Part of the legend of boxing promoter Don King was him arriving in the ring with Joe Frazier in Jamaica in 1973 and, two rounds later, while Frazier lay on the canvas knocked out, stepping over him and leaving with George Foreman.
Washington Commanders President Jason Wright is following in King’s footsteps.
Wright is selling the quick departure of Dan Snyder, the man who hired him, and selling the arrival of Josh Harris and company, who I am certain he hopes will hire him.
I looked on the staff directories for the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils to see if Harris had employed a chief blunder officer on either of those teams.
He doesn’t.
Still, that hasn’t stopped Wright from stepping over the dark days with current boss to pave the way for glory days with his potential new boss. He has spent time telling almost anyone who would listen that there is a pot of gold waiting to be had once Snyder is gone.
“When there’s an ownership change, we’ll be able to absorb the momentum of that,” Wright told The Washington Times in March. “They know that. I’m not saying anything that Dan and Tanya don’t know.”
That may be. Knowing it is one thing. Telling the world that your boss has become so toxic that his mere absence will be profitable to the team may be something different.
According to ESPN, Wright said the Snyders “knew the business side would get better on the other side of this. They’re not dumb.”
Not dumb, maybe, but Dan Snyder has proven to be blindly arrogant. A few years ago the team conducted a confidential poll that included what people’s approval ratings were for Snyder and then-team president Bruce Allen. Sources said they both were stunned by the microscopically-low numbers.
And that was before the sexual harassment and toxic workplace scandals surfaced that contributed to Snyder’s downfall — and opened this opportunity, apparently, for Wright, to finally turn this franchise around.
A turn the franchise has already made, thanks to him, according to Wright.
“We reversed the historical trajectory of the business of Washington football,” Wright said at the Super Bowl in Phoenix, reported boardroomtv.com. “And now as the Commanders, we have a very lucrative future ahead of us off the field, which allows us to invest in a championship franchise on the field. That’s why there’s so much conversation and so much energy and attention around this. We righted the ship, and now that ship is ready to go on a championship voyage.”
And I thought Snyder was the skipper.
The “ship” though, might as well be named the S.S. Minnow.
There is no shortage of blunders that have taken place under Wright’s watch — and responsibility — from the multiple Sean Taylor debacles to bouncing checks to the logo mistakes, wrong player information in ceremonies and a list of others that the person at the top of the organization has to carry the weight for.
The biggest, though, was the new branding of the team. The date of 2/2/22 will always be known for the lame, laughable announcement ceremony. That, though, has been overshadowed by the negative reaction in the public for the Commanders name itself since then.
As fans prepare for the long-awaited departure of Snyder and the new ownership to take over, high on their list for Harris and company to fix is to change the name, based on the recent sports conversation on radio and social media.
The rebrand was Jason Wright’s Super Bowl, and it has been a failure. Fans can’t wait for the name to be changed. It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter how feasible that change could be. Fans want the name of their football team changed.
In March, Wright dismissed the idea of a name change. “I would focus on the things that can fuel a championship,” Wright said. “I don’t know if that’s one of them.”
It’s not important to him, I guess. We saw that from the effort put into the 2/2/22 rollout of the latest brand.
Welcome to Washington, Josh Harris. Mr. Wright’s office is right down the hall.
There are many reasons why the housecleaning of this football franchise should include the chief blunder officer. The biggest one for me, though, were Wright’s comments to Front Office Sports shortly after he was hired by Dan and Tanya Snyder in 2020:
“They shared, I shared, and I think that transparency, authenticity and the acknowledgment that we had shared values and a shared vision of what makes for a good culture and a good organization made me incredibly excited to jump into partnership with them and coach Rivera.”
A man who would say that would say anything.
Speaking of that partnership with coach Ron Rivera, how is that going?
In a lengthy March profile of Wright in The Athletic, Rivera “declined an interview request for this story.”
I mean, you can’t shut Rivera up. Yet he had nothing to say about his team president?
It’s every man for himself on the S.S. Minnow.
You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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