Showing posts with label Washington Redskins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Redskins. Show all posts

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Insufferable, butt-kissing Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross seems willing to repudiate own fans, give up '15 home game vs Jets and play it in London for slight hypothetical possibility of landing Super Bowl. Someday. Maybe. With the right breaks

ICYMI: Butt-kissing Dolphins owner Stephen Ross perfectly willing to repudiate own fans, give up '15 home game vs Jets and play it in London for slight hypothetical possibility of landing Super Bowl. Someday. Maybe. 
With the right breaks.




Miami Dolphins In Depth blog
Bad idea: Dolphins yield Jets home game in '15,
Armando Salguero,
November 7, 2014 9:24 a.m
  
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/dolphins_in_depth/2014/11/i-like-the-idea-of-the-nfl-playing-games-in-london-i-even-like-the-idea-of-the-miami-dolphins-occassionally-doing-their-leag.html

There are many positive and negative things I'll never forget about my time living and working in the Washington D.C. area from 1988-2003.
One of those was that regardless of whether the Redskins were Super Bowl Champs, a very competitive team or just plain mediocre-to-awful -the Richie Pettibon years!- there was never any doubt in the mind of anyone I knew that the team genuinely was THE focus of the community's
hopes and dreams every Fall.

Just like you've heard/read/watched for decades back when CBS used to do NFC games and you could predict that before a big game against the Giants, we'd see a segment lauding Redskins fans and making the point that they had a direct connection with their fans that most NFL cities never have. (And still don't have.)
But it's true.



You didn't have to take a poll when I was living there to know that the Redskins genuinely were THE glue that held the community together, regardless of race, gender, political party, ideology or economic class.
I saw that for myself for years in tangible ways that even the South Florida I grew-up in during the Dolphins' heady era of dominance in the 1970's could never possibly replicate.

I know because I saw I witnessed it everyday in the Fall and Winter when I was on the Metro train on my way into work in the morning, esp. on Monday mornings after big Redskin wins or Friday afternoons before big games, and looked at the faces of the other commuters around me.
And even though I'd lived in Chicago when the Bears won the title in the mid-1980's, and knew well of their decades of suffering, especially when I was at IU, it was even more tangible than what I saw every morning in the Fall when I'd board an El train in Evanston down to The Loop.

It was noticeable at the hot dog stand on K Street with a Redskins pennant flying above it that played the Redskins fight song on an endless loop on their boombox on Friday afternoons. 
Noticeable precisely because it didn't surprise you,
You simply took it in stride.



Noticeable, too, at the CVS on Eye Street near the NY Times' Washington bureau, where I'd frequently run into the MPAA's Jack Valenti heading there mid-afternoon to solve a sugar or caffeine fix.
And while that weekend's weather forecast was always somewhat iffy, what wasn't iffy was knowing that once you walked into that CVS, that 99% of the employees had on a Redskin cap or skullcap.
You could take that to the bank!

So, that said, in 2007 when the Dolphins gave up a VERY RARE Dolphins home game against the NY Giants -the Giants being the team the Dolphins have played THE LEAST in the team's existence, with just 5 games prior to that one in 42 years- in order to appease the NFL execs on Park Avenue and play the game in London, like many Dophin fans, I watched the game with more than a little anger, since every single legit Dolphins fan my age or older -esp. ones like me who were actually from South Florida- knew EXACTLY what that home game represented.
A very rare opportunity: completely squandered.

And also understood what a major customer slap in the face that decision was to Dolphin fans, given the unique history and peculiar demographics of South Florida.
To Dolphin fans who had already been stuck with a listless, punchless team for many years at that point, it felt like once again a decision had been made NOT for what was best for the team or for the fans but for... something else.
Once again stabbed in the back, even as we nursed our cold beers and chowed down on finger foods and pizza throughout South Florida.

