the future for scumbag dan and the washington football team

[Ken Gargett]

the only other forum on which i actively participate is a washington football team one (surprisingly, it has always been far more civil than FoH - go figure??). needless to say, the mess with the emails, gruden going and more is attracting much debate. it has also got a fair bit of coverage down here. i have a fair idea what WFT fans think but i am curious as to the reaction from fans of other teams. how far will this go? any thoughts?

this below is part of a post i put on the WFT forum (i've removed some which was less relevant), which sums up where i think it might go. love to hear if i am way off base or what others think. could we be so lucky that this will lead to the farewell of dan? anyway, after all this, i'm off to watch 'the replacements' again. likely to be the only time i see a washington football team winning anything for a while. 

 

this is likely to become an issue with an entire franchise (perhaps even more) which is under the NFL's control.

but you can bet this has a long way to go. someone has these emails. so far, just a few released. no way did they happen upon those emails only. unless, and this seems beyond belief, dan and everyone did nothing wrong, you can guarantee more to be released.
look at those released so far - they condemn the actions of gruden and pash, neither of whom are with the WFT (and yet both gruden's brother and bruce allen - every scumbag's best mate - were but there has been nothing from them as yet). for me, this says that whoever has them is just warming up. they are generating interest. you don't lead your trump card/email first. this is now news around the sporting world. certainly getting plenty of coverage down here. everyone waiting to see what is next. it will start to focus on members of the WFT very soon, i'd guess. i suspect that the emails which may come out in the next few weeks will be much more serious and much more damaging to members of the WFT admin, especially.
also, with the current political atmosphere, especially with the cheerleaders making some fairly serious accusations, a lot of people outside the NFL and the WFT are going to be taking a much closer look and getting involved (remember that this is washington - they can't help themselves). as was said, a $10 mill fine and the removal of dan, even if replaced by his wife, is really serious stuff. i'll be stunned if much more does not come out.
i wonder if dan might have made a monumental mistake in having his wife take over. the cheerleaders are saying she has lied. who knows what is in the emails about her, but it becomes very hard for the NFL to say well we removed one snyder and he was replaced by another and now we have to replace her, but don't worry, we'll leave the team in their hands, especially with someone like bezos prepared to splash the cash. i am starting to wonder whether they are running out of sacrificial lambs and the synders might have to go. the real problem - and this is purely speculation - might come if goodell is implicated in anything in any way, even if minor. he might have to go as well.
the other 31 owners, while they might usually bind together, do not want the actions of dan and tanya to start seeing ratings drop and sponsors leaving. when it starts to cost them serious money (and every chance this could), they'll abandon dan like he is richard nixon caught with a naked schoolgirl. and does anyone really think goodell would fall on his sword to save dan?

one final point tonight - no doubt the WFT admin has a fair idea that it is not cream rising to the surface. so what does any organisation do? pulls up the drawbridge asap, but that horse might have already bolted, if the emails are in unfriendly hands - and clearly at least some are.
next option is a distraction. well winning games would not hurt but good luck there and it would be temporary. so someone came up with the bright idea to retire number 21 (at the very least, horribly late for sean taylor and 28 - darrell green - and green is such a beloved former player and respected ambassador that it staggers me they were not clever enough to include him). i believe dan has always said no numbers would be retired, but needs must. and yet, in typical WFT fashion, they have made a complete barry of the entire thing. hey, we are retiring 28 and give three days notice so many fans can't even arrange to get there and they forget to tell the family. you could not make that up. it smacks of utter desperation. to me, it screams a last minute idea, a bad one, to distract from what is coming.
what will piss me off beyond measure is if the actions of these muppets cause us to suffer salary cap penalties.

[TobaccoRoad]

Look to the way the NFL dealt with Jerry Richardson a few years back for clues. At the end of the day they forced Richardson to sell the Panthers for $2.2 Billion and fined him $2.75 Million for alleged workplace misconduct. He had paid $206 Million for the franchise in 1993. I don't have a lot of sympathy for him...

