How over are the Redskins?
So over that on WRC, Lindsay Czarniak did her sports report Sunday night without ANY visible Skins logos on her person. (Fact.)
So over that Sonny Jurgensen didn’t tussle with Jim Zorn in his postgame interview. (Fact.)
So over that starting this week, the Virginia Lottery has changed first prize for its $20 Redskins scratch tickets to two (2) Redskins season tickets, and second prize to four (4) Redskins season tickets. (Fiction!)
Butt seriously: What kind of buffoon is going to pay $20, the most heinous sum in the history of lotteries, for a chance to win Skins season tickets that pretty soon won’t be worth $20? Commercials for the scratch tickets ran throughout the Redskins radio broadcast yesterday, and the uglier the game got, the more absurd the prizes seemed. Who wants ANYTHING associated with the Redskins right now?
Coming soon to a courthouse near you: Dan Snyder sues lottery winners who turn down their Skins season tickets. (Fiction.)
But, good god, are the 2009 Skins over. (Fact.)
(AFTER THE JUMP: Skins’ suckage is the lead local story? The national newspeople take break into Tiger Woods coverage to dump on the Skins? Jurgensen takes it easy on Zorn? Sam Huff can’t stomach Albert Haynesworth? Will Haynesworth make everybody forget Dana Stubblefield? Bad news is good news for extremeskins.com? Who is this “Synder” fella? Nats get swept again? The Nats Tragic Number is down to what? It’s hockey season?)
“There’s no way to overstate just how bad this is,” said anchorman Craig Melvin to open the evening news broadcast at WRC, a place where news employees actually work for Dan Snyder and are known to wear their fealty to the Skins owner on their shirtsleeves. (Czarniak told the Tony Kornheiser Show last week that somebody above her, either station management or Dan Snyder, forced her to wear Redskins clothing on the air.) Several minutes of doom and doomer about the loss in Detroit followed on WRC.
Fox 5 also led off its 10 o clock news with the Skins: “Disappointment, anger frustation…” said anchor Will Thomas. “Keep going!” co-anchor Maureen Umeh chimed in.
Earlier in the day, Jurgensen also seemed at a loss for words during his post-game locker-room interview with Zorn. The Hall of Fame QB dropped the attack-dog style he’d used on the Redskins coach in recent weeks. There was no fight left in Zorn.
“We must change,” Zorn told Jurgy.
At the exact moment that Zorn and Sonny were moping it up on Dan Snyder’s radio station, WTEM, the Detroit Lions players were being shown on national TV walking around the perimeter of Ford Field accepting fans’ congratulations like they’d all just broken Cal Ripken’s streak.
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The Redskins are a national cause for concern, too: NBC interrupted its FedEx Cup golf tournament broadcast to alert viewers that the Lions had won for the first time since 2007.
“It’ll be a long week for the Redskins,” said the NBC anchorwoman.
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There were some fantastic radio moments between Skins play-by-play man Larry Michael and color commentator Sam Huff during yesterday’s WTEM game broadcast when the neo-Stubblefield, Albert Haynesworth, made his first sack of the season and stayed on the Detroit turf. Huff is tired of the $100 million man’s slothful demeanor on gamedays.
Michael: Haynesworth is down!
Huff: He’s tired…
Michael: And he has not moved!
Huff: Tired
Haynesworth was eventually taken off the field by medical personnel on a cart.
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Drama can be good for business: Dan Snyder’s message board, extremeskins.com, is claiming its all time record for traffic was broken after the game by a factor of 1 and a half.
As soon as a thread expressing all the bad feelings was closed, another one was started. Typical was one titled: If You Shared an Elevator With Dan Snyder Tomorrow………..What would you say to him?
“I’d fart,” said the poster Arkawi, the only guy to get in before moderators shut down the thread.
The traffic flow at Snyder’s web site was no doubt helped by the traffic tie-up at Snyder’s sports talker, WTEM-AM. For whatever reason, host Al Galdi took a paltry amount of callers in his two-hour or so post-game show, despite running out of ways to say that the Redskins had lost early into the program. One of the few listeners who managed to override WTEM’s filibuster and get on the air railed against the owner and tagged Vinny Cerrato as Snyder’s “personal sock puppet.”
WJFK, meanwhile, didn’t even have a postgame show to let fans decompress. Instead, the area’s newest sportstalker aired a live broadcast of the Pittsburgh Steelers/Cincinnati Bengals game.
Via email, WJFK boss Chris Kinard explained his station’s programming choice: “By contract with Westwood [One, an NFL syndicator], we have to carry their late afternoon game. It’s part of the deal to carry Sunday and Monday Night Football. We had a postgame last week when the Ravens game was blacked out locally, and will do expanded pre and post coverage whenever possible.”
Kinard, who says he also noticed how few callers were allowed on WTEM after the game, promises to let fans vent to their heart’s content today.
“We’re going to open the phone lines all day,” he says. “Should be interesting.”
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The Washington Post dealt the Redskins owner the lowest of blows yesterday. From an introduction to Michael Wilbon’s Sunday column in support of not firing the coach: “Jim Zorn is Daniel M. Synder’s sixth coach.”
“Synder!”
Somewhere along the way, for reasons I’m not sure of, “Synder” became the go-to nickname for hardcore Redskins fans when mocking the team’s owner.
“Schottenheimer” was spelled correctly in Wilbon’s piece.
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Nats lose! Nats lose!
Swept away…again. This time by the Atlanta Braves. At 52-103, the Road to 100 Losses is but a memory. If I’m carrying the one correctly, the Nats’ Tragic Number, guaranteeing the team the worst record in the Majors, is down to two — any combination of Washington losses or Pittsburgh Pirates wins, and our team’s got the top draft pick all over again.
Good thing it’s hockey season!
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