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“NFL-Next Man Up–Next Owner Forced Out”

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The National Football League has sat on the sidelines during this war of words over the Washington Redskins nickname.

That will be changed shortly.

The NFL may not be able to sit on the sidelines now, this latest issue involving the franchise owned by Daniel Snyder, cast as one of the worst owners in the NFL.

Money and power corrupt, and that probably explains who this man is, and why he acts the way he does.

And it likely explains why he did nothing about the story that spilled across the country thanks to the Washington Post’s investigative sports reporting team.

A searing report that covered 13-years of sexual abuse, harassment, and methods of operations by people who were part of Snyder’s inner circle in running the NFL team.

15-women, including 2-reporters, came front and center and detailed derogatory treatment by upper level management, most of them Vice President’s on the Redskins staff, working for Snyder.

It won’t be ‘he said–she said’. No, there are text messages, Emails, taped phone calls.

Allegations against a number of VPs, since fired recently, as the story was about to break.  Information about coaching staff members too.

Sexual touching, verbal abuse, references to sex acts, intimidation, and harassment.

Once upon a time it might have been a way of corporate life, but not in this ‘Me-Too’ era of society.

It happened in VPs offices; in lunch rooms; in meeting rooms.  It happened in team hotels; bars; skyboxes at the Redskins Stadium; and even at the NFL combine.

It went unchecked when presented to whatever resembled a Human Resource office at Redskins Park.

It went without discipline from the owner of the team, purchased for 800M-now-worth over 2B in the Nation’s Capital.

Redskins football has never been the same since Snyder purchased the team from Jack Kent Cooke in 1999, the team that reached glory with a Christian leader in Joe Gibbs.

In 20-years time, just five winning seasons.  They’ve won the NFC-East just twice in his tenure.  There is just 1-playoff win in the Snyder era.

A franchise that used to play before 92,000 fans a game at Fed Ex Field, now draws 62,000.  A team that used to have a waiting list of season ticket holders, has to sell discounted tickets on websites.

They’ve gone thru 4-team Presidents, a host of GMs, and a ton of coaches.

Everyone of them has ended badly under the Snyder reign of error.

None ever left on good terms, nor with a winning record.  Some should have never been hired, others wished they had never been.

Norv Turner finished (8-8).  Marty Schottenheimer was dumped after (8-8).  Steve Spurrier came from college and left at (5-11).  Jim Zorn was a disaster at (4-12).  Mike Shanahan was removed at (3-13).  So was the last hiring failure Jay Gruden.

Snyder’s business practices stagger the imagination.

He sued season ticket holders who failed to make PSL payments in the Recession.  He charged fans to attend preseason practices.  He sold commemorative hats after the 9/11 tragedies.  He was hit with a 36M dollar penalty for abuse of the NFL salary cap.

You name it, he did it.  And now this, what he allowed to happen from 2003-thru-2019.

Some people earned their wealth and Snyder did in Maryland as an advertising entrepreneur.

Some people inherited what was given them, like the Bengals’ Mike Brown taking over the franchise from Hall of Fame father Paul Brown.

Some are born on 3rd base, wake up and think they hit a triple, like the Chargers’ Dean Spanos.

Some have it fall into their lap like Mark Davis, inheriting a once proud but failing Raiders franchise.

But this story is scandalous because it happened in his front office, executed by his trusted advisors, and went unchecked till it hit the news cycle of the Washington Post.

If you don’t learn from history, you likely repeat it.

Dan Snyder need only to look down the road at Jerry Richardson, founder and builder of the Carolina Panthers.  From expansion team to Super Bowl.  Founded a franchise.  Built a stadium.  Made the tri-state proud.  He’s gone from the NFL, removed just two years ago after female execs turned on him for his sexist ways of doing business for years.

The NFL forced a sale of the franchise in the middle of the night.  The statue to Richardson was taken down a year ago.

Oddly, the Redskins, in the middle of the nickname upheaval, took down the statue to former racist owner George Preston Marshall weeks ago, and removed his name from the Ring of Honor and Hall of Fame.

And Snyder thought he was dealing with tough times just weeks ago.

So the sun comes up at the team headquarters in Ashburn, Virginia on a Friday morning.  New day for sure.  A different life about to begin for Daniel Snyder too.

The NFL cannot sit by and not take action.  They should, and they will.

And it won’t matter what the new name of the team is, for Snyder probably won’t be their owner going forward.

Power and money corrupt.  It looks like it did in Washington.

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“NFL-Next Man Up–Next Owner Forced Out”

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The National Football League has sat on the sidelines during this war of words over the Washington Redskins nickname.

