“You can’t F**K with me”: Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder threatens to EXPOSE Roger Goodell and the NFL ownership
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Daniel Snyder has checkmated Roger Goodell by gathering sensitive information that has the potential to get him fired.
The Washington Commanders are facing trouble on all fronts. The team has been playing terribly this season winning just one of its 5 games and while they are on track to have a losing season, the team’s owner, Daniel Snyder seems to have turned his fate around and is on track to retain his ownership of the team. Snyder has been in hot water for a long time now, following allegations of the prevalent mismanagement within the Commanders’ organization, the petition to get him fired from his capacity as a team owner has been gaining a lot of traction.
Daniel Snyder was being looked into by the NFL and Congress after multiple complaints came from within those working the Washington Commanders franchise. Reports of a toxic workplace environment, widespread sexual harassment, and misconduct, a lot of questionable and under-the-table deals along with the latest controversy surrounding Snyder’s proposal to build an entirely new stadium for the team have destroyed his credibility as an NFL owner. Fans do not trust him, his employees most certainly do not trust him, and now those in the NFL’s ownership brass are beginning to turn on him as well. Including the Commissioner Roger Goodell.
How is Dan Snyder still an owner in the NFL?
Dan Snyder knows he has been backed into a corner and he is doing everything to come out swinging. The owner has been the most controversial operator in the league’s history. If we take a look at former team owners in sports such as the NBA, they were removed from their roles with relative ease in comparison to Snyder. In the NBA, when the then Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was accused of being racist and his comments putting down people of color surfaced, he was immediately fined $2.5 million. Since this did not reassure fans, Commissioner Adam Silver was looking for ways to compel him to sell the team.
In this process, Sterling’s wife threw Silver a Hail Mary as she accused her husband of being mentally incapacitated and as a result, removed Donald from the family trust and ended up selling the team herself. The most recent case is of Robert Sarver, the owner of the Phoenix Suns, who has been accused of doing similar acts as Snyder. Sarver reportedly used the N-word on numerous occasions, sexually misbehaved with employees by making lewd comments, and fostered a toxic culture that involved him lashing out at his employees and demeaning them.
All of them were removed from their positions, but Daniel Snyder continues to stay put. It is not that the NFL and the other owners do not want to take him down. But if they do decide to vote him out, they are likely to going to be shooting themselves in the foot. Daniel Snyder has all his peers and the Commissioner under check.
He has been gathering dirt over the other owners and has not spared even Roger Goodell. In order to do this, he has engaged multiple private investigators to look into each owner in-depth and unearth their deepest secrets. This information that he has gathered has the potential to “blow up” the league and the reputation of the other owners.
“The NFL is a mafia”: Daniel Snyder claims all the owners in the league despise one another
Snyder has privately stated to an associate that “They can’t f**k with me, The NFL is a mafia. All the owners hate each other.” He is willing to expose the entire ownership in order to keep his position. The NFL is also aware of Snyder’s shenanigans and how he has been keeping close tabs on his fellow billionaires. A veteran owner in the NFL, however, dismissed Dan’s comments and stated, “That’s not true, they all hate Dan.”
Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, is a jolly, outgoing person who seldom tends to beef with anyone. On the contrary, he has for a long time, been attempting to have Snyder’s back and has tried on multiple occasions to smooth things over for him by talking to the Commissioner and those in the ownership brass. However, things seem to have reached a tipping point now, as Jerry Jones is no longer interested in vouching for Snyder to remain an owner in the league.
As per ESPN’s Seth Wickersham, who covered Daniel Snyder’s comments and their impact in-depth, Jerry Jones is aware that the Commanders owner has not spared him either and has gathered some dirt on him as well. “Jerry Jones is aware Snyder has a file on him. That is not sitting well with Jerry Jones. He has told people that he doesn’t know if he can protect Dan (Snyder) any longer. Someone close to Jerry has said, (Snyder) has lost Jerry Jones, which is a big one to lose in the ownership circles while they are weighing if you can continue on as an owner,” Wickersham stated on Get Up.
