In brief, the situation:
Young, brash zillionaire buys professional football team. Knows nothing about how to run one, but because he is now the owner, proceeds to make many personnel decisions that decimate the team, leaving a proud franchise losers, year after year.
He also makes innumerable changes to increase revenue for himself, to the detriment of the fans. These changes include, but are not limited to:
- – naming a section of the team’s stadium the “RFK party deck,” and “honoring” Robert Kennedy by selling tickets for $152.50; a price that includes access to a cigar bar and Hooters
- – selling fans bags of out-of-date peanuts purchased from a defunct airline
- – suing a 73-year-old woman who had been a five-decade season ticket holder for being unable to pay for her ticket plan due to economic hardship
- – deciding one year that fans could only pay for season tickets with an official Mastercard of his team. He was forced to back off the plan due to pressure from fans and Mastercard.
image and caption - washington post
The list goes on, but these are some of the more colorful offenses. It’s easy to find the rest in “The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder, available here, an article written by a journalist named Dave McKenna. McKenna writes for the Washington City Paper, an alternative weekly, and has been covering the Redskins’ owner for a long time.
Incensed by McKenna’s article, Mr. Snyder is suing the paper. In the lawsuit, his attorneys write that “the cost of litigation would presumably quickly outstrip the asset value of the Washington City Paper.” That line in particular riled up fans of free speech and a free press, to which he responded that he only filed the lawsuit because some other guy told him to.
The City Paper has launched a legal defense fund; you can also just use the link to submit your name in a “declaration of support.” Please do so if you are inclined; the City Paper is a great paper, led by a good friend of mine, and they deserve your support.
Oh, and there’s one more thing that’s worth noting. In his lawsuit, Mr. Snyder claims he has been the victim of an anti-semitic smear because of the illustration that accompanied the article. Here it is:
He seems to feel that he, as a member of a minority, has suffered a slur. The City Paper’s response is here. But more important, the matter of Mr. Snyder’s sensitivity to the feelings of minorities, or at least one in particular, can be found here – in his team’s much-criticized name and logo, which he has refused to consider changing:
…which is why so many fans now feel this, if they didn’t before:
LP – still keeping me up to date on sports news in DC…thank you!
oh, this is all too bad. i lived in DC in the 80’s and loved being around skins fever back in the glory days.
my first exposure to successful big time sports and so now i say
GO YANKEES!!!!!!
I am endlessly fascinated by the tension between fans and team owners — particularly the question of who really owns the team: obviously, the fans are the customers, and as such, are required for a team to be worth any money to the owners.
But the level of brand loyalty that sports fans have is unmatched in other areas, so owners can pretty much do whatever they want, as illustrated by Pat Hill’s refusal to turn her back on the Skins. . .yep, interesting stuff.
But don’t you hate it when you’re emotionally invested in a team that wins whatever championship, and the owners are presented with the trophy? And some billionaire (whom you’ve maybe never seen before) is given the mike, and he says, “This is really for the fans!”
The couple of times that I’ve experienced this, I’ve felt like a total patsy. (Similar to when I saw “The Social Network.”) All of the rooting I did, and the community that I felt like I was a part of seems, at that moment, to have been all about lining some jack-wad’s nest… Talk about seeing behind the curtain.
I heard an NPR story a few months back about some soccer club that gave voting rights to the fans — seemed like a way to counterbalance some of the distaste of it all. Of course, leave it up to the Brits to address the issue of distaste!
1: Yer welcome!
3: Sad but true that owners can pretty much do whatever they want, as hometown fans remain hometown fans no matter what. There’s been so much talk about people refusing to watch / go to the games, but they’re always sellouts. Pun intended.
Also: I feel less betrayed by the notion that something like FB is just lining some, as you say, jack-wad’s nest. I never cheered for FB per se, as I do for a sports team. Why did seeing The Social Network make you feel like a patsy?