[sportscurmudgeon]

Allow me to offer another way for fans to demonstrate their displeasure with the ownership and direction of the Redskins.


Let me acknowledge that the calls for fans to stop buying licensed Redskins gear/"stuff" (that includes Redskins lunchboxes for your kids/grandkids) will get some attention. If sales go down, someone will notice; that is a certainty. The same goes if the Skins find themselves unable to sell out the stadium through season ticket sales. That would be a wake-up call too.


HOW-EVAH, the chances that the financial damage that fans might inflict on Danny Boy would be so great that he would choose to sell the team are minimal at best. Consider that he is - more than most folks - driven by ego.


His ego is fed by the very fact that he is one of a very few folks who owns an NFL team. One of the few "clubs" that is more exclusive than "NFL Owner" would be "Supreme Court Justice". He is one of an elite few... Since other sports owners have also invested in/bought up English soccer teams, Danny Boy is activily shopping to join that elite club too. [Two sources say he will close a deal within the next 12 months.] He is an exec producer in the credits on the latest Tom Cruise flick. All of those things make him "special" and that is what interests him most - - maybe even more than adding to his substantial net worth.


Now, fans can inflict ego bruises a lot more reliably than they can inflict financial bruises. A local radio station wants fans to show up at games with bags on their heads. The problem with that is that it has already been done AND that Danny Boy can always convince himself that the fans are angry at the coach or the quarterback but not angry at him. [If he wavers and starts to think the fans dislike him, he has plenty of butt-boys/yes-men around him to pat him on the head and tell him that it's someone else's fault.]


Now, if that same radio station would spring for the cost of putting the name Danny Boy Snyder on the bags along with a big red circle and a slash through it, that would get a lot of attention on the telecast and on Sports Center and on YouTube. Now you would begin to get Danny Boy's attention because you would have lots and lots of fans aiming their displeasure unambiguously at him.


In Baltimore, Orioles' fans staged a walkout in the middle of a game. A local radio station organized it and it got loads of media attention when it happened. Imagine if only 10,000 fans marched out of a game at FedEx at some pre-announced time during a national telecast (MNF against the Eagles anyone?). If it was widely known in advance that this protest was going to happen and that Danny Boy Snyder was the object of the protest and it actually came off, that would get Danny Boy's attention.


Imagine for a moment that the crowd is assembling at Fed Ex waiting for the game to begin and Danny Boy ushers his guests into his owner's suite to preside over the game. And at that point a large fraction of the audience points directly to the owner's suite and starts to chant "You suck!" If that goes on for 2 minutes, someone will have it on YouTube in less than an hour...


Will any of that get him to change his ways? Not likely. Danny Boy is in his mid-40s and people of that age do not change easily without lots of therapy and lots of commitment on their part to make a change. I see no commitment on his part to change so put that in the "not gonna happen" category.


But if fans are sufficiently frustrated to want to get his attention for any reason, think about hitting him in the ego in addition to hitting him in the wallet. It's easier - - and it might be more fun.