NFL owners are not the nicest people in the world. There’s one owner that even other owners consider the worst of the worst: the owner of the Washington Redskins/Football Team/Commanders. And that is why Dan Snyder is malaka of the week.

There was a recent take down of Snyder by ESPN magazine. We begin with a quote from Dan Snyder:

“The NFL is a mafia,” he recently told an associate. “All the owners hate each other.”

 

“That’s not true,” one veteran owner says. “All the owners hate Dan.”

Dan Snyder’s malakatude comes in many forms. The worst is an ongoing sexual harassment scandal involving cheerleaders being treated like hookers. It’s resulted in multiple lawsuits, which has made the Washington Whatevers a petri dish for the Me Too movement. Dan Snyder’s policy has been to do as little possible to remedy the situation then brag loudly about it. He’s the Trumpiest owner in a Trumpy league.

Then there’s the team’s former name. Snyder resisted the change for many years. He insisted that Redskins was not racist. Say what? There’s an argument to be made about Braves but Redskins? Sounds like something Ethan Edwards would have said in The Searchers or John Wayne in real life.

Snyder was dragged kicking and screaming to change the name. That’s why they were known as the Washington Football Team for two seasons. Commanders is a shite name but it’s better than Redskins.

As far as his fellow NFL malakas owners are concerned these are not Snyder’s biggest sins. It’s the way he’s run a storied team into the ground on the field and his inability to deliver a new stadium. Multi-billion-dollar stadiums that look like spaceships are in vogue right now.

Snyder’s team plays in a dump described as follows by Slate’s Alex Kirshner:

“FedEx Field, the inconveniently located stadium that smells like pee and makes for one of the least pleasant gameday experiences in sports.”

Snyder is so toxic that an effort to build a new stadium in Virginia failed despite the support of the legislative leadership. The public backlash was so ferocious that the proposal never got out of committee.

There’s much grumbling among Snyder’s fellow asshole owners. Some would like to oust him from the league, but they don’t have the votes and Snyder is willing to resort to blackmail, extortion, and smear tactics. From the ESPN piece again:

Multiple owners and league and team sources say they’ve been told that Snyder instructed his law firms to hire private investigators to look into other owners — and Goodell.

 

League sources say the NFL is aware that Snyder has claimed to be tracking owners. But none of the owners or sources would reveal how they learned of Snyder’s alleged effort to use private investigators. It’s also unclear how many owners are said to have been targeted, though sources say they believe it’s at least six. One owner was told by Snyder directly that he “has dirt on Jerry Jones,” a team source told ESPN, though the nature of the information was unclear. Another source confirmed that Snyder has told a confidant that he has “a file” on Jones, the Dallas Cowboys owner who has served as Snyder’s friend, mentor and longtime firewall of support.

Snyder is widely suspected of being behind the leak of racist and misogynist emails traded by Bruce Allen and Jon Gruden that caused a shit storm last year His motive? To distract attention from his own malakatude and to send a message to his fellow owners: “Don’t fuck with me.”

The leak led to Gruden’s firing as Raiders head coach and to one of my finest post titles ever: Jon Gruden’s Macaca Moment. It was effectively a malaka of the week post but how could I pass on that title?

Snyder’s covert use of gumshoes and shamuses could have provided an alternate title for this post: NFL NOIR. But I believe in calling a malaka a malaka. The malakatude, it burns.

I consulted a man who knows from noir: my pal, fictional shamus Mike Hammer and asked him what he thought of Snyder’s sleazy tactics. His reply, “Fuck that guy. If he tries to hire me, I’ll punch his lights out and make him eat a moldy Redskins scarf.”

Creative mayhem has always been Mike’s strong suit.

Despite everything, ESPN’s NFL sources admit that if Dan Snyder can deliver on a new stadium, the move against him will end. NFL NOIR is about money, not morality. You can be seven different varieties of asshole but if your team makes enough money, all will be forgiven. They’re all malakas. Snyder just happens to be the bull goose malaka. And that is why Dan Snyder is malaka of the week.

The last word goes to Pink Floyd with a song written by recent malaka of the week Roger Waters: