Believe What You Want

What's the difference between the Redskins "200,000 person" season ticket waiting list and Bigfoot?

There's at least grainy footage of Bigfoot.

The fact that the Redskins continue to claim that 200,000 people are ready and waiting to plunk down $$$ to gain access to the worst game day experience in the NFL (forget the product on the field, that's a whole 'nother story) is amazing.

It's simply not true. Can't be. The evidence is now becoming an avalanche.

First, a few anecdotes.

1. I've been sent 3 (count 'em, THREE!) separate "Congrats, you've made it to the top of the waiting list" letters this off-season. This, after I "Congrats, you've made it to the top of the waiting list" did the same thing last spring, and turned down the tickets. I was offered the very limited chance to buy no more than EIGHT season tickets.

2. My colleage Andy Pollie (Andy Pollie!) recently received a glorious, heavy matte, tri-fold marketing piece offering him season tickets as part of an "enhanced" VIP status at Redskin park. Full color printing, it was a very nice piece of work! Expensive! Andy never requested anything like this. He was just in the right ZIP CODE (read: rich!) for the Skins marketing air drop. He too, could "only" buy 8 tickets. He declined. But my god, you should see this printed piece they sent blindly out to people. Gorgeous!

3. Stories like this keep rolling into my inbox....

Czabe,

Hope all is well old friend. We were on the Redskin ticket waiting list for years, at number 50,000+ at one point. When the team moved out of RFK our hopes and dreams were realized and I was able to finally buy 2 season tickets in the upper level - nothing special, just 2 seats in the upper level where I could enjoy a few games a year with a friend or one of my kids. Hooray!! Except the return on the investment quickly deteriorated and after a couple seasons we decided to not renew the coveted season tickets.

Well, I just got in the mail the attached "We want you back!" solicitation asking me to re-purchase my season tickets in the same section I had them originally. Do you see the disconnect here? I had tickets and DELIBERATELY gave them up. Supposedly there are tens of thousands of people still on the waiting list. They actually WANT to buy tickets! Were they offered the chance to buy run-of-the-mill upper level seats and already said no? The Redskin season ticket waiting list is nothing but a farce, a media/marketing fabrication trying to drum up interest (read: internet and viral marketing eyeballs) that has little to do with actually selling tickets and filling the stadium.

I have some other observations:

1) I went to the Redskins web site to see if they indicated the size of the waiting list and couldn't find anything. But they did have a promotional video showing crazy fans in the stands who I would HATE TO BE AROUND if I was actually at the stadium.

2) The offer includes a parking pass priced at more than 50% of the individual ticket price (season ticket = $64 per game, parking = $35 per game)

3) There is a $25 handling fee which seems to provide no value whatsoever, except to Mr. Snyder

4) Gotta love that PG County "Admission and Amusement Tax" of 10% per ticket.

There are 10 games per season, but 2 are pre-season and no one attends those but the mail room guy and his drunk buddies. So I would have to pay almost $1,800 for 8 regular season games. That's $225 per game for the privilege of driving an hour and a half each way, parking a mile from the stadium, sitting in 2 seats surrounded by drunk foul-mouthed fans (unless the other team's fans show up instead, which is even worse). Don't get me started on the cost of beer, flat sodas, and cold hot dogs when the ketchup runs out by the middle of the second quarter. And of course there is no scoreboard info to follow fantasy football either.

The man-cave in the basement is underrated. My wife makes an awesome artichoke dip, with hot wings or burgers ready for dinner, and the boys and I can throw the football in the back yard at halftime.

It's nice Mr. Snyder wants me back, but I want no part of him or the stadium.

See ya soon,
Tom

And the exodus continues. I'm not even sure that winning, and winning BIG will solve it.

Phallic-ally Challenged

Now that the Cavaliers are gone from the playoffs, I can sleep more soundly.

For weeks now, I have been haunted by the image of center Zydrunas Ilgauskas and his fully clean-shaven look.

All I could think of was: "My god.... it's a seven-foot penis with a hook shot."

Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong. I dare you. He looks awful like that. Grow some hair, some stubble, something. Please.

