LOVERRO: Dan Snyder’s Looney Tunes reign over Commanders nears an end

The legend goes that when Dan Snyder was removed as chairman of Six Flags Amusement Parks, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd embraced each other in tears in the Looney Tunes Lounge. Daffy Duck and Yosemite Sam danced at Pepe LePew’s Tea Party.  Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner jumped for joy together in Sylvester’s Pounce and Bounce.

All of Bugs Bunny World, a feature of the Six Flags Amusement Parks, rejoiced. The man who nearly drove the Acme Dynamite Company out of business was gone. It was as if an anvil had been lifted from their cartoon lives.

That celebration will be dwarfed by the glee that runs through the nation’s capital now with the news that Snyder has an agreement in principle to sell the Washington Commanders to Josh Harris and his group for $6.05 billion.

You may note that I did not use the nickname I gave Snyder as he sailed the Seven Seas on his $300 million yacht avoiding a subpoena during congressional hearings into the team’s workplace abuses. “Skipper Dan the Sailing Man” was my attempt to stick a pin in a blowhard who often demanded others refer to him as Mr. Snyder.

There is no need for any of that any longer.

Dan Snyder is now just Dan Snyder, the disgraced, diminished and soon-to-be former Washington Commanders owner.

There may be fears — reasonable fears — that until this is approved by the other NFL owners, something could go wrong, that the deal could be crushed by the Acme Dehydrated Boulder Company.

After all, Snyder is a man so petty that one former team employee says the billionaire, unhappy about the outcome of a business deal he had with Washington Nationals boss Mark Lerner, ordered the employee to pour milk on the carpet in the baseball owner’s suite at FedEx Field. So it would sour and smell, right?

Let’s remember, no matter how much money Snyder is making from selling the franchise he paid $800 million for in 1999, he is selling it while kicking and screaming on his way out the door.

This isn’t what he would prefer. He’d rather remain an NFL owner. But being the town pariah was too much. Who knows, he may dump a tanker truck full of milk in Ashburn before he hands over the keys.

Still, the exhilaration that comes with the news about a pending sale will know no boundaries.

It goes beyond the few Washington fans left who continued to take the emotional beatings the team gave them for more than two decades. And it goes beyond the former faithful who left in droves over their disgust for the owner and the damage he has done to something they once cherished.

There remain questions about what will happen to the NFL’s probe by former federal prosecutor Mary Jo White into sexual harassment charges by former employee Tiffani Johnston. It’s reasonable to believe that once the team is sold, the results of that investigation will wind up in NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s personal incinerator for scandal and corruption.

But Snyder remains the target of a federal grand jury investigation by the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia over financial improprieties. He is also under investigation by the Virginia attorney general for the same allegations, as well as being sued by the District’s attorney general.

For those who knew the good times that came before Snyder — the legendary George Allen and his Over-The-Hill Gang, the great Joe Gibbs and his three Super Bowl championships — the pain of the last two decades has been bone-deep. Because you knew how wonderful it could be. You knew what was lost.

For the fans who came after, who have known only dysfunction and despair, the franchise’s ham-handed attempts to leverage its glory days with sloppy marketing campaigns and botched jersey ceremonies must have felt dishonest and disheartening. 

How different will it be under new ownership? We know a lot more than we did when Snyder, who was an unknown, took over in 1999. We know Harris is an experienced sports owner, with majority ownership of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils among his sports portfolio. He has a track record of mixed success to judge. But there is no evidence that he is a walking crime against humanity.

We know his partner, local philanthropist Mitchell Rales, built a company, the Danaher Corporation, which is considered the gold standard for corporate responsibility and consciousness (they’ve been named among the best employers for diversity by Forbes for five straight years). Rales also built a monument to his personal values with his private art museum Glenstone, open to the public, which has a set of core values that includes “honesty and intellectual integrity.”

We know minority owner, Basketball Hall of Famer and five-time NBA champion Magic Johnson, owns pieces of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the MLS Los Angeles Football Club and the WNBA Los Angeles Sparks. He knows people and he knows winning.

There is reason to be hopeful.

Does this translate to a Super Bowl? Only time will tell. But at least the people poised to take over don’t seem to be the kind of people cursed with the same aura of self-destruction that seemed to taint everything Snyder touched when it came to this team.

I’ve often mentioned the “Surgeon General’s Warning” that applied to any discussion of football while Snyder owned the team. It boiled down to this: No matter who coached or who played for this team, they would not be successful over the long haul. There could be no true winning until Snyder was gone. Talking about outcomes for this team required a denial of reality as long as Snyder was the owner.

Maybe now that warning finally can be retired.

That’s all, folks.

⦁ You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.