Marcus from College Park
*FAN SUBMISSION by our good friend, Marcus from College Park. Follow him on Twitter @MarcusSports1.*
The Fourth Installment in a Series of Columns regarding the Drafting, Handling and Consequence’s of bringing Robert Griffin III to Washington. Today we take a look to the Top of the Totem Pole for the Machiavellian Prince of Ashburn, owner Daniel M. Snyder.
Dan Snyder began his tortured journey along the “Green Mile” when he was just a young boy. An ardent fan of the team, Snyder often muses wistfully of the Team Belt Buckle he wore as a good luck charm as a child, while watching Washington on the gridiron. One can easily equate that vision of youthful innocence in contrast with the present day miseries of his club, to the 1941intensely disturbing, tragic and iconic cinematic classic movie, “Citizen Kane”. Only in Snyder’s movie, it won’t be Kane’s beloved memories of his sled “Rosebud” that will be slipping through Snyder’s grip in the closing scene but a tarnished and beat up Burgundy & Gold belt buckle hitting the floor, signifying the failure of a lifetime as a loser.
How can it be, that a local boy makes good, without completing his college education, buy an NFL Team? Borrowed money and plenty of it, that’s how. After the death of legendary, rags to riches and sole owner Jack Kent Cooke, Washington’s Football Franchise was thrown into turmoil. Denied any significant monies from Cooke’s 900 million dollar estate, son John was without the financial wherewithal to buy the team from a Trust that was clearly instructed by Cooke’s Will to sell for the highest price bid without regard to any other ownership expertise, qualifications or considerations. In the end, it was all about the money to Cooke and His Legacy, “That It’s All About the Money”, that allowed a strictly “All About the Money Man” to make his move.
Enter Dan Snyder.
Snyder was able to borrow a reported 495 million dollars by bringing Financial Heavyweight and Harvard Business Grad, Mortimer Zuckerman as a partner to the table. Then along with additional borrowed money Snyder submitted an unprecedented and astonishing all time high offer for an NFL Franchise at the time, of $800 million. The Trust was more than happy and legally bound to accept the inflated bid and the NFL Hierarchy was all too gleeful to approve the highly leveraged bid, realizing that the “Boy Wonder” at age 37, had bid against himself in the process of buying the team, which had the direct ancillary effect of increasing the value of all of the Owner’s NFL Franchise’s many times. There was joy in DC, a Local Boy had made good and was willing to spend money to resuscitate a franchise that was in decline.
Courtesy: Washington Post
The celebration quickly dampened though when the fans and sponsors became Snyder’s personal ATM Machine’s, rifling through their wallets for every last nickel. Prices skyrocketed and the game day experience at FedEx Field is judged as the absolute worst by a wide margin. But hey, the fans were led to believe in and support a plan that preached spending money, more money, money, money and that everything was going to be all right. The wins would mount just by spending the fan’s hard earned cash and allow the franchise to dominate again but still over the years, the loses and fan anger mounted. Money doesn’t buy wins or love in the NFL and it hasn’t been all right and rosy in Washington for decades. The fans whose hearts Dan Snyder has wanted to win so desperately and completely are hardened with hostility towards a distant, isolated, arrogant and miserable owner.
Look, I used to point out to my former wife that I couldn’t be wrong all of the time. It’s mathematically impossible! So, statistics say I have to luck out and be right every once and a while, right!? If you view Dan Snyder’s “Roll’s of the Dice” in that light and you’ve got to wonder….. How the Hell does Snyder roll Snake Eyes every single Goddamn time he makes a move. Free Agent Signing’s, Block Buster Trades, Big Buck Coach Announcement’s, Fan Treatment, you name it, every single decision and policy that he has made in behalf of his beloved boyhood team has resulted in enormous disappointment, distrust and the feeling that the owner is betraying the team’s fans for the dollar..
Consider Faust, selling ones soul in pursuit of an unobtainable goal.
Are we’re left to wonder, in the style of Broadway’s “Damn Yankees” and a Faustian Fate, that Lucifer granted Dan Snyder’s wish to own the team in exchange for his eternal soul but now with irony-a-plenty the Devil ruefully rest on Dan’s Shoulder, game after painful game, reminding Dan that he granted his wish to own the team but Ol’ Satan never agreed to let the team win big as part of the bargain. Snyder now owns the team, sure. Will the team win and allow a lifelong, child’s dream to be met? If twenty plus years of failure are any indication, this team will not be a success under Dan Snyder. It can’t. Dan the Man might be a Marketing Genius, a Skilled Borrower and Moneymaker but he’s no NFL Owner and never will be. Twenty Plus Year’s have proven that. Oh, and then there’s that annoying “Faustian Deal” Dan made. Owning the team, no problem….. Winning….. No Deal.
So Snyder walks with Mephistopheles along a never ending “Green Mile”, no matter the trading for and drafting of RG3, no matter the next Genius Move, no matter the next ballyhooed recycled Coach, no matter, no matter, no matter, no winning, no adulation of the fan’s or the respect of his peers. A living Hell, for the cursed owner and ironically, the fans languishing in Hades with him who welcomed Snyder, supported him and fed him tons of cash for the privilege of over two decades of damnatio
