Solving DC’s Football Problem
Dan Snyder should move the Redskins to Los Angeles where plans to build a new stadium for an NFL team that is yet to be, are already underway. Knowing our creepy little owner’s affection for movie stars and his new found desire to market his team to out-of-town fans, moving to LA is a logical next step!
A wise bartender in Cooperstown, NY, where the Baseball Hall of Fame is located, once described his home as “A Drinking Town With A Baseball Problem.”
Well, Washington DC has become, “A Football Town With An Ownership Problem.”
Dan Snyder has single handedly destroyed a fan base that was once one of the surest things in sports. In the next few years his sold out 93,000 seat stadium will be practically empty, of Redskins fans that is. He has joined the ranks of such dastardly local flimflam men as Peter Angelos, the man who ruined the Orioles, and Abe Pollin, a building magnate whose only purpose in owning a sports franchise was to maintain tenants for his sports arena. As far as I can tell, the Nationals ownership, the Lerners, are also in that category.
But alas, there is hope. Dan Snyder has been quietly yearning to implode the monstrosity in Landover – home to the worst game-going experience in North America, FedEx Field – in order to capitalize on all that under-productive real estate. Meanwhile, LA is gearing up for an NFL team to-be-named-later with plans going forward to line-up ticket buyers and build a 75,000 seat stadium.
See the stadium here: Snyder’s New Home!
There are basically three ways to market a big league team. 1) Build a winner. 2) Get a player people will pay to see even if you lose most your games. 3) Market your team to fans of the opposition. Snyder, clearly a failure at options one and two, is now following the example set by Angelos, Pollin, and the Lerners, resorting to option three, and that is sad. It is especially sad since he had a built-in rabid customer base when he bought the team, and has done everything in his power to alienate and abuse their loyalty.
But it would be the perfect tact to play in Los Angeles! LA is a basketball town, football for them is a mere novelty.
With Snyder and the ‘Skins gone, Washington can get a relocated team or an expansion franchise and have them play in a newer bigger RFK built on the same site in DC where so many legends were born. Cleveland got it right when the Browns owner fled town for a new stadium in Baltimore. Cleveland kept the team name and records for the city of Cleveland. Perhaps DC could exact the same exit fee from Snyder. But wouldn’t it be better to take such an opportunity to shed not only our rude and grumpy little owner, but also that antiquated and embarrassing mascot? Washington is a football town. It’s not the name that makes the sport popular.
And now is the time for Dan to move. In the next few years his seat liscenses are going to expire, and the winning bet here is that a majority of those once rabidly loyal fans won’t get fooled again. When the team stops selling out, the games will be blacked out on television in the area, and Snyder’s woppingly lucrative team will become a black hole of red ink, almost overnight. He should see that writing on the wall now and get out now while his team still has value. ‘Skins fans need to understand, that the team is over, and they are never going to get it back. So moving it is the only way to recapture what was once football euphoria in this city.
C’mon Dan, you know you can do it. Move’m now!
And let’s have a contest to name our new NFL franchise’s mascot!
You heard it here!
More later.
-JJP