Jump to content
Washington Football Team Logo
Extremeskins
Forum Rules and Guidelines

WP: A once-proud franchise, the Redskins are showing signs of foundational cracks

hail2skins

By hail2skins
in The Stadium

Recommended Posts

RemoveSnyder

RemoveSnyder

Posted
Posted

Snyder has to be one of the all time great hucksters of his era. He's one lucky SOB to have gotten the money he did, when he did. 

 

Let's be honest, making multiple hundreds of millions of dollars in the late 90s through selling a telemarketing company is the 18th century equivalent of becoming king of england by selling water divining rods, or the old west equivalent of becoming president by selling immortality elixir. 

 

I once read that he at one time was leasing jets which were sending college spring breakers down to florida, etc.

That's his target audience, frat boys with Dad's money. 

 

He's one of those insidious marketing leeches who insinuates himself in-between drunk-ass, or drunk craving, people trying to get somewhere for a blowout party, who have loose wallets and lessened inhibitions. He doesn't actually provide anything of substance, didn't build the planes, didn't fly the planes, didn't build the resorts, didn't maintain the resorts, he just got himself in-between two willing partners and somehow got some money. 

 

He's a sidler. 

He probably kicks himself for not creating 'girls gone wild' himself. 

 

He basically speculated with other people's money and unapologetically "marketed" bull****, that of which I can't even decipher looking back at it today, until someone was dumb enough to pay him a ****ton of money believing that his company was actually based in something real.

 

Guy was a con artist who struck it big on a fluke market that was all speculation and no substance. I guess some people were ****ing confused about what the internet really was and what telemarketing really was.

 

He was smart enough though to parlay his money into buying the washington team rather than sit on the money he got, just to wait for the people who he burned to eventually figure out telemarketing was all a scam and eventually sue him. For the first time he seemed to get a hold of a business with a tangible product. But he's squandered the opportunity, ruined the organization, because of who he is at his core. 

 

Whoever the hell it was that paid Snyder those multiple millions of dollars must have been the biggest horse's ass of the century. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
my_friend_goo

my_friend_goo

Posted
Posted

Showing signs? Feels to many of us that a major structural engineering job is needed sooner rather than later because the signs have been ignored for too long.

 

Maybe, though, this time the damage really is starting to have a more substantial effect if the consequence is that the bottom line is being hit. I can deal with that getting worse if it means that at some point Dan will finally clean house and install someone with the ability to set a vision for the team and hire the people who fit that vision and a set of values to which all in the franchise are assessed against and held accountable for. Like others I've lost the faith that this might one day happen. It needs somebody with a true track record of success, a success which lies in the present and future of football, not in the franchise's past. That doesn't seem to be the way things happen around here.

 

Still, I think the apathy is in the long term more damaging than the anger. The more fans simply stop investing their time and money in the team, the more likely the effects will be. That's not to say that those good folk who still turn up at FedEx field to root for the team 8 weeks a year are in the wrong, not by any means. The ones who might be vocal on their dissatisfaction with how the team is being run can keep it up though in my view. Whatever fans can do to get the message across via whatever means possible is welcome.

 

As a UK based fan who has made the trip across the pond twice, I'm in no hurry to repeat that pilgrimage.  This  is a great shame as both games I've seen have been exciting nail biters with the best possible outcome. As a child growing up with limited exposure to the team, but able to enjoy the glory days to an extent I didn't imagine that I'd ever make it over. Yet I was able to take my father, the man who sparked my interest in the team, with me for one of those journeys. It breaks my heart to feel the way I do, but I've been battling for some time with this. I bought gamepass once again this year and had the usual mixed bag of exhiliration and frustration in the early going.  The wins were fun, but it felt obvious that the ceiling was winning a weak division and little else. Once the wheels fell off, the root cause was to me inexcusable. The injury 'bug' stems from a combination of poor investment in injury prevention, cost cutting by picking up talented players with injury history and a soft approach to practice, problems that lie with the culture of the organisation and which have been ongoing for several seasons now. So it has reached the point  where I check the scores, the thread titles and headlines on this forums and that's  about it. On a Sunday,  I'll  pick a game that looks interesting, choose a team I'd prefer to win and try to enjoy a good football game. I can't invest as much emotion into these games and I'll more willingly let family life get in the way than if it were a skins game that I could face watching. I'll never support another team, I just can't, but until I see major changes, I'll remain distant. Inevitability I'll be keeping my eyes out for news of a front office massacre in the coming days, but I have no belief that it will happen and in this case the apathy will continue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
FrFan

FrFan

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, BRAVEONTHEWARPATH93 said:

 

Arrogant and contemptuous Dan sinking this once proud franchise.