Well, Friday's blog post by the Miami Herald's Armando Salguero suggests that clueless, disconnected-to-reality Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has really learned nothing at all from history...
It looks like decisions are once again being made NOT for the benefit of the team that's on the field or for the fans in the stands but for something else entirely.
For his benefit.

Do you honestly think the Baltimore Ravens would give up a home game against the Steelers so that Baltimore maybe, perhaps, someday, possibly host the Super Bowl? 
Or that the Seattle Seahawks would give up a home game against the S.F. Forty Niners for the same remote possiblity? Nope.
Neither do I.

The prescient statue dedicated to FDR outside The National Archives' entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington is very much to the point: "The past is prologue."
For most people, but apparently not Stephen Ross.

His insufferable ownership is just another burden for true Dolphin fans to bear who've already had to endure so many other indignities and embarrassments the past 15 years. 

To no tangible change for the better

Saturday, August 14, 2010

When pols get ballgame tickets, ethics sometimes gets kind of hazy: "Tickets, tickets, who wants a ticket?"

Above, the old-style Miami Dolphins helmet decal that I grew-up with, when it was the most unifying symbol in all of South Florida. The Dolphins kick-off the exhibition season at home tonight against Tampa Bay.

I found this St. Pete Times story below quite interesting given what transpired at Tuesday's very contentious Broward County Commission meeting, when one of the few moments of levity came when Comm.
Lois Wexler's made some comments about 26 Dolphin-Bucs tickets sent to her by the team to distribute, during the otherwise heated ethics debate.
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2010/08/ticketgate.html Later in the day, there was some news about interim Comm.
Al C. Jones rescinding his ticket offer.

How could Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White really think a Bucs skybox ticket had no "value" if there was not a price on it?
Wow!

Years ago when I still worked in Washington, D.C., when the MCI Center -now Verizon Center- finally opened downtown, in a perfect location, right next to Chinatown, and with the arrival of the one-and-only MJ, Michael Jordan, because he knew that Washington lobbyists would actually find going to Wizards games more fun now that they didn't have to schlep out to suburban PG County, Maryland, Wizard's owner Abe Polin reportedly -definitely!- had some very nice lower-level seat tickets which had a higher financial value, intentionally marked with a lower one so that lobbyists could legally give them to Members of Congress, influential staffers and other D.C. insiders and poohbahs without fear of running afoul of lobbying and ethics rules.

Mr. Polin believed that having more elected officials and lawyer/lobbyists at games would give going to a Wizards home game more cachet -
albeit, NOT as much as going to Redskin games at RFK in the late '80's when Jack Kent Cooke was still alive.

Or so the Wizards and the Washington Post surely thought at the time.

Which perhaps says more about what D.C. and the woebegone Wizards though 'cachet' was about than anything else!

See also:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-mssp/sport.pdf
---------
St. Petersburg Times
Kevin White belatedly reports free Bucs skybox tickets

By Bill Varian, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Saturday, August 14, 2010

TAMPA — Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White has belatedly reported as a gift a luxury suite ticket he received last year from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

White said he received an invite from the Buccaneers to attend their Sept. 27 game against the New York Giants. He said the tickets, for him and his wife, had no face value printed on them, so he thought nothing of it.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/kevin-white-belatedly-reports-free-bucs-skybox-tickets/1115204

------

Tim Smith's Fort Lauderdale blog Posted by Tim Smith at 8/10/10 4:27 P.M. Commissioner Indian Giver !

Todays' Broward County Commission meeting was one for the record books.


Commissioners crying, yelling, stomping their feet over the proposed Ethics Proposal.
They even had to call a time out and send everyone to their corners for a cooling off period!


But while Rome was burning, and Commissioner's ethics was the topic, District 9 County Commissioner Al C. Jones was busy passing out goodies to the neighborhood Presidents in his District by e-mail!


Read the rest of the post at:

http://blog.timsmith.com/2010/08/10/commissioner-indian-giver-.aspx