I do feel sorry for Ron Rivera. I still think he was the best Panther's coach we've ever had and by all indications a good man. He had just finished going through the Panthers workplace improprieties scandal and willingly went into try to help the WFT deal with their situation. They are paying him generously but he could've been paid elsewhere. I wonder if he is having second thoughts. 

Bottom line- The NFL Owners club is an exclusive good old boys club and everybody turns a blind eye to the shenanigans of the fellow club members and their employees. Until it threatens to affect profit, then they turn on the violator(s) like a pack of dogs. Not one of them give a rat's ass what Jerry Richardson or Dan Snyder have done, much less John Gruden or Bruce Allen. But they will do what they have to do to protect their business interests.

[Ken Gargett]

16 minutes ago, TobaccoRoad said:

Look to the way the NFL dealt with Jerry Richardson a few years back for clues. At the end of the day they forced Richardson to sell the Panthers for $2.2 Billion and fined him $2.75 Million for alleged workplace misconduct. He had paid $206 Million for the franchise in 1993. I don't have a lot of sympathy for him...

I do feel sorry for Ron Rivera. I still think he was the best Panther's coach we've ever had and by all indications a good man. He had just finished going through the Panthers workplace improprieties scandal and willingly went into try to help the WFT deal with their situation. They are paying him generously but he could've been paid elsewhere. I wonder if he is having second thoughts. 

Bottom line- The NFL Owners club is an exclusive good old boys club and everybody turns a blind eye to the shenanigans of the fellow club members and their employees. Until it threatens to affect profit, then they turn on the violator(s) like a pack of dogs. Not one of them give a rat's ass what Jerry Richardson or Dan Snyder have done, much less John Gruden or Bruce Allen. But they will do what they have to do to protect their business interests.

yes, that seems in line with my thoughts. 

and very much so re ron rivera. definitely comes across as a good coach and a decent man. taking on this cesspool while dealing with cancer. tough gig. the players at the WFT obviously love him. you might have seen how they got together behind his back and did all this stuff for his one-year cancer free anniversary. it was quite moving. 

snyder would walk away with a profit of around $3 to 4 billion i think, since he bought it (paid $800 mill, i think, although he seems to have got a lot of that from "investors" who seem to feel he has dudded them). as much as he does not deserve it, if it got rid of him, he could have twice that. 

[riderpride]

Let's not forget Robert Kraft's sponsorship of human sex trafficking. He was arrested but the charges were dropped while others were prosecuted with similar evidence against them - and it's highly unlikely that was his first trip there or to any other joint with similar practices. 

I wonder what happened to make this all disappear to keep the Patriots legacy untarnished so he can continue to hang with Bon Jovi and Marky Mark and get face time on every NFL broadcast singing his praises? The worst thing that happened to him was a ring being stolen by Putin - but I'm sure he has a replacement for that. 

Steven Ross may be an exception to the cesspool. While he has proven to be less than competent as the Dolphins owner, at least he votes against franchise relocations as he feels that more is owed to the fanbases and communities than just chasing the almighty dollar.

 

Edit: forgot to add he financed a $400mil renovation to the stadium out of pocket.  No tax dollars were used

[inter4alia]

I am a former WFT and NFL fan. The league is destroying itself and I've come to terms with it. The league is dead to me. College football might be following in its footsteps very soon if it's not careful. But for now, college football is a good substitute for the NFL, which I doubt I will ever watch again. 

[JohnnyO]

7 hours ago, riderpride said:

Let's not forget Robert Kraft's sponsorship of human sex trafficking. He was arrested but the charges were dropped while others were prosecuted with similar evidence against them - and it's highly unlikely that was his first trip there or to any other joint with similar practices. 

I wonder what happened to make this all disappear to keep the Patriots legacy untarnished so he can continue to hang with Bon Jovi and Marky Mark and get face time on every NFL broadcast singing his praises? The worst thing that happened to him was a ring being stolen by Putin - but I'm sure he has a replacement for that. 

