Being an owner is the best job in all of professional sports because you never have to take the blame for anything. The stadium is awful? Blame the local government. A player is bad? Blame the coach. The coach is bad? Blame the search firm, or the GM, or that guy at your pheasant-hunting club who recommended him. Toxic workplace environment? Blame the team president, because how can you control all of that while floating on the Mediterranean in your super yacht? The thing has a two-story IMAX theater; do we really have time to deal with everything happening on dry land?
However, upon the news that Daniel Snyder could be, possibly, maybe, selling the Commanders after hiring Bank of America to explore the possibilities, we have reached a point where the buck stops at the billionaires’ club. Owners, by a 24-of-32 vote, would have to approve another new owner. Presuming, for the purposes of this column, that it’s happening, it’s now their job to actually do a modicum of research and make sure that the next member of their secret society isn’t a stain on the brand.
Obviously, it is good news that Snyder will be moving on. It’s good news for all of the employees who, for years, raised awareness of their own personal horror stories. It’s good, in a different way, for fans of the club, who have begged for Snyder’s removal for almost two decades now. It’s good for folks who would, at some point, like to walk into a crisp, new home stadium near the nation’s capital. It’s good for the fellow owners who won’t have to go through the franchise’s stadium receipts to make sure the NFL money didn’t land in the Kenny Chesney concert money bin (a claim which, in fairness to Snyder, he has denied).