That will be changed shortly.

The NFL may not be able to sit on the sidelines now, this latest issue involving the franchise owned by Daniel Snyder, cast as one of the worst owners in the NFL.

Money and power corrupt, and that probably explains who this man is, and why he acts the way he does.

And it likely explains why he did nothing about the story that spilled across the country thanks to the Washington Post’s investigative sports reporting team.

A searing report that covered 13-years of sexual abuse, harassment, and methods of operations by people who were part of Snyder’s inner circle in running the NFL team.

15-women, including 2-reporters, came front and center and detailed derogatory treatment by upper level management, most of them Vice President’s on the Redskins staff, working for Snyder.

It won’t be ‘he said–she said’. No, there are text messages, Emails, taped phone calls.

Allegations against a number of VPs, since fired recently, as the story was about to break.  Information about coaching staff members too.

Sexual touching, verbal abuse, references to sex acts, intimidation, and harassment.

Once upon a time it might have been a way of corporate life, but not in this ‘Me-Too’ era of society.

It happened in VPs offices; in lunch rooms; in meeting rooms.  It happened in team hotels; bars; skyboxes at the Redskins Stadium; and even at the NFL combine.

It went unchecked when presented to whatever resembled a Human Resource office at Redskins Park.

It went without discipline from the owner of the team, purchased for 800M-now-worth over 2B in the Nation’s Capital.

Redskins football has never been the same since Snyder purchased the team from Jack Kent Cooke in 1999, the team that reached glory with a Christian leader in Joe Gibbs.

In 20-years time, just five winning seasons.  They’ve won the NFC-East just twice in his tenure.  There is just 1-playoff win in the Snyder era.

A franchise that used to play before 92,000 fans a game at Fed Ex Field, now draws 62,000.  A team that used to have a waiting list of season ticket holders, has to sell discounted tickets on websites.

They’ve gone thru 4-team Presidents, a host of GMs, and a ton of coaches.

Everyone of them has ended badly under the Snyder reign of error.

None ever left on good terms, nor with a winning record.  Some should have never been hired, others wished they had never been.

Norv Turner finished (8-8).  Marty Schottenheimer was dumped after (8-8).  Steve Spurrier came from college and left at (5-11).  Jim Zorn was a disaster at (4-12).  Mike Shanahan was removed at (3-13).  So was the last hiring failure Jay Gruden.

Snyder’s business practices stagger the imagination.

He sued season ticket holders who failed to make PSL payments in the Recession.  He charged fans to attend preseason practices.  He sold commemorative hats after the 9/11 tragedies.  He was hit with a 36M dollar penalty for abuse of the NFL salary cap.

You name it, he did it.  And now this, what he allowed to happen from 2003-thru-2019.

Some people earned their wealth and Snyder did in Maryland as an advertising entrepreneur.

Some people inherited what was given them, like the Bengals’ Mike Brown taking over the franchise from Hall of Fame father Paul Brown.

Some are born on 3rd base, wake up and think they hit a triple, like the Chargers’ Dean Spanos.

Some have it fall into their lap like Mark Davis, inheriting a once proud but failing Raiders franchise.

But this story is scandalous because it happened in his front office, executed by his trusted advisors, and went unchecked till it hit the news cycle of the Washington Post.

If you don’t learn from history, you likely repeat it.

Dan Snyder need only to look down the road at Jerry Sullivan, founder and builder of the Carolina Panthers.  From expansion team to Super Bowl.  Founded a franchise.  Built a stadium.  Made the tri-state proud.  He’s gone from the NFL, removed just two years ago after female execs turned on him for his sexist ways of doing business for years.

The NFL forced a sale of the franchise in the middle of the night.  The statue to Sullivan was taken down a year ago.

Oddly, the Redskins, in the middle of the nickname upheaval, took down the statue to former racist owner George Preston Marshall weeks ago, and removed his name from the Ring of Honor and Hall of Fame.

And Snyder thought he was dealing with tough times just weeks ago.

So the sun comes up at the team headquarters in Ashburn, Virginia on a Friday morning.  New day for sure.  A different life about to begin for Daniel Snyder too.

The NFL cannot sit by and not take action.  They should, and they will.

And it won’t matter what the new name of the team is, for Snyder probably won’t be their owner going forward.

Power and money corrupt.  It looks like it did in Washington.

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“San Diego—Big City-Small Time”

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Explain the psyche of the leadership in San Diego.
Detail for me the politicians in San Diego.
Rationalize the voters in San Diego.