Steven Ross may be an exception to the cesspool. While he has proven to be less than competent as the Dolphins owner, at least he votes against franchise relocations as he feels that more is owed to the fanbases and communities than just chasing the almighty dollar.

 

Edit: forgot to add he financed a $400mil renovation to the stadium out of pocket.  No tax dollars were used

Dont be giving Steven Ross such a pat on the back. He asked the city to finance the $400 million roof, while he had just donated $200 million to Michigan University football program. Citing previous owners Wayne Huizenga and Joe Robbie as benefactors of preferential tax breaks, Ross wanted a piece of the action at a cost to John Q Public. They're all a bunch of miserable schlamiels. John 

 

12 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

the only other forum on which i actively participate is a washington football team one (surprisingly, it has always been far more civil than FoH - go figure??). needless to say, the mess with the emails, gruden going and more is attracting much debate. it has also got a fair bit of coverage down here. i have a fair idea what WFT fans think but i am curious as to the reaction from fans of other teams. how far will this go? any thoughts?

this below is part of a post i put on the WFT forum (i've removed some which was less relevant), which sums up where i think it might go. love to hear if i am way off base or what others think. could we be so lucky that this will lead to the farewell of dan? anyway, after all this, i'm off to watch 'the replacements' again. likely to be the only time i see a washington football team winning anything for a while. 

 

this is likely to become an issue with an entire franchise (perhaps even more) which is under the NFL's control.

but you can bet this has a long way to go. someone has these emails. so far, just a few released. no way did they happen upon those emails only. unless, and this seems beyond belief, dan and everyone did nothing wrong, you can guarantee more to be released.
look at those released so far - they condemn the actions of gruden and pash, neither of whom are with the WFT (and yet both gruden's brother and bruce allen - every scumbag's best mate - were but there has been nothing from them as yet). for me, this says that whoever has them is just warming up. they are generating interest. you don't lead your trump card/email first. this is now news around the sporting world. certainly getting plenty of coverage down here. everyone waiting to see what is next. it will start to focus on members of the WFT very soon, i'd guess. i suspect that the emails which may come out in the next few weeks will be much more serious and much more damaging to members of the WFT admin, especially.
also, with the current political atmosphere, especially with the cheerleaders making some fairly serious accusations, a lot of people outside the NFL and the WFT are going to be taking a much closer look and getting involved (remember that this is washington - they can't help themselves). as was said, a $10 mill fine and the removal of dan, even if replaced by his wife, is really serious stuff. i'll be stunned if much more does not come out.
i wonder if dan might have made a monumental mistake in having his wife take over. the cheerleaders are saying she has lied. who knows what is in the emails about her, but it becomes very hard for the NFL to say well we removed one snyder and he was replaced by another and now we have to replace her, but don't worry, we'll leave the team in their hands, especially with someone like bezos prepared to splash the cash. i am starting to wonder whether they are running out of sacrificial lambs and the synders might have to go. the real problem - and this is purely speculation - might come if goodell is implicated in anything in any way, even if minor. he might have to go as well.
the other 31 owners, while they might usually bind together, do not want the actions of dan and tanya to start seeing ratings drop and sponsors leaving. when it starts to cost them serious money (and every chance this could), they'll abandon dan like he is richard nixon caught with a naked schoolgirl. and does anyone really think goodell would fall on his sword to save dan?

one final point tonight - no doubt the WFT admin has a fair idea that it is not cream rising to the surface. so what does any organisation do? pulls up the drawbridge asap, but that horse might have already bolted, if the emails are in unfriendly hands - and clearly at least some are.
next option is a distraction. well winning games would not hurt but good luck there and it would be temporary. so someone came up with the bright idea to retire number 21 (at the very least, horribly late for sean taylor and 28 - darrell green - and green is such a beloved former player and respected ambassador that it staggers me they were not clever enough to include him). i believe dan has always said no numbers would be retired, but needs must. and yet, in typical WFT fashion, they have made a complete barry of the entire thing. hey, we are retiring 28 and give three days notice so many fans can't even arrange to get there and they forget to tell the family. you could not make that up. it smacks of utter desperation. to me, it screams a last minute idea, a bad one, to distract from what is coming.
what will piss me off beyond measure is if the actions of these muppets cause us to suffer salary cap penalties.

