We’re six weeks away from the start of a new NFL campaign, but we may already have identified the big winners of the pending professional football season.
That would be the Washington Commanders and their fans, who have emerged from a nearly quarter century of masochistic behavior. Under the stewardship of Daniel Snyder, the Washington franchise, under its current name and the racially insensitive previous one, careened from one misstep to another.
On the field, the Commanders won just under half their games from 1999 on. They reached the playoffs only six times during that period and finished last in average attendance, even after they pared down the size of their Landover stadium.
However, it was off the field where Snyder’s organization ran far afield from the standards of decency.
Investigations conducted by news organizations and the NFL itself found that Snyder and people connected to the team engaged in conduct that either tolerated or flat out promoted sexual harassment.
Results of the league’s probe were released two years ago and called the Washington workplace toxic and unprofessional. Snyder was forced to step away from daily management of the team for a time and the organization was fined $10 million.
Through Congressional hearings, lawsuits and reports that Snyder collected information on other owners and Commissioner Roger Goodell to try to hold on to the team, the drumbeat for him to relinquish control grew louder and louder.
However, it wasn’t until reports that Snyder may have withheld revenue from the league surfaced that the push to get him out got serious.
Josh Harris, the principal owner of the Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, convened an investor group and made an offer of just over $6 billion to Snyder, a price 7.5 times the $800 million that was paid in 1999.
When the sale became official a couple of weeks ago, you’d have thought normally staid Washington had become Endor, the forest moon where the rebels defeated the empire in the Star Wars saga. On Snyder’s way out, the league released a report chronicling sexual harassment and financial irregularities. He was slapped with a record $60 million fine, a pittance compared to what he got for the team, but it’s not nothing.
In the two weeks since the sale, Harris and his investment group, which includes NBA legend Earvin Magic Johnson, have set about trying to restore the Commanders’ reputation in the D.C. community and beyond. Last week, the front office barred a pair of local radio announcers who demeaned a female TV reporter attempting to cover the team’s training camp.
They called the woman Barbie and insinuated that she was there as a cheerleader. Through the ban, the team immediately served notice that things would be different now that Snyder’s gone. At the same time, Harris and Johnson suggested that they’d be amenable to restoring the previous team nickname, one that many Native American groups labored long and mightily to remove.
After so many years of losing, the Commanders may still need a little while longer to learn how to win.
And that’s how I see it for this week. You can reach us via email with your questions and comments at Sports at Large at gmail.com. And follow me on Threads and Twitter at Sports at Large.
Until next week, for all of us here, I’m Milton Kent. Thanks for listening and enjoy the games.