In what appears to be a ‘here we go again’ scenario, the City Council and the Mayor are now reviewing proposals from 2-firms who want to rebuild the Sports Arena-Midway District into a sports-entertainment venue.

The valuable piece of property, where the 54-year old Sports Arena sits, will be developed with housing, businesses, entertainment venues.

The two finalists include proposals from Brookfield Properties…a firm linked with AEG, the Anschutz Entertainment Group.  The other finalist is the firm Toll Brothers.

Brookfield wants to create something akin to “LA Live”..the restaurant-theatre district that wraps around the Staples Center, home of the Lakers-Clippers and Kings.  AEG (Anschutz) has a history of success, witnessed by what they also did at the London “O Sports” complex in England and that creation in LA..

However Brookfield is not going to change anything within the Sports Arena, but will develop the 48-acres adjacent

The Toll Brothers package includes 125M for renovation of the aging Gray Lady, the arena, plus an outside 13,000-seat modular soccer stadium to be built by the San Diego Loyal.  That package will also include on its sight, housing units, and office building, and a garage.

For as big as San Diego is, 8th biggest city in the nation, it is small minded.

How do you not find a way to either finance and build a new Sports Arena, or spend money to renovate the inside?  Maybe Brookfield  feels there will never be an NHL or NBA team relocating here, and there is no need.

The Toll Brothers proposal means they won’t just slap some paint on the old arena, but likely gut it and start over, keeping the historic facade that reminds us of yesteryear and the old Great Western Forum in LA.  But at least their proposal for an outdoor stadium means something new for soccer in the city.

But that then goes against the grain of what is planned for the new Aztecs stadium on the land sight of SDCCU Stadium.  So how many new soccer venues do we need.

Nothing has ever made sense in this market, and I have now lived here 33-years.

You do remember the 22-lawsuits that tried to stop the building of Petco Park.  Look what that has meant to the Padres and the Gaslamp Quarter.

We lost the Chargers because no one could get a stadium package passed for the Q-sight, because of politics, the economy, governmental leadership and the selfish greed of the Spanos family who wanted to go to Los Angeles.

You do recall the decades of struggles for the Convention Center and the continued war of how we expand it to grow our best-biggest industry, tourism.

End of the day, I don’t know how you go forward in San Diego if renovation or construction of something shiny and new does not take place on the Sports Arena sight.  A new building or a renovated almost new building has to be part of the project.

San Diego….big city…continues to be plagued by small minds.

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“What I See–What I Feel”

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Time out from sports, from spring training, from the NFL camp issues, from the NBA bubble in Orlando, the NHL’s opening of camps, to the MLS soccer tourney

Time in to talk about where we all are at this hour.

The CIF, the governing body of high school sports in California, needs to cancel fall sports, including football.  Move it to spring if need be, but student athletes in large numbers, cannot be together.  And how do schools pay for this kind of testing.

Reality has moved into the NFL house, with teams preparing to play infront of reduced crowds or now crowds.  And the Union is pushing back on the all things the NFL is trying to do to open camps on July 28th.  The NFL should postpone the start of the season till October 1st, meaning holding off camps till September, to see if the country can get a hold on the virus spike.

College football cannot go forward with camps in August.  Buy some time with a 1-month delay but the real plan should be a spring schedule.  Use all this time to practice and prepare, then play in March-April-May.

Baseball will start in two weeks, and seemingly has done a good job testing and controlling players inside the stadium venues.

The NBA camps are underway and there have been few negative tests inside the bubble in Orlando, yet.

The NHL teams are in camp now, and head to the Hub cities in a week to start the playoffs, where all the games will be in either Edmonton or Toronto, where the virus has been tamped down.

MLS soccer, ravaged by the outbreak the first week with problems with four clubs, had zero tests in the 2nd week inside their bubble…zero infections in the (1,227) tests taken.

NASCAR-Indy Car-Formula 1….testing at every track…no outbreaks at all.

It appears this can be done in most sports.

I think football is the only one it cannot be guaranteed safe.

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“Nicknames–How Do You Feel About Your Team”

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Hail to the Redskins will no longer be their fight song.
The Indian head logo on the burgundy helmet is gone.
So is the nickname Redskins…the name the team had for 87-years.

Washington’s NFL, known by that name since 1932, when they were the Boston Redskins, will announce a new name and a new logo within the next two weeks.

Sammy Baugh, a Cherokee Indian, quarterbacked them.  So did Eddie LeBaron, the 5’5 signal caller known as the Chiefs.  So did John Riggins, who had part-Indian blood in his family.

