On Friday, July 21, the NFL’s 31 owners voted unanimously to approve the sale of the Washington Commanders franchise to Josh Harris and his 21-member ownership group, ending the troubled regime of Daniel Snyder. To commemorate the sale, I asked my friend and former colleague from the Loudoun Times-Mirror (Leesburg, Va.) sports department, and lifelong Washington fan, to share his thoughts on what the sale means to followers of the burgundy and gold. The footnotes are mine. - Brian
There was some novel written back in the day that started, "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times."1 Or something like that.
I'm a football fan, not an English major. And as a die-hard believer in Joseph Jackson Gibbs being the second coming of Jesus Christ, I lived and died for football Sundays and my beloved Washington Redskins.
Three Super Bowl championships in 10 years. Numerous title games. Record-breaking performances in the biggest game. All of that, I witnessed in the first 20 years of my life.
Then, as another famous novelist once coined the phrase, a black hole sun took over my life.2
Two dates can simultaneously take the blame for what has been the last 24 years of hell, not “hail.”
April 6, 1997 and May 25, 1999.
No, these aren't the milestone dates in my life that led me to being a great leader of a third-world country. Nor are they momentous dates like the birthdays of my children. These dates are now notorious to Redskins fans as possibly the worst days ever in the history of our franchise.
The former refers to the death of our iconic owner and leader, Jack Kent Cooke. The man, no doubt a crooked, absurd business tycoon, placed a priority on winning the D.M.V. area that had not been seen before. Yeah, the Bullets had won a championship before the Skins, but, as was the case back then, and still is now, NO ONE cares about the Bullets (Wizards).3
The latter date, meanwhile, introduced us to what would be a period of time in sports history that will never be duplicated again.
The day Daniel Snyder bought my burgundy and gold heart, no one had a clue who he was. No one knew what he owned. No one knew what business he made his money from. NO ONE KNEW THE CRAP WE WOULD GO THROUGH.
Deion Sanders. Bruce Smith. Albert Haynesworth.
All Hall of Fame players. The first two with actual busts residing in Canton. The last guy in the Hall of Crooks Fame. Snyder decided these three guys, each way past their prime, could lead us back to the heyday.
Deion signed a 7-year/$56 million dollar contract. Played one season. Then in a true “Prime” performance we have all become used to, took his ball and went home. Forcing Washington to cut AND pay him.
Being a huge Virginia Tech Hokies fan, I can say I loved the Smith signing. He did play four seasons at FedEx Field, recording 29 sacks. Breaking Reggie White's all-time career sack total as a Redskin.
Albert, Albert, Albert. No other man made more money lying on his back doing nothing than Albert. Well, maybe Ron Jeremy.
A hundred million dollars of waste. That's $315,457.41 per pound of useless flesh Snyder paid for.4
Years and years to follow, hope seemingly faded at the beginning of each season.
One almost felt that because Snyder was so hated around the league, the league was doing all it could to keep success from coming to the nation's capital. But, reflection and honesty has only revealed that all the bad came because of the owner himself, and those which he surrounded himself.
Now, I could go on and on about questionable decision-making made over the past 24 years and how each one of those set the team back further and further in the football spectrum. Like the last two and a half decades, it would just cause me to shed more tears and take away time I will never get back.
Present Day. Positive Day. And, another reference to a literary legend — Big E. “It's a NEW DAY!”5
July 20, 2023 marked the day that HOPE was reborn in Redskins/Football Team/Commanders6 fan around the world. And that's by no means hyperbole. It's actually factual.
The man, Josh Harris, was also a fan of the team growing up, just like our previous owner. However, Harris has aligned himself with stupid-successful businessmen in Mitchell Rales and Mark Ein. He has also enlisted in his ownership group a worldwide celebrity and renown winner in Earvin "Magic" Johnson. Dude has lived with HIV since being diagnosed in 1991, when no one thought that would ever be possible.
Getting Washington back to being the greatest franchise in the NFL will be easier than my youngest son getting Robux or Shiny Rocks from my wife on a Friday.
I witnessed something that no one in this great creation of a universe could have ever seen coming. Johnson walked into a press conference alongside JOE GIBBS. What?!?!
Not an hour after buying the team, Harris called into 106.7 The Fan. The radio station had staged parties at two bars in the Northern Virginia and D.C. area to celebrate the completion of the $6.05 billion sale. The man went on to buy all those in attendance beer. WTF? Who is this guy? Where has this guy been all my life? And why has he all of a sudden jumped up in my ratings of favorite humans in my life?
1. Grandma
2. My wife
3. Josh Harris
There's only one answer to that. Hope. I now have HOPE.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
As hard as I tried to search this novel on Google, the only reference I could find to a “black hole sun” involved 1990s grunge band, Soundgarden, and its late lead singer, Chris Cornell.
The Washington Bullets became the Wizards on May 15, 1997. Abe Pollin, the Washington owner at the time, believed the name condoned gun violence.
Haynesworth, who weighed 350 lbs., signed a contract for $100 million over seven seasons on February 27, 2009. It is generally considered one of the worst free agency signings in the history of the NFL.
This reference is not to an actual literary legend, but WWE professional wrestler, Big E, who is part of the wrestling tag team, The New Day.
Snyder finally relented to the name change in July 2020, when major corporate sponsors, including FedEx, Nike and PepsiCo, threatened to cut ties with the franchise. The team played as the Football Team until re-branding as the Commanders for the 2022 season.
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