Here in the DC area, today is one of great anticipation. Unless there is a snag that derails about six months of momentum, today is the day that Daniel Snyder will let loose the reins on the Washington franchise in the NFL. If there are Commanders’ fans out there who will be sad to see him go, I have not run across any of them. The team’s fanboy websites are preparing to sing the song from The Wizard of Oz with these final lyrics:
“Ding-dong! the merry-o sing it high, sing it low“Let them know the wicked witch is dead.”
There are two categories of people around here, however, who might actually miss Snyder’s presence as the owner of a local pro franchise:
- The two other owners of pro franchises in this area might miss him because as long as he was around, those folks looked better by comparison. Now that he is gone, some may start to wonder about the local baseball franchise who gave up on and could not sign Bryce Harper, Anthony Rendon, Juan Soto and Trea Turner. Now that Snyder is not around to pollute the air, some may look at the owner of the Wizards and the Capitals and wonder what he has done so positively over the last 20 years or so.
- The sportswriters at the Washington Post and the Washington Times might miss him because his arrogance, ineptitude and sleaziness always provided material for a report or a column for the day. It was never really a slow news day with Snyder in town.
Notwithstanding the possibility that those two groups of folks might wish Danny Boy was around occasionally, there will be generalized joy around here later today. Unless, of course, at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute …
Speaking obliquely about other franchise owners in this area, the Wizards and the Capitals are owned by an entity called Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MS&E) headed up by Ted Leonsis who made his fortune as part of the senior leadership of a little company known as AOL. Recently, MS&E took on a minority partner; it sold a 5% share of the enterprise to the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) for a reported $200M. So, the situation now is that the Saudis “own” golf and the Qataris now have a piece of the action in the handful of sports franchises contained in MS&E.
For the record, QIA has owned the French soccer team, Paris-St. Germain, for about 10 years and has partial ownership of a Portuguese soccer team too. QIA is said to be interested in buying Manchester United in the English Premier League if the current ownership puts the team up for sale; so, there is plenty of history of QIA being involved in sports ownership. And with the deal between MS&E and QIA, the so-called sovereign wealth from the Middle East has a toehold in ownership of professional basketball and hockey here in the US.
The NBA and the NHL obviously permit sovereign wealth/institutional wealth investors to purchase minority shares of their franchises. Currently, the NFL forbids either type of investor in its ownership groups. I believe the NFL will “come around” on this issue purely for economic reasons. Sovereign wealth funds and large hedge funds here in the US have the wherewithal to bid up the prices of franchises they are interested in joining. When franchise prices go up, the owners of every franchise see their bottom line increasing. Connect the dots here…
Moving on … Don’t look now, but the Baltimore Orioles are in first place in the AL East by .005 in win percentage over the Tampa Bay Rays. And, the NY Yankees are alone in last place in that division 9 games behind the O’s. Who had that as a prediction back in March? Not I.
And speaking of MLB, let me present you with information I received from a former colleague who is never as happy as the times when he can present someone else with baseball trivia. We were speaking on the phone about a week ago and he gave me two gems:
- The Minnesota Twins have lost 17 consecutive playoff games. He posed the question by asking me for the longest current losing streak in playoff games and I guessed it was 6 thinking that a team that got swept in a World Series might have then lost a couple more playoff games in a row. I was incredulous at the number 17, so I went to verify and indeed the last time the Twins won a playoff game was in 2004.
- The Pittsburgh Pirates had the overall #1 pick in the MLB Draft this year. To put the futility of the Pirates in perspective, my friend had me guess how many times since 2000 the Pirates have had a pick in the Top 4 of the MLB Draft. My guess was 5; the answer is 10. I have said here before that I think baseball scouting is a VERY difficult endeavor. The Pirates’ record over the past couple of decades juxtaposed with the number of high-level picks they had would seem to confirm that assertion.
Finally, here is a remark made by humorist, Tom Lehrer, about 40 years ago which has relevance today:
“In my youth, there were certain words you couldn’t say in front of a girl; now you can say them, but you can’t say ‘girl’.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………