Dear reader, I live to entertain you, whether it’s taking on big targets like LeBron James or ESPN, or little peons like Goingfor2.com, I like to tackle subjects who in spite of their detractors have a lot of fans. I don’t like going for low hanging fruit, so originally I wasn’t going to ever do a Dan Snyder article, the closest I was going to get to him was with the NFC East article two weeks ago, but dammit he hasn’t given me a choice in this matter.
With him apparently being a road block in getting rid of Robert Griffin III, I could no longer stay quiet, in the words of Popeye the Sailor “I can stands a lot but I can’t stands no more.” I had to write something. So in the words of Keith Olbermann… wait ,no, I’m going to mean ever single thing I say, so go ahead take this completely literal, I’m completely serious, here’s Why I Hate Dan Snyder.
Where do I begin with this ass-clown? How about I start with the most recent transgression and that is the possibility (more than likely the reality) of Snyder blocking his General Manager and Head Coach from cutting/trading Robert Griffin III. This is par for the course with Snyder though, he latches onto a player and that player becomes untouchable no matter how dreadful they may be.
What drives me fucking insane about all of this is this off-season Snyder and the VP of Pants and Picnics i.e., Bruce Allen went out and got an honest to god real fucking GM in Scott McCloughan to make these tough decisions. That’s his job, evaluate the players and along with the head coach decide who to keep on the team and who to get rid of.
If you’ve ever seen Money Ball, and if you haven’t what the fuck is wrong with you, there is a scene where Billy Bean (brilliantly played by Brad Pitt) sends his assistant Peter (also brilliantly played by Jonah Hill) on the road with the team. He does this so he doesn’t get too attached to the players personally. He does this because he has to be able to cut or trade players to better help the team, and if you are personally involved with a player that will make it hard.
This is the underlining problem with Snyder, just looking at him you can tell he wasn’t popular in school. He looks like a smarmy asshole who would snitch on the popular kids at the drop of the hat. And now that he’s a billionaire with his own football team he can hang out with all the popular guys in the NFL and feel cool. So he hob-knobs with his top players and all of a sudden they’re untouchable, it’s a fucking shit show and thank god for the fucking Jets and Browns, otherwise my favorite franchise would be the worst run team in the league, and yet somehow it seems like the owner wants to be worse than those two. Snyder let your fucking coach coach and let your GM manage the team, just sit back and collect your money and blow it on whatever the fuck you want. Go have a fucking drunken orgy with Jim Irsay for all I care, just stop meddling with the fucking team.
Secondly, the way he’s dealt with opponents to the Redskins name. People act like this is something new, but really it isn’t. What is new is that many of those in the sports media who were on the side of the team have flipped. Have they all suddenly changed their mind on the name because they’re more enlightened? Some, probably, all, probably not. What has changed since Jack Kent Cook owned the team and now? Well the owner, obviously. Dan Snyder is so unlikable that it makes it hard to take his side. Dan Snyder could be on the side of peace and love and you would seriously question whether or not war and hate were the better options.
The way Jack would deal with opponents to the name was basically just to ignore them and watch the Skins win. In fact, that was just kind of Jack’s mantra, higher the right football guys, ignore everything else and watch the Redskins win.
Snyder hasn’t really done any of those things. Maybe he’s hired a football guy with McCloughan, but he’s got to let the man do his job. Watching the Redskins win, he hasn’t done that, ignoring everything else? Nope, he seemingly can’t do that. Anyone who writes or says anything negative about him or the team he gets litigation happy, so naturally I’m expecting to get sued, or getting Geoff sued which would make my year.
So what has Snyder’s response been to the growing protests towards his team’s name? First he started the Original Americans Foundation, or O.A.F… Seriously, who the fuck thought that was a good idea. We’re in the Twitter age where just about any long name gets an acronym. You’d think someone in a billion dollar organization would have caught that. And besides that, the name without acronym sounds completely awkward. So it has to be a joke right? This has to be Snyder giving the middle finger to everyone by calling his “foundation” OAF, right… right?! That’s the only logical explanation, no one can be this monumentally dumb, can they?
And after that went over like a lead balloon, Snyder started bribing Native Americans so he could either trot them out onto FedEx Field during halftime or during the pre-game or paying them to sit with him in the owner’s box.
Snyder thinks by throwing money at the problem that it will go away. Granted O.A.F, I mean the Original Americans Foundation has done some good work, but did he do this as a reaction to the name controversy or because he’s a good person. I think you know the answer. And whenever he pays Native Americans to appear at Redskins games, the media runs with it, but not in the good way he was hoping for. Seriously, the fact that he hasn’t figured out that if he just kept his head down and his mouth shut that things would get better. Other than that I don’t know what to say to him other than “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
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Dan Snyder has also literally ruined one of the most storied franchises in NFL History. The Redskins are one of the oldest teams in the NFL, being founded in 1932 by George Preston Marshall as the Boston Braves. A year later they were moved to Washington D.C. and renamed the Redskins because George was all about alliteration. Fuck, why couldn’t he have named the team the Warriors if he was so obsessed with the mascot being an Indian? But then again in this easily offended PC world we live in people would take umbrage with the logo on the helmet and want it changed, I guarantee that shit.