Here's a photo of "Z" with a Cavs fan. Cute, eh?



Mark Whitaker in Los Angeles writes...

Czabe,
I'll tell you EXACTLY who the Cavalier's Ilgauskus looks like.
Remember the Sea Hag in the Popeye cartoon.  He looks like one of her goons. Google image:  Sea Hags Goons.............and look at the second picture shown! It's eerie!

Thanks Mark. I sure as HELL don't remember that one, but you are indeed correct! A damn near perfect match!



Maybe I've got some variant of the rare disorder Jonah Hill's character had in the movie "Superbad." If you haven't seen the movie, you must at least spend a minute watching this!



Of course, "Z" could just "fix" this awkward look, by letting his hair and beard grow a bit. Here's his old look, which I think was sorta bad-guy-cool. Reminds me of the psycho in "Fargo", Peter Stormare. Only without the hair.



Here's a much better "Z" look. Work on it, big fella. And enjoy your summer.

Gone In A Puff of Chalk

A little "inside baseball" here first.

Sometimes I wake up Sunday morning and write my Monday post early, so I can then enjoy the rest of God's day without worrying about making sure there's a fresh posting here for you loyal readers.

But that post can get stale pretty quickly, depending on the circumstances.

I think I need to amend my LeBron stance regarding his douchebaggy exit from the Eastern Finals on Saturday.

Skipping the media, not so bad. No handshake? Inexcusable. I didn't focus on that enough when I wrote what I did below. I should have. What LeBron showed is just how stubbornly immature this 24-year-old man-beast still is, how gilded in narcissism he remains.

LeBron: "Shaking hands with somebody who just beat me, beat me up. That makes no sense to me."

Except they've been doing it in sports for oh, centuries, I'd guess.

When Dino Cicarrelli can begrudgingly shake the hand of Claude Lemieux who put teammate Kris Draper in the hospital with a crushed face, then LeBron can shake Howard's.

It really is, that simple.

Okay, that said, here was my original take on the deal. I think the saving his teammates some agony part is still partly correct, even though I doubt he did it on purpose.

Enjoy my wrongness....

(Filed Sunday morning, 8:15 a.m.)

Go ahead, rip LeBron James for running home off the playground after the Orlando Magic got done kicking his team's ass.

It's easy. It's fun. Makes you sound tough.

Let me offer an alternate theory on what he was doing, and why. Mind you, I'm not an apologist for the guy. I'm just analyzing what would have probably went down.

Theory: LeBron skipped the post-series press conferences, so he could save his TEAM the kind of embarrassing questions he would have likely been asked.

Look, you can say James was a cowering King, unable to “face the music.” But honestly, what “music” was HE going to be faced with?

“You suck. Can I get your thoughts on that?”

Please.

Here's how the questions WOULD have gone to King James.

“Even though you were sensational in this series, do you think you have enough of a supporting cast to win the NBA Finals in Cleveland?”

“Even though he was the coach of the year, do you think Mike Brown has the experience necessary to guide a team to the Finals?”

“Even though you have said that you are happy right now in Cleveland, does this loss help or hurt the chances that you will opt out of your contract after 2010 and go to a larger market?”

And on, and on....

This is not like A-Rod skipping the media after going 1-for-a-billion at the plate in October for the Yankees. Dude averaged nearly 40 in this series, and singlehandedly won TWO games with miracles in the 4th quarter. It wasn't him.

So while you can say that LeBron still needed to suck it up, and deflect those questions or sing the company line with a proud loser's chin, by doing what he did, LeBron didn't allow those questions to even get off the ground.

If a tree falls alone in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

If the superstar player of a woeful franchise in a downtrodden city, runs home for the off-season without answering any questions about why his team/coach/city sucks so much, is that not actually one last favor he does for them?

Now, the “story” is Big Baby 'Bron. The media will chew on that for a few days. Privately, his coach and team will thank him for it.

Again, just an alternate theory. Maybe the obvious take is correct: Boo Hoo 'Bron. I don't quite see it like that. He's taking the blow, just like he took all the big shots to bail them out.

In the meantime, call Geppetto. We need a fuzzy Dwight Howard puppet. Stat!