Marc Fisher co-authored a story in the Washington Post this weekend entitled “Washington’s NFL Team: From Passion to Pariah,” and he joined Grant & Danny Monday to discuss the nuts and bolts of how he and Liz Clarke came to that conclusion.
“It really is kind of subjective to some extent; there are numbers, like the value of the franchise – which has been jacked up in the last few days – and attendance that went from first to last in Snyder’s time,” Fisher said. “But, there is the unsaid aspect in how this franchise brought the region together like nothing else did; it crossed racial, geographic, political, and economic divides. In the upper deck you had families who had been going to games together for years, and in the suites, the movers and shakers of this town did business. We found Snyder’s management of the franchise was a huge problem, but there were also other factors that played an important role in undermining the bond between this franchise and their fans.”
Demographics – specifically, a lot of newcomers to the District and its suburbs – and competition from sports franchises both in town (the arrival of the Nationals and the rise of the Capitals and Wizards) and in the region (read: the Ravens) were among those factors. Of course, the on-field turmoil helped, too, and as Fisher said, “When the Redskins quit the District for FedEx Field, they left a lot of fans behind.”
Fisher and Scott compared Snyder to the Steinbrenner family – a comparison Yankees fans identify with in terms of “hating the owner,” despite that team’s success – although in this case, the hate wasn’t as “fun” as it might have been in NYC.
“In the case of people like Steinbrenner, who turn into the Boogeyman for everything that’s wrong with the franchise, that became more of a fun thing because the team won,” Fisher said. “With Snyder, everything he did to diminish this franchise led to an even worse product on the field, so when you add in the stewing of the fans, you get this recipe for disaster that was different than Steinbrenner.”
Had the Redskins turned WFT turned Commanders won more often, perhaps that wouldn’t have been an issue, and Fisher noted how the Nationals have been a moribund franchise under the Lerners for a long time, but the commitment to trying to win, and the 2012 rebuild that led eventually to the 2019 World Series, also bought a lot of gravitas.
“A good owner and real mediocrity probably would’ve been okay,” Fisher said in the case of Snyder, “certainly better than what we had, which was the worst of all worlds.”
The Lerners did try to sell the Nationals in the future, and likely will after Ted’s recent passing, but Ted Lerner was around and engaged with the fans…something Snyder would, and could, never do.
“He would need double Secret Service protection if he showed his face, which he hasn’t for quite some time,” Fisher said. “His personality is what rubbed people the wrong way, in addition to his misdeeds.”
Hear Fisher’s entire segment above, including this blunt take on Washington Football economics: “To win, you need $20 million performances from $1 million players; Snyder paid players $20 million for $1 million performances.”
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