Washington fans clamoring for Dan Snyder to sell his football team is nothing new, which is why so many were left feeling dejected after a Washington Post expose in July never resulted in anything punitive for the owner.
That investigative report rightly fired up critics en masse, decrying the owner for seemingly fostering an environment fraught with unreported sexual harassment claims. In the end, Snyder announced an independent investigation — dubiously paid for on his dime — in an effort to clean house of any lingering bad actors.
But something about The Post's latest offering — a new expose published Wednesday alleging further harassment from 25 new accusers, this time drawing a direct line to Snyder — feels different.
The reaction feels acutely more intense, the anger distinctly more palpable, and Snyder more defenseless to the coming onslaught.
It's as though there are no more bodies to hurl under the bus. The firings that resulted from the previous report are in the past and there's a renewed thirst for blood, this time from the head of the snake.
Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins is leading this charge, devouring the NFL for being complicit, seeming to allow environments like Washington's to fester.
"Snyder's fellow owners have been reluctant to force a sale of the Washington Football Team merely on the grounds of his shoddy business practices," Jenkins writes. "They lacked the will to get rid of him, and now they're going to have to eat his dog food."
"They find themselves guilty by association with a business that produced bootleg porn," she continues on, "with an owner who former cheerleader Tiffany Bacon Scourby says tried to send her to the hotel room of one of his old high school buddies.
"They're partners with a man who sank a flagship organization, leaving behind a smutty storefront. If they don't purge this guy from their ranks, they own his franchise's misdeeds, past and future."
The all-important question, as JP Finlay notes, is if the uproar grows loud enough to force a reckoning in the league.
106.7 The Fan columnist Rick Snider says the NFL needs to open its own investigation into Snyder.
"The NFL needs to really know what's happening in Ashburn, and if the Post stories are true, the league should suspend Snyder and encourage him to sell the franchise," Snider writes in his latest column. "A team president was named last week so let him run the operation. If these outrageous stories continue flowing, then it's truly time to force Snyder to sell."
What's below is merely a snapshot of the wrath that's sure to come:
There is no argument for Dan Snyder to keep the franchise. pic.twitter.com/pzTFKlqTKv
— Cian (@Cianaf) August 26, 2020