A representative of Jones refused to comment on this situation. Daniel Snyder has now put all the owners in an extremely difficult position. If they do opt to vote him out, which they have been contemplating for nearly a year now and have been ‘counting votes’ to gain a majority. However, if they do that, then they risk having all of their dirty secrets leaked out to the public and since Roger Goodell is also on the hot seat, he would not do anything that would risk his position and compromise his power in the NFL.
A longtime Commanders’ executive stated that Snyder “thinks he has enough on all of them. He thinks he’s got stuff on Roger.” Another executive called him “the most powerful owner in the NFL” because of what he knows. The threat to leak incriminating documents and other stories will cost Snyder as well.
The Commissioner has made it clear that any owner found to be leaking such sensitive information to reporters will be fined millions. But this will not be something that keeps Snyder up at night. If anything, he has shown us that in order to retain his power; he is willing to go to any lengths, even if it means burning a few million dollars to get there.
He is a billionaire, millions mean nothing to him and if he stays in his ownership role, he will make that money back in no time as we all know the financial benefits of owning a team in this league. While many owners are attempting to dismiss Snyder’s claims of having dirt as a pathetic sham and an attempt to bluff them, they are afraid that if it turns out to be true. It’s game over for them.
Daniel Snyder has been represented by Reed Smith, a law firm that represented Alex Rodriguez in his lawsuit against the MLB. The firm has had a history of hiring private investigators to look into the opposing parties and, while representing A-Rod, they kept a close tab on Rob Manfred, the commissioner of the MLB. So one cannot completely dismiss the notion that Snyder has nothing and is merely bluffing.
In addition to this, Daniel Snyder’s Congressional hearings also witnessed numerous claims of the businessman hiring private investigators to look into employees and partners. So he does like to do this a lot. The owners are now exploring all options to strip him of his ownership title. However, it may be easier said than done.
These allegations that Snyder has leveled against his peers do raise an interesting question. Would the public rather have Daniel Snyder’s head on a silver platter, or would they be willing to let him slide in exchange for the alleged “dirt” that he has upon others? The owners love their position of power and would do anything to remain there, as owning an NFL team is an investment that yields immense returns.
What now?
If the owners are reluctant to vote out Snyder in a conventional way, they are attempting to create problems for him in other spheres. He did make a deal with Roger Goodell to give up the day-to-day management of the team to his wife Tanya and was fined nearly $10 million in July last year, but he continues to be actively involved in the activities of the team. The decision to trade for Carson Wentz was his call.
Owners are now attempting to push Dan out of the mix and give his responsibilities and voting powers to his wife Tanya, in hopes that she will act in a similar manner to Donald Sterling’s wife. In addition to this, they are doing everything they can to slow his efforts to build a new stadium, including choking his funding.
“They would jam him on a debt-limit waiver. When owners build stadiums, they typically take out a lot of debt, the league has strict rules over how much debt they can carry. Most people think that Dan Snyder cannot write a cheque for a new stadium in the DC area and would need those debt-limit waivers including the loans that the league often offers and owners have talked about not permitting him those waivers as a backdoor way to transfer permanent ownership to Tanya,” ESPN’s Seth Wickersham stated on First Take.
This battle will be a hard one for Snyder to fight. He has lost the faith and support of almost all the owners, but the only reason he is able to hold on is due to the leverage that he has on them. The owners are in a tough position as well. On one hand, they want him gone, but they risk losing their positions in the process if what Dan says turns out to be true.
The mood at 345 Park Avenue, New York, where the NFL is headquartered at, is tense. The owners across the league are scheduled to meet next week on the 18th and the 19th respectively, and Daniel Snyder will be a hot topic that they discuss. If not in a formal manner, they are guaranteed to talk about him amongst themselves.
The moment Daniel Snyder walks into that meeting, the room is bound to go silent. He will have to try his level best to calm owners down and attempt to get them back on his side. It is doubtful that his ownership status will be challenged in the meeting, but he will be brought up in some form or other. Especially if his wife Tanya Snyder attends the meeting on his behalf.
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Sumedh Joshi
(2235 Articles Published)