While Daniel Snyder Must Go, It’s Perhaps Time to Give the Washington Commanders Owner His Due

The New York Post reported last week that actor Matthew McConaughey has expressed interest in joining one of the ownership groups set to bid for the NFL’s Washington Commanders. McConaughey is one of many celebrities said to be so inclined.

All of this is very telling. And it paradoxically speaks well of Daniel Snyder, the present owner of the Commanders.

About Snyder, there will be no defense of his ownership here. To say he failed is a waste of words. Before Snyder purchased the team for $800 million in 1999, the three-time Super Bowl winning Redskins were one of the NFL’s premiere franchises. Under Snyder they sunk to one of the League’s laughingstocks. The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay took to referring to them as “the Washington Sadness Machine.” Gay’s description speaks loudly to how NFL ownership in total failed itself and its fans for allowing Snyder to remain an owner for as long as they have.

To the above, some will yell “property rights” on the way to saying that the team is Snyder’s, and Snyder’s only. That’s not true. The NFL is a collective in a sense. While the teams are individually owned, major sources of revenue (television, most notably) are earned collectively. This is important with Snyder in mind. The Redskins’ decline under him wasn’t just bad for the team and its fans. It was bad for the League. When a major franchise like the Redskins/Commander is thriving, logically the League in total gains. That’s why owners are said to have the right to force owners to sell. The view here is that they should exercise this right more frequently and should have forced a sale by Snyder long ago.

Of course, that’s all in the past. Who knows why, but Snyder is thankfully exploring a sale of the team, and some speculate he’ll fetch $7 billion. Expected bidders include centi-billionaire AmazonAMZN
founder Jeff Bezos, along with all manner of celebrity types including Jay-Z who would like to join Bezos. Which once again speaks well of Snyder. Think about it. And in thinking about it, consider the League that Snyder bought into. It wasn’t the NFL you know today.

To develop a sense of what Snyder bought into requires traveling back in time to 1989. It was then that the Dallas Cowboys were put up for sale. Many of the suites at Texas Stadium were empty at the time, as were seats in the stands. Cowboys legend Roger Staubach tried to put an ownership group together but couldn’t generate enough interest. An unknown by the name of Jerry Jones ultimately risked his whole fortune earned in insurance and oil on the Cowboys. What’s important about his $150 million purchase is that few, including his investment bankers, thought his buying decision wise.

Five years after Jones bought the Cowboys, Bob Kraft paid $172 million for the New England Patriots. Chump change now, but at the time Kraft greatly feared the wrath of his late wife, Myra. All of which brings us back to Snyder.

He again paid $800 million for Redskins in 1989, but the fact that it was Daniel Snyder buying the Redskins speaks volumes. It does because an unknown like Snyder likely couldn’t buy an NFL team in 2022.

To see why, consider yet again Jones, Kraft and Snyder. Who had heard of any of the three before they entered the NFL club? Which is the point. That they all became owners in what is now known to be one of the world’s most exclusive Clubs hopefully reminds readers of how just how far the NFL has come.

Jones, Kraft and Snyder were able to enter the NFL when they did precisely because the NFL’s perceived future between 1989 and 1999 wasn’t nearly as grand as it is today. When teams went up for sale back then, the list of Forbes 400 style bidders was limited to non-existent. That’s plainly why Jones, Kraft, and Snyder are owners today. While not members of the Forbes 400 when they entered the NFL club, they became 400 members as the value of their purchases soared.

It’s a reminder that awful as Snyder has been, he should at least be credited for seeing an NFL future in 1999 that few saw. We know this because realistically the first any NFL fan had heard of Jones, Kraft and Snyder was respectively in 1989, 1994, and 1999. Since the NFL wasn’t the NFL, all three had a shot at ownership of what they couldn’t own if bidding today. And we know why they couldn’t enter the Club today.

They couldn’t because in 2022, the NFL is the NFL. While unknowns could purchase teams back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, nowadays people on the short list of world’s richest people are interested in entering the Club, as are celebrities whom the world’s richest will allow in as minority owners as a way of creating buzz.

Stated simply, the NFL has more than arrived. And while Daniel Snyder didn’t live up to what the NFL became, give him his due for taking a big risk. Some of the richest men in the world and celebrities are lined up to join the NFL club in 2022. Snyder is an owner now, and among the richest men in the world now because the world’s richest weren’t interested in the NFL twenty-three years ago.