Decades of pressure and criticism led to owner Daniel Snyder making the move.  Pushed not by just public criticism, but by the threat of all his corporate sponsors, they would cancel their contracts.

Shoved to the brink of losing out on a land deal, whereby he could have built a new stadium for the team on the original sight of RFK Stadium.

Beyond what is going on at Pennsylvania Avenue,  the cross fire of criticism was fierce at the Redskins headquarters.

The civic drive led by the Mayor’s office, and the D-C City Council on land usage, hit Snyder between the eyes.  The pressure of Maryland’s governor to evict the team from its home stadium, hit home.  No new land for a stadium without a name change.

The crush from Fed X, which had a 208M-sponsorship deal with the franchise, led to a cascade of threats from virtually every other sponsor.  The revenue streams would be gone if they took the field with the same name.

The team has been a miserable failure on the field under Snyder’s regime.  Its players are very popular though.  The team used to draw 92,000 fans a game.   It’s financial success is legendary.
But no more.

The civil unrest across the District, and what has happened across America, staggered the franchise.

This is a Redskins team once owned by a deep-south racist, George Preston Marshall.  It was the last team to employ black players, waiting till the mid 60s, when they traded for Bobby Mitchell, the superb running back-receiver of the Browns.

It was a team that won a Super Bowl with a black quarterback in Doug Williams.  It has Hall of Famers like Art Monk and Darrell Green, both African American icons.

Last month, Snyder took down a monument to the previous owner, then the family asked his name be removed from the Ring of Honor and Hall of Fame.

But now the change is complete.  The Redskins have been eradicated.  Next up are targets like the Kansas City Chiefs, the Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves in baseball, the Chicago Blackhawks in hockey.

I think you have to take each nickname, each logo on an individual basis.

Washington honored the name and the logo with respect to the tribes of America.  The team logo is a takeoff of the Indian head logo on our American nickel.  Will we do away with coins next?

I thought the name and that logo respected Native Americans.

In baseball, the Cleveland Indians have existed since 1905.  Under enormous pressure a couple of years ago, the Tribe got rid of its popular logo ‘Chief Wahoo’ on the team jersey and hats.  And yet many felt the smiling Chief logo was that of an Indian, happy to play baseball. The first star of Indians baseball was a Native American.  the first black in the American League, was Larry Doby, an Indians player too.

In Atlanta, the Braves name goes all the way back to their days as the Boston Braves in the late 1940s, thru the move to Milwaukee, before the shift to the deep south.  The crest of the uniform is a Tomahawk.  So is the chant.  The Braves did remove the Indian head logo they used, and the war bonnet logo they used, a decade ago.  But there is proud tradition in the name.  Baseball’s great home run hitter Henry Aaron war the logo proudly as a black man too.

The Kansas Chiefs name, and logo, the arrowhead on the helmet, depict the proud warrior status of the franchise.  Will Kansas City ban the tomahawk chop at Arrowhead Stadium?

The movement to show respect began three decades ago, with the push to rid college teams of their names and to re-image the logos.

Syracuse Orangemen became the Syracuse Orange.  The warring and embarrassing look indian logo was removed for a ‘Block S’.

Miami of Ohio’s Redskins became the Red Hawks, and the tomahawk was deleted as its logo.

Eastern Michigan’s Hurons, named for the tribe in the Great Lakes, became the Eagles.

Ages ago, the Stanford Indians became the Stanford Cardinal, with a tree becoming the logo-linking it with the nickname of the campus, the farm.

William & Mary’s Indians became the Tribe, its war bonnet feather logo removed.

North Dakota’s Fighting Sioux, a hockey power, became the Hawks and a snazzy Sioux headgear logo was eliminated.

Dartmouth’s proud tradition of the name Indians, disappeared years ago, replaced by Big Green, the school colors.

The St John’s Redmen basketball team rid itself of its heritage name.

So did the Marquette Warriors.

It is odd, all those teams had names representing pride and honor.  Some of the schools needed a logo update.  Instead they all caved in under pressure.

For all the money spent on lawyers fees to force the issue, you’d think  the money would have been better spent to help with health care programs, education, job training  and rehab centers on the Indian reservations around the nation to aid its struggling population base.

We live in a very different time.  A politically correct time.

Maybe I am old-school.  Maybe you think its racist.  Maybe it’s over-reaction and wasted energy.

The Washington Post did a survey of Native American tribes, and 90-percent of them had no problem with the name, just 6-years ago.  Now everyone-everywhere has problems with names, statues and monuments in America.

Wishing instead of changing names of popular teams, we could instead eradicate the “N” word, White power Neo-Nazis, and dirty cops instead.

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