The Redskins/NFL spent 1000's man hours reading 650,000 emails. 40 women with attorneys want them made public. The result? Gruden is forced to resign even though he had nothing to do with the team or the investigation. If Goodell erased the Patriots spy gate tapes, you can bet all day he's busy hitting the delete button. John

[SpecialK]

I see Mark Davis on the Hot seat very soon...  

[Ken Gargett]

7 hours ago, JohnnyO said:

Dont be giving Steven Ross such a pat on the back. He asked the city to finance the $400 million roof, while he had just donated $200 million to Michigan University football program. Citing previous owners Wayne Huizenga and Joe Robbie as benefactors of preferential tax breaks, Ross wanted a piece of the action at a cost to John Q Public. They're all a bunch of miserable schlamiels. John 

 

The Redskins/NFL spent 1000's man hours reading 650,000 emails. 40 women with attorneys want them made public. The result? Gruden is forced to resign even though he had nothing to do with the team or the investigation. If Goodell erased the Patriots spy gate tapes, you can bet all day he's busy hitting the delete button. John

i have a suspicion that they might be a smidge late with their delete button. clearly someone has got hold of at least some of these emails, possibly all. as soon as gruden claimed the first email was out of character etc, they dumped a few more suggesting it was not. this will not come out because goodell/the NFL/ the WFT has a crisis of conscience. rather because an outsider is currently, as a former prime minister of ours liked to say, 'doing them slowly'.

it is going to be interesting to see. 

as to kraft, sure, all appalling but if the police drop the charges and he is not prosecuted, becomes very hard for the NFL to do anything, even if they wanted to (suspect they most certainly did not). a judge ruled out the video and so there was not enough to proceed. an analogy was ray lewis. that was raised elsewhere of another example of the NFL protecting its own. again, not found guilty of anything so what can they do? 

here, the emails might provide the evidence. i suspect that no one will be charged or convicted of anything but the evidence of conduct etc will be available for all to see. and in this case, this is up to the NFL. they won't be able to hide behind the fact that no charges were laid. will be interesting. or perhaps it is simply wishful thinking by me that the snyders will be consigned to the rubbish bin of history. 

[riderpride]

9 hours ago, JohnnyO said:

Dont be giving Steven Ross such a pat on the back. He asked the city to finance the $400 million roof, while he had just donated $200 million to Michigan University football program. Citing previous owners Wayne Huizenga and Joe Robbie as benefactors of preferential tax breaks, Ross wanted a piece of the action at a cost to John Q Public. They're all a bunch of miserable schlamiels. John 

 

The Redskins/NFL spent 1000's man hours reading 650,000 emails. 40 women with attorneys want them made public. The result? Gruden is forced to resign even though he had nothing to do with the team or the investigation. If Goodell erased the Patriots spy gate tapes, you can bet all day he's busy hitting the delete button. John

The point wasn't to give him a pat on the back or build a shrine in his honor. He's a billionaire - he didn't get there being Mother Theresa and neither did any of the others. He explored every avenue available as a businessperson should. He still ponied up the dough and didn't throw a hissyfit and threaten to relocate. 

We may not like where his line is, but he does appear to have one. 

[Ken Gargett]

8 minutes ago, riderpride said:

The point wasn't to give him a pat on the back or build a shrine in his honor. He's a billionaire - he didn't get there being Mother Theresa and neither did any of the others. He explored every avenue available as a businessperson should. He still ponied up the dough and didn't throw a hissyfit and threaten to relocate. 

We may not like where his line is, but he does appear to have one. 

dan has a line. sadly, he is so short, he can reach it. never will. 

[BrightonCorgi]

The NFL is just doing a woke smoke show and is run by really unimpressive people.   The NFL dislikes their fan base.

