Amid the news about the owner of Washington’s professional football team exploring a sale, a pointed memory surfaced. Known as the Commanders since early this year and the Washington Football Team the two years prior, the team previously was known as the Redskins. For short, they also were known as the ‘Skins.
In late Summer 2000 I started a job with The Prince George’s Journal, a now-defunct newspaper just east of DC. My initial responsibility was general assignment reporting, so often I found my own news stories and pursued them. I knew the football team was popular, but I wasn’t particularly fazed. However, with their home field in Prince George’s County, the team and its activity was hard to ignore. One time I reported county police responded to the field because a man had been caught breaking, entering and ripping off the team store.
That home stadium is called FedEx Field, which had been changed shortly before my arrival from Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, memorializing the late, respected longtime owner. It’s about five miles due east of Washington. I had heard multiple names attached to the corporate limits where the team’s home is located: Raljon, Summerfield and Landover.
In mid-late October, editors informed me complaints were coming into our now-late sister publication The Montgomery Journal regarding restrictions against parking for home games. A major roadway stretching northwest to southeast of the field is State Route 202. North of the field, across 202, was the Landover Mall, which had been in disrepair for some time, prompting one of my co-workers to describe it as ‘a flea market’.
For home games at the stadium, fans of the football team used to park for free at the mall then walk the 15-ish minutes to the stadium. But in October 2000, callers stated that as of late they were disallowed from doing so.
Editors tasked me to the FedEx Field parking story and as luck would have it, the next game was October 30 against the Tennessee Titans, a ritualistic celebration known as Monday Night Football.
Off I went that Monday eve to the stadium, finding my way to a pressure point where I saddled up to a county police officer tasked with confronting walkers. The officer told anyone approaching by foot that they could go no further because if they did they were trespassing.
‘This is Mr. Snyder’s private property’, the officer told the fans, referring to team owner Daniel M. Snyder.
I had not heard too much about Snyder to that point but then the Gates of the Underworld opened wide. He built up such a reputation that he was known in the mid-Atlantic as ‘The Danny’, which is roughly comparable to how the other guy was known in New York as ‘The Donald’.
Some fans were incredulous, stopping dead in their tracks and confusedly looking at the officer. Others were irate as they’d driven all the way from Memphis or Nashville or Washington or Maryland or Virginia.
While those on foot and in cars were forcibly re-routed toward the main entryway for the paid parking lot, the fishy stench was rancid. At one point when no fans were before us, the officer and I did some simple math. We guessed the parking fee was $40 then multiplied that by an estimated number of cars needing to park.
The next day I called the team and was directed to a vice president named Karl Swanson. I told him of some of the complaints and he expressed concerns about the safety of pedestrians crossing 202.
‘Someone’s going to get killed!’ Swanson exclaimed, then responding to my telling him many believe the true motive is collecting parking fees on stadium grounds by belting out: ‘That’s absurd!’
I asked about the construction of a pedestrian footbridge spanning 202 and the vice president of a renowned, multi-billion-dollar professional sports franchise derisively asks: ‘Do you know how expensive that is?!’
My next call was to the county police, where an administrator was tasked with handling the calls. That manager told me: ‘Someone’s going to get killed!’
That was the first demonstration of the team’s powerful regional grip. But, otherwise, the team was less-than-powerful.
One consistency about that football team was it was routinely horrendous. But, despite the tragic, woeful on-field performances, it still gripped a loyal following.
Off-field newsworthiness is another story, also where Snyder’s persona shone through via high-profile messes.
Among them: he gouged fans to park for tailgating; he hired crews to clear cut a rare, protected species on his rural Maryland property for views of the Potomac River without permission from the National Park Service; and National Football League and congressional investigators are probing reports of rampant sexual harassment practices, ticket-selling scandals and additional charges contributing to a toxic culture.
One Spring day many years ago, I sent out a blast email informing friends that Ben & Jerry’s was conducting its yearly Free Cone Day. Among those who replied was a judge whose courthouse I wrote about so I searched for a nearby store and called His Honor with information about that location, which was at the Six Flags amusement park in Bowie. But then I realized who owns the park.
‘No way Mr. Snyder will give away anything for free’, I said.
‘Ohhh no!’ he agreed while laughing.
In my years living about 10 miles from the stadium, I only entered the place once. That was a Friday nite in early October 2002 when I attended a Rolling Stones show and somehow managed to find free parking nearby.
Chatter about potential buyers flared very shortly after news broke about the owner exploring a sale, with high-profile names being Jeff Bezos and Jay-Z, among others. Some estimates put the franchise sale as high as $7 billion.