It the early years they won two NFL titles (So fuck you Dallas, we have as many Championships as you, not our fault it wasn’t called the Super Bowl then, and while I’m at it, fuck the 49ers as well) with Sling’n Sammy Baugh (who at one point led the league in passing, punting, and interceptions as a safety, fuck you soft players who don’t play both ways, he played three positions).
The team sank into mediocrity in the 60’s only to be rejuvenated by Vince Lombardi before he passed away due to cancer, but George Allen picked up the torch and led the Over the Hill Gang to Super Bowl VII. Allen’s legacy would carry on through Joe Gibbs who turned the Redskins into a Power House in the 80’s with 3 Super Bowl appearances and two wins, and one more win in the early 90’s for good measure.
The 80’s Skins quote unquote did it the “right” way with a punishing offensive line and hard nose running the ball. The organization was a class-act with owner Jack Kent Cook being the smiling old man who looked like your grandpa, GM Bobby Bethard was in charge of putting together a fine group of players, some through the draft (like Hall of Famers Darrell Green and Art Monk) or guys who were cast aside like John Riggins or many of the Hogs, and then there was the salt of the earth Coach Joe Gibbs to lead them.
This became the image you thought of when you thought of the Redskins, a team run the right way by class-act group of people. This image lasted until Dan Snyder bought the team.
Snyder though didn’t give a shit about the draft or developing players, he came in and felt he could take the NFL by storm like George Steinbrenner did to baseball, but the NFL isn’t the MLB, the NFL has a salary cap, but that didn’t stop Snyder. He over paid guys like Bruce Smith, Andre Reed, Deion Sanders, and Jeff George to come play in DC. Fuck if this was 1995 the Redskins could have done some damage, but no, it was five years too late.
Snyder’s idiocy continued in 2000 when in the midst of a playoff hunt at 7-6 Snyder fired Norv Turner after losing to the Giants. Seriously who fucking does that? What NFL team has every fired a playoff contending coach in the middle of the season? Then the next season Snyder brings in Marty Schottenheimer, an actual honest to god, god damn smart football move on his part. But with the aging defense (most of whom were here to collect a paycheck but not actually play) not giving a fuck, the Skins started out 0-5, but went on a late season run to end up 8-8. To me and anyone else who has a clue, that would tell me the Skins were on the up swing. They were jelling together and listening to Schottenheimer. So Snyder fires him in favor of Steve “Old Ball Coach” Spuirer. I’m not even going to fucking talk about him.
I bet you’re seeing a pattern here. When smart football minds say “go left” Snyder fucking goes right. He is just absolutely fucking hopeless. I’ve had people who don’t really follow football tell me the team is cursed. It’s not cursed so much as that it has a dip shit calling the shots. Oh my how I hate that fucking troll in the god damn owner’s box. I used to defend him by saying “well at least he’s doing something to try to get us winning, he could be like Paul Brown in Cincy, just collecting money and not giving a fuck,” well not giving a fuck has landed the Bengals in more playoff games than the Redskins, so fuck me I guess.
And still this fucker hasn’t learned a damn thing, and that’s mainly because he doesn’t know shit about the NFL, which in and of it self is mind-boggling. He’s owned an NFL team for 16 fucking years (holy shit, I’ve endured this bull shit for literally half of my life), you’d think he’d pick something up, or luck into a power house like Jerry Jones did (don’t fucking fool yourselves Cowboys fans, your owner is only slightly less moronic than ours). And you know what, it kind of looked like he did this off-season hiring Scott McCloughan, we had a real fucking GM, first time in what 14-15 years since he fired Charley Casserly.
But then it looked like it quickly went back to business as usual when it was clear to everyone (even my 7-year-old son) that Cousins was the better QB, but Snyder tried to muscled his employees in wanting Robert to start. Well it looks like the football people have won this battle since Cousins has been named the starter, so maybe just maybe this is a ray of hope that Snyder has learned something. But, no dear reader, I’m not falling for this shit again. I fully expect at the end of the season unless Cousins wins the MVP and Super Bowl that Gruden and McCloughan will be fired and RG2 named coach and his son re-installed as the starting quarterback. I want to say I’m kidding and that this won’t happen, but just you fucking watch.
Fuck, I’m done wasting my time on Snyder, I hate him, I hate him so fucking much, like I hate him more than anything and I have a bitch of an ex-wife and I’d rather spend time with her than talk about Dan Snyder anymore. So you know the rest… blah, blah, blah, swipe right on tinder follow me on twitter @jomac006 so you can see my soul slowly drain away 140 characters at a time during the football season.
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