Dan Snyder Stinks at Everything

I love my brother Tommy. I'm a pretty die-hard DC sports fan, but I have nothing on my brother. He is such a die-hard homer, he won't even let you speak ill of Dan Snyder in his presence. Tommy thinks Dan Snyder is just the dean's peanuts. His one go to defense of the man is that our fine owner makes money, he is very successful at it,and eventually he will be very successful at constructing a Super Bowl-winning franchise.

We all know at this point that Dan Snyder has had one successful company in his life. A broken clock tells the right time twice a day, and sometimes it stops on 12:01. Unfortunately, he used the money from that one company to buy the Washington Redskins. He has failed at every other thing he has ever done. Since he has been in the DC limelight he has driven Jonny Rockets, 6 Flags, and Tom Cruise's movie career right into the ground. Dave McKenna can fill you in on all of the other crazy shenanigans this crazy SOB has been a part of.

Tom is convinced Dan Snyder is a marketing genius (I honestly think Snyder may have told Tom Cruise to go on Oprah to profess his love for Katie Holmes as a marketing ploy, but I have no proof.) Right around the time that Snyder started bulldozing the seats in the upper deck because he can no longer sell them after a decade of alienating a fan base that had a 200,000 plus waiting list for season tickets, I asked Tom if he still thought that Snyder had any clue about what he was doing with anything. Tommy said yes, the man is a marketing genius.

So he e-mails me this morning, telling me that he is still of course right, because the Redskins are the number four most valuable franchise in the world according to Forbes. I'm going to tell you why Tom is dead wrong. The NFL brand, which the Redskins are 1/32 of, has improved vastly with time, despite the current lockout. If I owned a Starbucks in 1995, and I consistently served the worst coffee in the company along with another Starbucks in Detroit, and my service was so bad that we were tearing out tables to create a "coffee-drinker party zone" where people can stand and drink coffee to make it look like there is not a bunch of empty tables, it does not amount to a hill of beans that my Starbucks location will be worth more in 2005. The brand improved, bringing the general value of all franchises associated up with value, including the one I have mismanaged.

This was not enough for Tommy.So instead of putting this breakdown in an e-mail back to him, I'll break down the numbers for the few people who will still see this nearly defunct DC sports blog. First off, every single NFL franchise is one of the top 43 most valuable sports franchises in the world. (They include soccer franchises, counting them as "sports" franchises.)In the last seven years, Dan Snyder has increased the value of the Washington Redskins from 1.1 billion to 1.5 billion, a growth of 36%. This might seem impressive, but the Cookes increased the value of the franchise from around $235 million to $741 million from 1995-2000, when Snyder bought out the franchise, a growth of 211.3% in value. In 1995, the Cowboys were the NFL's most valuable franchise, by 2000 it was the Skins. Since Dan Snyder took over, the Cowboys are the most valuable franchise again, worth $1.81 billion on Forbes' new list.

The Cowboys were worth $1.1 billion in 2004, a and grew 63.6% to their 2011 worth of $1.8. In fact the average NFL franchise worth grew from $552 million in 2004, to $1.02 billion in 2011, growing in value by 84.7% to Snyder's 36%. Snyder is underperforming even in franchise worth, barely building off what the Cookes built for him. Arizona was the least valuable franchise in 2004, coming in at $418 million. They have as dysfunctional of a QB situation as we do now, and they managed to grow to a worth of $919 million in 2011, a gain of 105%.

So lets take the average franchise. Indianapolis is more or less Acme City, USA. Since 2004, they have essentially had the same team; Peyton Manning is the star, put anyone around him, and he will get you to the playoffs and contend for the Super Bowl every single year since 2004. The Colts were worth $715 million in 2004. Nothing has changed, and they are now worth $1.04 billion, an increase of 45.4%.

Dan Snyder's beloved franchise is growing slower in value than the rest of the NFL. One of the only reasons it grows at all is because the general worth of the NFL is increasing exponentially. The other big reason is because of fans like Tommy and I. I will still go to the games, cheer on whatever piece of crap team he puts on the field, scream at the television during away games, and still wear the outdated Skins gear I have, because I refuse to buy anything new and give Snyder a dollar more of my money than I have to the last 5 years. The only reason the Skins have any value is because of guys like Tommy, who loves his football team so much he won't let you say anything negative about our stupid buffoon of an owner. Dan Snyder has no value whatsoever to the DC area. The only place I can imagine he has any value whatsoever is in Dallas, where if I was Jerry Jones, Snyder's pizza-eating pal, I would put up a statue of the imbecile running my chief rival right next to the statue of Staubach. (If they do that sort of thing in that freakshow they call a stadium.) I'll love the Skins until I kick the bucket, and that is why I will always hate Dan Snyder and what he has done to my once great football team.