before the future Houston Rockets center was born.

Pollin helped make the world a lot smaller than it was back then.

***

Which makes this a perfect time for an update on...the Asian Bias™ in Golf! Greg Norman, who was in town for a White House visit yesterday, sees that golf's future is in the East. The Australian legend is captaining the "International" squad in the upcoming (and always bogus) President's Cup, a silly nationalistic links exercise that was founded in Northern Virginia at the Lansdowne resort but will be held next month at Harding Park in San Francisco. While meeting with the president, Norman was taking a lot of stuff from golf fans for using his captain's choice to put Ryo Ishikawa, a 17-year-old from Japan, on the un-American President's Cup team. Ishikawa will join Y.E. Yang of Korea.

The USA squad's proof of the Asian Bias™ comes with Anthony Kim and, of course, Woods.

Last week, 17-year-old Byeong-Hun An of Seoul, South Korea, became the youngest golfer ever to win the 2009 U.S. Amateur championship. The tournament record for youth was previously held by Danny Lee, also a South Korean native, who was just 18 when he won the 2008  U.S. Amateur. Lee broke the record set by the Godfather of the Asian Bias™ in golf: Tiger Woods.

The 2009 U.S. Women's Amateur Championship was won recently by Jennifer Song of Daejon, Korea.

Cheap Seats Daily, intrigued as all get out by the Eastern dominance of what just yesterday was the lily-whitest sport in the history of man, promises to continue to hype the Asian Bias™ until Lou Dobbs treats our reports like real news.

***

The Nats lost to the Phils, 5-3.

Let the Countdown to 100 Losses begin! Washington is now 47-91, and would have to go 16-8 to avoid a third season in a row with triple-figure losses.

That ain't gonna happen: 18 of the remaining games are against teams above .500, including nine vs. either the Phillies or Dodgers.

Pedro Martinez got the win for Philadelphia. If memory serves, Martinez hadn't thrown a pitch this season before last week. But he now has a 4-0 record. Before yesterday's September call-ups, which included Shairon Martis (5-3 with the Nats prior to being sent to the minors), Washington had only one pitcher on the roster with more wins in 2009 than Martinez — John Lannan, now at 8-10. Amazing...

***

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