 

 

12 hours ago, hail2skins said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/a-once-proud-franchise-the-redskins-are-showing-signs-of-foundational-cracks/2018/12/29/c5194e90-0b8d-11e9-85b6-41c0fe0c5b8f_story.html?utm_term=.0aa8f7b7ebc3

 

Brutal.

"The Redskins have posted a .413 winning percentage in nine full seasons on Allen’s watch and have lost off the field as well."

I'm shocked !

 

kkMGhLN.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Wildbunny

Wildbunny

Posted
Posted
43 minutes ago, my_friend_goo said:

Showing signs? Feels to many of us that a major structural engineering job is needed sooner rather than later because the signs have been ignored for too long.

 

Maybe, though, this time the damage really is starting to have a more substantial effect if the consequence is that the bottom line is being hit.

The main point in the article I believe is this one:

 

Dysfunction has been running in DC since Snyder bought the team. But since 4 years, economically the franchise is starting to take a nose dive due to all of these. Which will be a problem for the NFL.

 

They related that to Jerry Jones whom Daniel Snyder is often compared when it comes to the way he runs his franchise. Except Jerry Jones is making lots of money with his team, while Snyder isn't. And that's a huge thing for other NFL owners. There are some really competent ones in the NFL that could do wonders in DC. And some outsides of it that would probably do way better given the reigns of the Redskins.

 

Dan Snyder better find ways to stop the dollar bleeding anytime soon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Skinsinparadise

Skinsinparadise

Posted
Posted

the big paragraph for me is this below.  There was one beat guy who dissented from this point but I talked about this on the Bruce thread the other day which is some people like Keim and Paulsen say they don't get the rationale for fan discontent when there is some and Dan specifically is likely insulated from most of it.  Paulsen saying he hears he's not on social media, doesn't listen to talk radio.  The WP said before he doesn't even do email.  It paints a picture of a Greta Garbo type, who just hangs with people who tell him everything is great.  He goes out drinking with Bruce and they pat each other on the back for a job well done.🙄

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/a-once-proud-franchise-the-redskins-are-showing-signs-of-foundational-cracks/2018/12/29/c5194e90-0b8d-11e9-85b6-41c0fe0c5b8f_story.html?utm_term=.f2ddf895be53

Some close to Snyder say privately that he doesn’t fully grasp the extent of fans’ enmity. Like a quarterback who can’t read the whole field or spot open receivers, he fails to connect his squad’s poor performance, both on the field and at the turnstile, to the frequently tone-deaf moves of his unpopular front office.

Nor does he necessarily see his own hand in the mess, opting to find and fire scapegoats, as he did again this past week, ousting his handpicked chief operating officer, Brian Lafemina, less than eight months into the job. Snyder was said to be stunned by backlash among fans who railed on social media and besieged Redskins Park with angry phone calls. The team’s young marketing staff was bewildered, according to two people with knowledge of the in-house briefing on the purge of Lafemina and his top lieutenants.

In his penchant for blaming the Redskins’ woes on others, Snyder risks missing an essential point that was glaring this season: The team’s fan base is eroding, and he has few allies at a time when he sorely needs both.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
hail2skins

hail2skins

Posted
  • Author
Posted
40 minutes ago, Wildbunny said:

They related that to Jerry Jones whom Daniel Snyder is often compared when it comes to the way he runs his franchise. Except Jerry Jones is making lots of money with his team, while Snyder isn't. And that's a huge thing for other NFL owners. There are some really competent ones in the NFL that could do wonders in DC. And some outsides of it that would probably do way better given the reigns of the Redskins.

A fair chunk of the article is related to dwindling attendance, and I think it is going to be interesting to see how attendance numbers are reported next season, particularly after the firing of Lafemina.

