Only for the fact that Dan Synder wasn’t physically present to watch his name get dragged through the dirt in New York City on Tuesday afternoon, the autumn quarterly meeting of NFL owners had an unavoidably Five Families showdown in Wappingers Falls feel about it.
The latter fictional / semi-fictional summit was more emergency than scheduled; The Godfather’s most powerful don, Vito Corleone, had had enough after his son Sonny was ensnared by his own rage and brutally murdered at a toll booth. And so, for the sake of peace and profit, the warring Corleone and Tattaglia families needed Emilio Barzini to oversee an intervention.
Synder is beyond hope, though, and it’s less an intervention and more of a push to rid the NFL family of its very own Fredo. Synder is the controversial and corrupt owner of the recently rebranded Washington Commanders, formerly the Washington Football Team and, prior to that, for far too long, the Washington Redskins.
That overtly racist and murderous moniker only endured as long as it did because Synder and pretty much nobody else believed it was the marketing hill they would die on.
And now, in a move very much consistent with a character who felt clinging on to something like an arcanely team name was appropriate, he is cruel digging his fingernails deep into the flesh of the most unpopular ownership in American sports.
Synder is currently suspended from the duties of being an owner, a dagger to his ego that is probably being contravened at every imaginable turn.
The suspension came about earlier this summer after the first half of the year delivered the twin threat of financial irregularity and sexual misconduct. Truly a football team that overachieves in everything but where it ought to.
Snyder and his regime (but let’s be honest, mainly Snyder) are alleged to “have engaged in a troubling, long-running, and potentially unlawful pattern of financial conduct” that is said to have involved withholding up to $5 million in refundable deposits from season ticket holders and also hiding money that was supposed to be shared among NFL owners.
The probe was right on their doorstep, becoming a federal matter for DC legislators and investigators.
There’s no more stressful transaction for a fan of a team anywhere than to have to queue up and pay for season tickets or even the waitlists in many cases.
The whistleblower is a long-time, high-up employee, Jason Friedman, who was a former vice president of sales for 24 years. He also claims in a letter to investigators that there were two sets of books recording the finances of the club as well multiple other shady transactions that were as inconsequential as they were slimy.
It had always been the case that Snyder pulled some strange and petty stunts (for example, flogging past their sell-by-date peanuts to unsuspecting fans) but now there was documentary evidence for the NFL and indeed the government to start moving.
“Snyder is long on bluster and short on everything else, including competence, and his duplicity has made him chronically distrusted,” wrote Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post this week, brilliantly summing up the simmering acrimony while also subtly throwing his diminutive disadvantage into the mixer.
And if Snyder was withholding shared revenue from fellow owners, a line was being crossed and it was no longer just angry fans and angry columnists who would be eager to twist the knife.
The heave amounted to 40 former Washington Commanders employees who collaborated for a statement that read starkly for the Snyder family.
“It’s clear that the team’s misconduct goes well beyond the sexual harassment and abuse of employees already documented and has also impacted the bottom line of the NFL, other NFL owners, and the team’s fans,” it said in the statement.
“We are proud of our many clients who have come forward at great personal risk to reveal the truth and bring us closer to total transparency about the full extent of the dysfunction at the Washington Commanders.” The other heavier part of that dysfunction had been outlined earlier in February when the NFL blamed the club for withholding documents involving sexual harassment and office misconduct allegations.Snyder denied these claims, not to mention the allegation by a former employee made directly against the owner.
Can you imagine the team of lawyers being told to obfuscate a probe into their own boss’ busy hands? And how cliched can it possibly get? Tiffani Johnston, a former cheerleader and marketing manager for the team, told members of Congress that “Snyder harassed her at a team dinner, putting his hand on her thigh under the table and later trying to press her toward his limousine”, according to a report in the Post last winter.
“I do not see any way that a team can do its own investigation of itself,” commissioner Roger Goodell said during a presser right before the Super Bowl in February. “That’s something that we would do. We would do it with an outside expert that would be able to help us come to the conclusion of what the facts were and what really, truly happened so that we can make the right decision from there.”
After the meeting of home truths on Tuesday, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay – no stranger himself to controversy nor to being unpalatable to fans and media – did the unthinkable and breached the inner sanctum by making a beeline directly for the gaggle of gathered media.
“I believe that there’s merit to remove him as owner,” Irsay told them during a 15-minute doorstep before adding that he believed he and his fellow owners would rack up the required 24 votes to do so.
“I think it’s something we have to review,” Irsay continued. “We have to look at all the evidence, and we have to be thorough in going forward. But I think it’s something that has to be given serious consideration.” But Snyder is not content to allow the chains of justice move against him, to butcher the football parlance. Fully aware that the putsch was gathering steam, an ESPN story landed last week claiming that he had begun to focus his own air defense systems towards Dallas and Boston.
Again he denies it but an insider claims that the owner hired private investigators to snoop around the activities of his new foe, the likes of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
“That is patently false and intended to erode the trust and goodwill between owners that I take quite seriously,” blasted Snyder in yet another statement. “I have never hired any private investigator to look into any owner or the commissioner. I have never instructed or authorized my lawyers to hire any private investigator on my behalf for any such purpose. And I never would.” The calculated move by the otherwise slow-moving Irsay has now focused the minds of the rest of the league, forcing the hands of fellow owners, many of whom like Irsay were first while allies of Snyder.
For somewhat obvious reasons to do with its limited global reach, the NFL has successfully managed to avoid Russian oligarchs and fossil fuel-drenched sovereign wealth funds, neither of which power-hungry species boast particularly humane approaches to control.
But they are some of the biggest fish in world sports ownership, nonetheless. According to Forbes, there are four owners in the NFL who are worth more than $10 billion.
In August, a megarich group led by Walmart heir Rob Walton alongside Greg Penner and Carrie Walton-Penner took over the Denver Broncos. Randomly, Lewis Hamilton is a minority shareholder. Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper is in the top ten of the world’s richest owners and Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke has been enjoying a pretty decent decade. Aside from those three, Cowboys oil-rich Texan Jerry Jones rounds out the upper echelon of NFL heavy hitters.
Snyder has owned the Washington outfit since the late 1990s and has overseen its steady demise. What was once a top tier and Super bowl winning organization has descended into a joke and a crude one at that.
As we’ve seen in London, once the most worrisome school of sharks begins to smell blood, even the most stubborn of regimes can easily fall.