The Super Bowl Sunday Scaries, Part II
A comedy of errors featuring Dan Snyder, the NFL, and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform
Dear Readers,
It was once again a busy week in the world of sports, with the Winter Olympics (and a fresh Russian doping scandal) underway in Beijing, some blockbuster trades in the NBA, and a handful of new developments in the MLB labor lockout. On the baseball front, MLB’s owners and the players’ union now have about two weeks to broker a deal if they want the baseball season to begin on time, and if a deal doesn’t materialize, you can expect these columns to become increasingly desperate as the two of us spiral into a very dark place. You might not believe it, but this newsletter can always get crankier.
As much as we’d like to excoriate baseball’s billionaires again, or write 1,000 words on why Ben Simmons’ trade to the Nets will only add to the growing problem of an influx of Australian culture into Williamsburg, we won’t subject you to that. Instead, our focus this week is on the sporting event that real Americans actually care about: the Super Bowl. OK—it’s not really about the Super Bowl, but our subject this week is a truly insane story, so we hope you’ll read it anyway.
Happy bowling,
Calder + Ian
The Super Bowl Sunday Scaries, Part II
One year ago, on Super Bowl Sunday 2021, we published a piece called “The Super Bowl Sunday Scaries,” in which we contrasted the Washington Football Team’s efforts to diversify its front office staff with the league’s otherwise pitiful efforts to address racism and racial disparities in the league. As the recent Brian Flores saga has made abundantly clear, the NFL’s diversity problems have not gone away. But one year later, and on the eve of yet another Super Bowl, the Washington Commanders (as the team is now known following a recent re-branding exercise) are once again in the headlines—for all the wrong reasons.
Despite its relatively diverse front office, the Washington Commanders still have one major issue: their ghoulish owner, Daniel Snyder. Regular Southpaw readers will be familiar with Snyder’s slew of misdeeds, but here’s a brief summary to catch everyone up to speed. (This is a bit of a doozy, but bear with us. We promise you it’s worth it.)
In 2020, the Washington Post published a series of damning reports detailing multiple allegations of sexual harassment against Washington employees—including Snyder himself. The articles also document how Synder has fostered a workplace culture that tolerated sexual harassment and other overt displays of sexism and general male swinery. Following those reports, the team retained the high-powered D.C. lawyer Beth Wilkinson to investigate the claims. In September of 2020, the NFL announced that it was assuming control of Wilkinson’s investigation, presumably to ensure its credibility. After concluding the investigation in July of 2021, the league slapped Snyder with a $10 million dollar fine and brokered a deal with the team to allow Snyder’s wife to take over the day-to-day operations of the organization.
Here’s the catch: despite fining Snyder, the NFL never released the findings of its investigation, and the NFL’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, has refused to publish any detail of the league’s conclusions about Snyder’s wrongdoing. The NFL’s refusal to make its findings public has led some to (quite reasonably) ask what the league is trying to hide, and whether it might be carrying out some sort of cover-up on Snyder’s behalf. Among those asking questions is the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which in October of 2021 launched its own investigation into the league’s handling of the investigation.
Believe it or not, the plot thickens from here! During a public roundtable hosted by the House committee on February 3, Tiffani Johnston, a former cheerleader and marketing manager for the team, detailed a new set of sexual assault allegations against Snyder, claiming that he repeatedly groped her at a work dinner and tried to force her into his limousine at the conclusion of the meal. (Other former employees shared equally appalling details of Snyder’s regime, including that team executives had hired prostitutes for a professional retreat at Snyder’s vacation home in Aspen, and that executives pressured an employee who was a recovering addict into drinking alcohol at a different business meal.)
So guess what happens next: the exact same thing! This past Wednesday, the Washington Commanders announced that they had retained a different high-powered D.C. lawyer to investigate Johnston’s claims, prompting the NFL to clarify later that day the league, not the team, would be in charge of the investigation. At this point, we’re tempted to reach for that famous quip about history repeating itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. We can’t remember which smarty-pants wrote this. Marl Karx? Snarl Parx?
Now, it might seem that this situation couldn’t get messier, but incredibly, it does. On Thursday, the NFL sent a letter to the leaders of the congressional committee accusing the team of blocking the committee’s access to over 100,000 documents that it has requested as part of its inquiry into Wilkinson’s investigation. The details here get a bit technical, but the gist of the NFL’s letter is that the relevant documents are in the possession of a third-party vendor which, for obscure liability reasons, needs the team’s permission to release the documents. For reasons that should be obvious by now, the team has refused to grant the vendor permission. Of course, the team denied the league’s accusations in a statement released later that day—but the committee still doesn’t have the documents.
Now, compared to Snyder and the NFL, the members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform might seem to be the adults in the room. But, being members of Congress, they inevitably are not. As you might expect, the recent Congressional roundtable quickly descended into partisan bickering, with Rep. James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, using his opening statement to complain that the discussion was distracting members from their real work of combatting rampant inflation, addressing the crisis at the southern border, and countering the existential threat of Chinese hegemony—because the House Committee on Oversight and Reform has historically been so effective at handling those big issues. At one point, Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico called the proceedings “a sham,” and the Post reports that, “the discussion grew so acrimonious that Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who took over the chair’s role midway through the two-hour roundtable, banged his gavel several times.”
If this telescoping pile of dogshit isn’t the perfect metaphor for the sorry state of America’s political and cultural institutions, then we’re not sure what is. Unlike the feel-good sports we all know and love, this is a plotline with no heroes—only three ham-handed villains, each tripping over the other as it finds the best position from which to cover its own ass.
Who needs a Super Bowl when the spectacle off the field is so much fun?
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about. . .
. . . the Russian doping scandal at the Beijing Olympics? “How did the anti-doping system for the Beijing Olympics break down so badly?” by Brian Mann in NPR (February 12, 2022).
. . . the latest in the baseball lockout? “With spring training looming, MLB makes new proposal to players' union” by Chelsea Janes in The Washington Post (February 12, 2022).
. . . MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s ridiculous statement that owning a baseball team is not particularly profitable? “Rob Manfred Either Thinks The Owners Are Idiots, Or That You Are” by Ray Ratto in Defector (February 11, 2022).