 

Capacity at FedEx is listed at 82K, but I don't think that is the case at all.  When the stadium opened in '97, I seem to recall from a media guide that the lower level contained 27K seats, the club level 15K seats, and the upper level 33K seats which put the main seating bowl at 75K. The various suites probably added 4-5K to bring the capacity up to about 80K. But then Snyder added 8-9K seats more in the lower bowl with the cave and dream seats, and stuffed seats in at other miscellaneous locations to put the capacity up over 90K. But since 2010, at least half the upper decks seats have been removed. Some of that capacity was taken by the SRO sections, but even those sections were closed off this season. So I think the capacity is in reality around 75K at most. Attendance for the Dallas game was listed as 66300, and from being there, although there were noticeable empty seats in the upper deck, the place was pretty much packed otherwise

 

Now as far as reporting, I think the Skins took every single seat/position they had that either they sold or was made available to ticket brokers, which gave you the attendance figures of the mid-to-high 70s that have been reported in recent seasons. But not that many folks attended the games, as there have been noticeable empties in the club and upper decks during those seasons. That said, with the new strategy of cutting out the brokers this season, you saw the resulting plummet in attendance numbers. And I do think that from a butts in seats perspective, its not a stretch, IMO, to say that the number of folks in the club and upper seating bowl fell by a third this season. I do think the fallout from the Kirk situation, as well as the Caps Cup success, were also contributing factors to a lesser degree.

 

The article quotes the team's PR consultant indicating that it plans to "restructure" the marketing plan for 2019, indicating that Lafemina's plan "didn't work out as well as it would've liked." I think removal of additional seats and the lowering of prices should be on the table. But at the least, the Skins will probably go back to making the seats available to brokers, which will result in lower secondary market prices again, and probably at least more butts in seats in 2019, if not as many as there were in 2017. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
my_friend_goo

my_friend_goo

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Wildbunny said:

 

They related that to Jerry Jones whom Daniel Snyder is often compared when it comes to the way he runs his franchise. Except Jerry Jones is making lots of money with his team, while Snyder isn't. And that's a huge thing for other NFL owners. There are some really competent ones in the NFL that could do wonders in DC. And some outsides of it that would probably do way better given the reigns of the Redskins.

 

Dan Snyder better find ways to stop the dollar bleeding anytime soon.

Financial failure may be the only short term route of exit from Dan's reign. But I wonder how. If the team is losing money and therefore likewise the NFL, on what basis so the NFL intervene? I don't think that the redskins would be the only such team and if other owners with a history of low input into the league's coffers aren't having their hands forced, then why single out Snyder? If he is universally despised, there could be a coordinated effort amongst the more powerful owners and league to entrap him into a particular PR disaster, giving the league an excuse to intervene. But how much worse than some of the stories in the past do they have to go?

 

Maybe, just maybe, financial ruin is closer for Snyder on a personal level than we think. Could explain the lack of investment in certain areas. Plenty of companies have gone under after their dire financial situation is only made clear at the very end.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
London Kev

London Kev

Posted
Posted

That's a tough read, but fair.

 

It's scarey how similar that article is to the many written about my local soccer team, Charlton Athletic FC.

 

The owner (Roland Duchatelet) is hated by the fans and runs things like it's his own personal fantasy team. He sacked our beloved manager Chris Powell, brought in an inexperienced friend to act as a puppet CEO, signs players himself and has plunged the club into massive debt, a debt that is owed to himself!

 

The fans decided that enough is enough and formed a protest group called the Coalition Against Roland Duchatelet (CARD) and have carried out some memorable protests, including throwing thousands of plastic pigs, beach balls and crisp packets onto the pitch to disrupt games, staging a mock funeral parade of the club, driving a custom sign-written taxi to Duchatelet's home town in Belgium and generally boycotting games.

 

The protests have apparently worked and he is finally in the process of selling the club. Fan power at it's finest. 

 

https://www.dreamteamfc.com/c/news-gossip/430859/footballs-front-lines-charlton-athletic-roland-duchatelet/

Link to comment
Share on other sites
profusion

profusion

Posted
Posted

I'm also not optimistic about the league intervening to rescue the Redskins. History suggests otherwise. They've let Mike Brown flounder with the Bengals for two decades. They let the Bidwill family destroy the Cardinals after Charles Bidwill died on the eve of the team's only championship in 1947. It took Mike Bidwill taking the reins for them to stop being a joke. 

 

The one thing that might change this is the need to have the Redskins as a premier franchise in a powerful NFC East. The league always does better when it can market the East rivalries. Kinda tough to market the Skins nationally these days. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...