The following pair of events is abjectly coincidental:
- Yesterday, I wrote about the Skins’ FOD – Front Office Disarray.
- Then the Skins fired their GM on the first day of free-agent season.
With Scot McCloughan out of the GM job, that leaves Danny Boy Snyder and Bruce Allen in charge of things. The track record for Danny Boy as a prime mover in the football personnel arena is well-established and it is not good. Let me look at Bruce Allen for a moment today.
Here is how John Feinstein described Bruce Allen:
“He was born on third base and thought he tripled. And he has been thrown out repeatedly trying to steal home.”
Here is how redskins.com describes Bruce Allen:
“Bruce Allen is the personification of an NFL winner.”
Here is how some Skins’ fans view Bruce Allen:
- They have started a petition online at change.org to remove Bruce Allen from power. As of this morning – about 16 hours after McCloughan’s firing – this signature has 4,856 signatories. It will be delivered to the Skins where it will be promptly and summarily ignored as are most petitions at change.org.
I have no idea how all of this will play out but you have to agree that I was on the right path yesterday calling out the Skins for their FOD.
I am sure a Skins’ fanboy will point to this item as a sign of stability in the Skins’ Front Office. Head coach, Jay Gruden, recently received a 2-year contract extension in the wake of two consecutive winning seasons. Why is that good news – – or even news in the first place? Well, Danny Boy has owned the team for almost 2 decades now and Jay Gruden is the first coach ever to get a contract extension. On the assumption that he will not be fired in the middle of next season – his fifth in DC – he will then be the first coach to make it successfully to the end of the contract they signed up to.
That is what passes for “normalcy” regarding the Skins’ off-field operations…
While musing about dysfunctionality in the sports world, let me go to an unusual place for these rants – – the NHL. Please recall that the NHL fought tooth and nail to put and then keep a team in Phoenix going to extreme measures to prevent a Canadian from buying the team and moving it to “South Ontario”. That was not ancient history; that happened between 2009 and 2013. I commented then and I will assert now that there was then and is now and will be into the foreseeable future a larger fanbase in “South Ontario” than in Phoenix. Nonetheless, the league and Commissioner Gary Bettman remain adamant about a team in Phoenix.
However, there is a small speed-bump here… Recently, Commissioner Bettman wrote a letter to the Arizona Legislature supporting a measure under consideration there that would set up a public-private partnership that would build a new arena for the Coyotes. Here are two statements from that letter:
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“The Coyotes cannot and will not remain in Glendale.”
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“[Glendale] is not economically capable of supporting a successful NHL franchise.”
If your Hypocrisy Meter just sounded an alarm, that means it is in proper working order. Let me be clear about something here:
- There is only ONE REASON that the Coyotes are in Glendale in 2017 and that is because Gary Bettman and the NHL fought tooth-and-nail to keep it there and took that case to court.
- In 2009, the previous owner tried to sell the club and when the league blocked that move he simply abandoned ownership and the NHL had to take over running the team.
- When the league sold the team to the new owner, one stipulation was that the team would stay put.
- Now the NHL is threatening to move the team if the taxpayers do not cough up money to build the team a new playpen.
You can read the recent report on all this stuff here. My fervent wish is for the citizenry of the Phoenix area to tell Gary Bettman to take his team and move it somewhere – – like “Southern Ontario” for instance.
Finally, yesterday I also commented on the FOD of the Los Angeles Lakers. Last evening, I ran across this comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald on the same topic:
“The Los Angeles Lakers fired Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak. One more firing and Jack Nicholson is in charge.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………