Skip to Content
NFL

Who Can Actually Get Rid Of Dan Snyder?

Will Newton/Getty Images

So in the aftermath of Roger Goodell's day trip to Congress and the meeting of Feck and Less he had with the House Oversight and Poseurs Committee, the question naturally arises: Who can take Dan Snyder's team away from him?

We know who can't, and that's Goodell, who morosely said so as he counted the minutes stolen from his remaining lifespan answering questions from the rabidly unhinged pile of burning oily rags that is Jim Jordan. We know it isn't his fellow owners, who are empowered to do so but hate the idea of a precedent that could easily ensnare many of them in the same sort of sludge tsunami. We definitely know it isn't Congress, because, well, Jim Jordan might not actually be the aggressively dimmest one of them all. After all, we haven't seen them all.

Which leaves ... well, I guess it's you, Commanders fan. If you've finally reached your limit propping up this creosoted capybara of a man, there is only one thing to do, and that's abandon your team, en masse. Walk. Attend no more games. Watch some other team, or no team at all. Burn your sweatshirts, jerseys, T-shirts, Y-fronts and associated shmata. Maybe even take to the streets, as your brethren during the Super League fiasco did. In fact, definitely take to the streets and leave your shmata in burning piles for added visual effect. Consider this your DIY project straight from whatever your assign to be your god.

America is not the place to go for restorative justice when it comes to the rich. We long ago abandoned the ridiculous idea that the law cannot be bought, to the point where the Federal Trade Commission should put a bar code on the forehead of every human who works in the industry. That, though, was the belief when Florentino Perez, the man who runs Real Madrid, organized the Super League to gather 12 of the most powerful teams in Europe to a competition that they could remain members of forever. He'd have gotten away with it, too, except for the six English clubs whose fans took to the streets and invaded the stadiums to call bullshit on the enterprise. Amazingly, it worked, because shame is still part of the European infrastructure, and a Super League without the Brits is just the USFL.

As this applies to the NFL and Yachtin' Danny Snyder, well, our fans are considerably more sedentary, thinking that "Person X Sucks" chants are all the civil unrest they need to display. It is a chant that, while emotionally satisfying, does nothing to change the suckery to which they object, as your team is still lousy unless you're a Golden State Warriors fan, the team your team is playing will never not suck in your eyes, the referees always suck, and you haven't chased out a bad owner yet. They have invested too much money and ingested too much profit to worry about the proles and their level of dissatisfaction. They're banking on your collective torpor, and so far, they've banked plenty.

Not only that, his share of the NFL's media money would almost surely allow him to stay safely profitable even if nobody came to any game. I mean, he would probably not get that new stadium he's been whining about for all these years, but he'd probably sacrifice that rather than give in on anything else.

And that's probably what we have here. Maybe the oxymoronic Department of Justice decides to dig in and take after Snyder in a real and legally binding way, but that's not the way to bet. I mean, they've got the paperwork already and have shown no interest in whatever case there is to be made, maybe because being demonstrably objectionable on every level isn't actually against federal, state, or DC law. Snyder showed what he thinks of Congress by sailing off to France while his well-paid spineless invertebrate functionary explained that in terms of owner discipline he is indeed both of those things.

Now there is one other possibility—maybe Snyder finally reassembles his sense of shame and concludes that he is ... igggkk gakkhh blerargh, manual shutdown in 15 seconds.

Sorry. Apologies to all for that. You pay to not have to read that level of decomposing tripe, and it will never happen again. Danny Snyder is to shame what Chet Holmgren is to that vague bloated feeling from overeating. His obstinacy is legend, his mean-spiritedness is galactic, and he will do anything to anything to get whatever passes for his way. His lawsuits alone will have the half-life of plutonium, and be about as tasty.

Which means unless something drastically changes either in him or in his partners, the only way out of Snydertown is the street, and as we have seen in London, Manchester and Liverpool, it take lots of people coming out all at once to refuse the latest bucket of gruel served them, and an actively non-compliant media to cheer them on as also happened with the Brits.

So now that you know the lay of the land here, the size of the task, and the cowardice of those who could and should perform it, your own choices are clear. Active non-compliance with the siren song of Washington's filth-encased football team, or, well, I guess ... uhh, go Ravens?

If you liked this blog, please share it! Your referrals help Defector reach new readers, and those new readers always get a few free blogs before encountering our paywall.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter