Good riddance

March 20, 2023

by Steve Thomas

The latest news in the ongoing Washington Redskins Washington Football Team Washington Commanders Washington team sale saga is that an agreement is imminent, perhaps sometime this week.  That’s outstanding, fanbase-changing news, and is the story for which we’ve all been waiting for the better part of two decades.  The long nightmare is almost over, everyone.  In light of this news, I just wanted to take a few moments to thank Mr. Snyder for all of his efforts to improve the franchise and to wish him well in his future.  He’s loved, and he’ll be missed.

Just kidding.

It’s a travesty of justice that as miserable a human being as Danny is going to get out of the mess he created with somewhere between $5 – $6B, but that’s the price we’ll pay for our freedom.  We’ll have plenty of time to analyze the team’s new owner later, whether it’s Josh Harris, Tilman Fertitta, Jeff Bezos, or some other unknown person.  The Hog Sty will cover that person when an announcement is made.

Right now, though, I’d just like to speak directly to Danny, with one last chance to let him know how I feel, so please keep reading, little man: you managed to ruin my life-long fandom – my ability to root for the team I’ve cheered for since I was going to RFK Stadium with my dad when I was four years old.  It was one thing to watch a badly coached, mismanaged team constantly flail between bad and mediocre year after year, with an occasional smattering of “pretty good but not actually competitive” thrown in.  That was okay.  Being loyal to your team is part of being a fan.  This is the franchise I’ve traveled around the country to see, on which I’ve spent an untold amount of money, one to which I’ve dedicated countless Sundays, and help start a podcast and website which consumes a significant amount of my free time.  I enjoyed every minute of it, for too long.

Danny, you took the joy of watching and talking about professional football away from me, and for that, I’ll never forgive you.  When we formed The Hog Sty in 2015, our original intent was to analyze from a fan’s perspective what we watched happen on the field, plus the draft and free agency.  Instead, we’ve had to spend countless hours talking and writing about your nonsense.  At the end of the day, though, for everyone who’s not either employed in the professional football industry or who makes a living as a sports journalist, this is just entertainment and not supposed to be serious.  You made it serious.  I didn’t necessarily blame you for buying the team from the estate of the late Jack Kent Cooke over his son John, because that was due to Jack’s estate choices more than anything else.  But let’s just say that your tenure started off badly and went down from there.  However, it was another thing entirely for you to condone and, at some level participate in, the mistreatment of female employees, financial management, open disrespect of fans, and all the rest.  And I won’t even get into changing the name from “Redskins” to a dumb, meaningless nickname that nobody likes.  To top it off, you’ve been unapologetic and downright condescending about those events.  It was as if you never realized that this team’s ultimate success depends on the support of the fans.  You were either too stupid or too arrogant to realize that you the team wasn’t your personal plaything, and that you’d actually have to build a competent, respectful organization that at a minimum operates within the normal bounds of reasonable business practices.  Not only could you not even do that much, instead leading some sort of Wolf of Wall Street / Enron-style frat house, but you just assumed that we’d all just continue to come along for the ride in the form of ticket and merchandise sales and TV ratings.  Remember the decades-long sellout streak?  Its end is 100% on you.  I don’t know why you ever expected the fans to just blindly continue to follow along forever.

I was able to root for a bad team; I wasn’t able to continue to root for a team led by you, a terrible person who clearly didn’t and still doesn’t respect anyone or anything but yourself.  And this includes your own family – congratulations on disrespecting your wife by creating a situation in which people felt compelled to testify in front of Congress about your alleged dalliances with strippers / prostitutes.  I’m sure that went badly at home, although given your utter and complete lack of character, you probably just lied about it instead of manning up and admitting what you did.

So, Danny, in the end, you’ll soon get your billions of dollars in cash, but as you float around on your luxury yacht for months on end – are you afraid to set foot back in the U.S.? Why would that be? – I hope you reflect on your failures.  It’s not lost on any of us that everything you’ve ever touched has turned out badly, from Snyder Communications, which got fined millions of dollars for “slamming”, which is the practice of improperly switching customers’ long-distance service without consent, to Johnny Rockets, which flailed under your leadership, to Six Flags, a company you ran so poorly that it fell into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, causing its creditors to take over and kick you out.  Then there’s the Tom Cruise movie “Valkyrie”, which disappointed at the box office, your questionable acquisition of Dick Clark Productions, and other lots of things.  You get the point.  Granted, you’ve managed to fail upwards at times in terms of money, which is disgusting; although, even now, you are at a minimum in debt to the tune of several hundred million dollars for the cost of having to buy out your minority partners, who you allegedly screwed over, and there are rumors of significantly more debt, so I’m not sure how much cash you actually have.

I just want you to you understand that you’re a failure as both a person and a businessman who’s managed to destroy nearly every shred of goodwill of a fanbase that adored the Redskins.  Thanks for that.

I think this is enough.   I don’t want to waste more words explaining something you should already know.  Hopefully this is the last time I’ll ever have to write about you as the owner of Washington’s NFL team, whatever it ends up being called.  No matter who the new owner will be, that person will be an improvement over you and your terrible behavior, total lack of leadership and management ability, and utter lack of respect for the fans or anyone around you.  Just take your billions and get the hell out.