Washington Redskins COO Dave Donovan announced his resignation from the team “for personal reasons” last Monday. Friday, someone not named Donovan or Snyder admitted that the team’s inability to sell approximately 10,000 season tickets was the reason for removing a like number of seats from FedEx Field.
Could the two events be related? I don’t know the answer, but I have a big fat picture of Donovan going “Oh Heck no, not another ticket issue!”
Donovan burst on the scene in 2009 to explain why the team was suing fans who struggled to fulfill ticket contracts in the midst of the Great Recession. In this round of explanations, Lon Rosenberg, vice president of operations, acknowledged weak ticket sales in a radio interview. Mitch Gershman, chief marketing officer, tried to explain it away in an email to fans on the season ticket waiting list. GM Bruce Allen explained the changes at FedEx Field in an interview with Larry Michael.
If this happened to the Washington Capitals, Ted Leonsis would have posted a blog about it. If this happened to the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones would have been his own spokesman on many more media channels that the ones he owns. If this happened to the Indianapolis Colts, @JimIrsay would have tweeted about it.
Leonsis created his blog, Ted’s Take, to control the Google search results for queries about him or his team. Leonsis no longer worries what the media says about him since his blog can get more hits than media channels.
Say what you will about Jerry Jones, but there is no doubt about who is in charge of the Cowboys. He is the only team executive you see on any topic, outside of the local Dallas market at least.
Jim Irsay’s tweet stream is as entertaining as a NFL owner can get, though he rarely discusses team issues over Twitter. Irsay has 41,000 Twitter follows.
What do these owners know that Snyder (apparently) does not? Explaining bad news is a mark of good leadership. Here’s another point. Fans consider their sports teams as something of a public utility. We want to hear from owners who we see as quasi-public officials.
The story of the seat removals, season ticket sales and executive departures are golden opportunities for Snyder to build a personal relationship with fans to explain what happened and what he is doing about it. Credibility comes from a show of awareness of problems and strategies for dealing with them. Snyder has little of that and he will continue to be credibility-challenged until he is out-front on these matters.
The shame of it that Redskins fans crave to hear from Snyder, whether it’s from behind a mike as Jones does, or through one of the new media channels a la Leonsis and Irsay.
Snyder’s reputation was no higher than in 2007 in the days after Sean Taylor’s death. Snyder was out front and showed uncommon generosity for players in grief. We loved him for the love he showed our team. He’s been hiding behind other people ever since.
If you think this is a Snyder bash, you’d be wrong. It’s a lament. I am a Snyder critic, true. Everyone is. But I want Snyder to be a better leader, to understand that championship teams are built from championship organizations. Championship NFL teams have championship owners who show winning skills before they win titles. Championship teams do not have owners who hide.
We expect that Mike Shanahan and Bruce Allen will make better football decisions than Snyder and Vinny Cerrato. But the Redskins won’t win titles until Snyder becomes a better owner. When fan-related issues like the stadium seating and ticket waiting lists emerge, we need to hear about it from Dan the Man. You know, the guy in charge.
Point after: Donovan’s departure may be related to Snyder’s suit against the Washington City Paper. Donovan served as Redskins general counsel in 2009 when stories broke that the team was suing grandma over tickets she could no longer affort. Washington was alone in the practice. As COO, Donovan signed all the threatening letters directed at The City Paper to force a retraction of certain points in Dave McKenna’s A Cracky Redskins Guide to Daniel Snyder.
That was an ill-considered move, not because most observers believe it to be a fool’s errand (speaking a a legal layman), but because it reinforces the negavite view of Snyder as petty and thin-skinned. Perhaps the suit is not going well.
News accounts have Donovan rejoining prestigious DC law firm Wilmer Hale where he served as the Redskins’ outside counsel before signing on with the team. As of this morning, Wilmer Hale had not corresponding notice that Donovan was rejoining.
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