[Cairo]

42 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

The NFL dislikes their fan base.

I bet they dislike their former fan base as well.    😀

[El Presidente]

The days of playing a straight bat, publicly apologising and weather out the media storm appear to be over. 

For Dan

•  always assume the smoking gun (s) are out there. 
• Hire the best racially appropriate female PR disaster specialist available. 
• put in place an ownership structure that you don't appear to directly control but do. 
• feign illness 
• Get someone from BLM to supprt you publicly.
• Go into a form of relevent rehab. Your lawyer has the appropriate one on speed dial. 
• Keep your head down for a year. 
• Fix your Oline and get another receiver. 

 

[Ken Gargett]

2 hours ago, El Presidente said:

The days of playing a straight bat, publicly apologising and weather out the media storm appear to be over. 

For Dan

•  always assume the smoking gun (s) are out there. 
• Hire the best racially appropriate female PR disaster specialist available. 
• put in place an ownership structure that you don't appear to directly control but do. 
• feign illness 
• Get someone from BLM to supprt you publicly.
• Go into a form of relevent rehab. Your lawyer has the appropriate one on speed dial. 
• Keep your head down for a year. 
• Fix your Oline and get another receiver. 

 

thankfully part of the deal with riveria coaching was for dan to bugger off and make no football or draft selections. we did get another WR - samuels - who is an excllent WR but sadly has played about two downs all year with injuries. 

the rest? well he supposedly put his wife in charge to deflect this but she is no better. 

[Ken Gargett]

7 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

The NFL is just doing a woke smoke show and is run by really unimpressive people.   The NFL dislikes their fan base.

no argument about the unimpressive people but attempting to fight the blatant racism exhibited by people in positions of power and trying to reverse the harrassment of women, which basically started the original investigation, is "a woke smoke show". that is a crock. 

[Fuzz]

The WFT should rename themselves again to WTF.

[Ken Gargett]

16 minutes ago, Fuzz said:

The WFT should rename themselves again to WTF.

this may not come as a surprise but that is not the first time someone has suggested that. or, i suspect, the millionth. 

[BrightonCorgi]

11 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

no argument about the unimpressive people but attempting to fight the blatant racism exhibited by people in positions of power and trying to reverse the harrassment of women, which basically started the original investigation, is "a woke smoke show". that is a crock. 

There are many examples of the NFL's woke smoke show from playing a 2nd National Anthem, allowing players to take a knee of the real national anthem, to promotion of divisive ideologies that have nothing to do with football.   Plenty of other examples beyond that.

Now the NFL is thought police, but only when it suits them. 

[alloy]

9 hours ago, Fuzz said:

The WFT should rename themselves again to WTF.

Thought they already were! 😢

[bassistheplace]

Goodell is a hypocritcal woke POS. Other than that all is well in the NFL

[Chibearsv]

Taunting - aka "Nah Nah Na Nah Nah" is a personal foul.  I wonder if market research shows that co-ed touch football is the direction the league should go.  

[Kitchen]

First, this is nothing but a superficial woke sacrifice to distract from the possibility of any real wrong doing by WFT (no actual emails concerning them were released even though there was an investigation) along with other controversy the NFL is dealing with.  One such controversy that was starting to get press in the media was that for the last three decades, about,  the league was using a practice called race norming to determine how much to settle for with black players with brain injuries as opposed to white players.  Lets just say they were paying out less to black players based purely on racist preferences and ... just like that ... no one is paying attention to it anymore.  

I am sure also that this was looked at as a great way to get rid of a couch that was over paid and of the wrong political leaning.  

However the bigger part of the story is what this means for overall society.  We have a group of people, throughout society, who now think it is within their right to scour through anyone's personal correspondences throughout their entire lives for any reason and then destroy their life with, albeit, off-color, comments, which effected no one (at the time), that person made in private without any chance of forgiveness.  How so Stalinesque.  This is a standard no one anywhere can live up to, and it is not for making a great society.  

[BrightonCorgi]

12 minutes ago, Kitchen said:

However the bigger part of the story is what this means for overall society.  We have a group of people, throughout society, who now think it is within their right to scour through anyone's personal correspondences throughout their entire lives for any reason and then destroy their life with, albeit, off-color, comments, which effected no one (at the time), that person made in private without any chance of forgiveness.  How so Stalinesque.  This is a standard no one anywhere can live up to, and it is not for making a great society.  

If someones most obvious traits are off limits, what are we to use when talking smack about someone else?  Which traits are safe?  Asking for someone else.

[Chibearsv]

18 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

If someones most obvious traits are off limits, what are we to use when talking smack about someone else?  Which traits are safe?  Asking for someone else.

Back in the day on the basketball court, nothing was off limits as far as smack talk except talking about someone that didn't have a chance to dish it back.  An email to someone about someone else's personal traits as an insult...that's pretty far out of bounds, even for my era.  Agreed though that digging it up and publishing it over ten years later is BS.

[Ken Gargett]

1 hour ago, Kitchen said:

However the bigger part of the story is what this means for overall society.  We have a group of people, throughout society, who now think it is within their right to scour through anyone's personal correspondences throughout their entire lives for any reason and then destroy their life with, albeit, off-color, comments, which effected no one (at the time), that person made in private without any chance of forgiveness.  How so Stalinesque.  This is a standard no one anywhere can live up to, and it is not for making a great society.  

personally, i think so much of this is more about money than politics.  and i'd agree that if anyone dissected most of our lives over decades then the divinities couldn't save us. no doubt almost all of us have said and done stupid and thoughtless things. hopefully we get better with age. but there would also be plenty of things that could now be interpreted in a way detrimental to us that was never intended in the first place. or the world was a different place where things were more accepted than now. it is not easy. 

but to suggest that this equates to people in society thinking they have a right to go through personal correspondence, i don't see that as applying here at all. this is the correspondence from the WFT which is a franchise that is part of the NFL. it is not personal. no doubt there is much that none of us will ever know re the rules and customs within that organisation, but the WFT handed these emails over. there was no court case to try and avoid this. presumably they knew as part of the NFL they had little choice. and they copped a $10 million fine and dan's removal without a squeak. one suspects that dan thinks he got off lightly because he is not known for simply accepting anything like that. 

gruden's emails were not sent to bruce allen's personal email account - he sent them to the account at the WFT. may be he even sent them from his own corporate accounts. this is not someone going over bruce's personal stuff. maybe gruden did not think of that but that is on him. it was not made in private. plus, we all know that there is every chance of crap getting out. so if you make the statements, good chance they will become public. especially if you are high profile and very few people in the NFL are as high profile as gruden - superbowl winning coach and long term commentator. even bruce allen has a high profile for an administrator - i can't believe we will not hear a lot more about him as he seems the link. he was dan's best mate for ten years, he was with gruden at oakland and tampa, he is the bloke pash dealt with. we now see the oakland CEO coming out and saying she had complained about him a number of times at oakland when they were both there. nothing done. 

the fact that so many organisations did nothing so often is why this is coming out. trask said gruden would not work with her. something should have been done. the pash/allen stuff - something should have been done. the WFT cheerleaders years of complaints - something should have been done. and at all times, if something was done, it would never have got to this stage. 

to suggest it is okay to make those statements because it supposedly affected no one at the time, although gruden's actions and comments seem more widespread and the actions in relation to the WFT cheerleaders certainly affected people, is no excuse. these things come out so they will affect people. gruden then lied about it which hardly helps. do you really think that gruden should have continued coaching because his comments were in the past (though clearly some not so far in the past)? would have made for an interesting locker room. 

 

10 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

There are many examples of the NFL's woke smoke show from playing a 2nd National Anthem, allowing players to take a knee of the real national anthem, to promotion of divisive ideologies that have nothing to do with football.   Plenty of other examples beyond that.

Now the NFL is thought police, but only when it suits them. 

fair enough. i suspect we are at cross purposes here and mine didn't reflect what you were getting at.