Coaches are hired to be fired -- it's just more fun when it's pipsqueak Dan Snyder's team imploding
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The little pipsqueak -- er, the "cool guy" with the shades, that's world-class scumbag Daniel Snyder. The other guy, that's . . . well, he's nobody now. He used to be the Redskins' head coach. Don't worry about him.
by Ken
Thank goodness for the Washington Redskins, say I as a New York Giants football fan. It's been a rough football season here in the Big Apple. After that deceptive 5-0 start, the Giants came on to show just how fine a coach the New Tom Coughlin is and veritably stank their way to an 8-8 finish. (Somehow the Jets slipped into the playoffs, but I don't know anyone who takes them seriously.)
We're a tough breed, though, us NY-ers. As bad as the Giants sucked, there has been much entertainment value this season in the truly disastrous performance of our sometime division rivals the Redskins. And there's plenty of fun in watching the Skins in agony, because you know the digestive tract of former-boy-wonder but permanent-scumbag owner Dan Snyder must be dripping acid like a leaky battery. Hurray!
Okay, it means Scumbag Dan gets to fire somebody, which probably makes his day, making him feel like some kind of a big deal. You just have to hope that reality has seeped into this awareness enough that on some level he knows how grotesquelly incompetent he has proved at running an NFL franchise, especially one as visible as the storied one in our nation's capital.
Today was the day, after a season-long death watch, when Scumbag Dan's people dropped the ax on Skins head coach Jim Zorn. They're talking about Mike Shanahan taking over, with presumably full control of the football operation, Scumbag Dan supposedly having learned his lesson. Only the Scumbag Dans of the world don't usually learn lessons, at least not the right ones. So for this Skins-hater, the idea of Shanahan working for Scumbag Dan -- I say, "Bring it on!" That should provide us Giants fans with a measure of comic relief during the struggles of whatever bozo our genius management comes up with to replace the New Tom Coughlin.
TIME WARNER CABLE PLAYS CHICKEN WITH RUPERT M
What made the Giants' season doubly hilarious was the high-stakes game of chicken Time Warner Cable was playing with a scumbag who makes Scumbag Dan look like a choirboy, Rupert Murdoch. (I believe that in some translations of the Bible Rupert makes his first appearance as a public scumbag in the Garden of Eden sequence in Genesis, where other translations have "a snake" or "a serpent" giving Eve that great advice about the apple.)
Rupert, you see, wanted that TWC should give him some astonishing amount like $4 per TWC customer for Fox "content," on the theory that somebody might be watching it. This year's year-end threat had us threatened with losing all of News Corp's TV programming, including American Idol and 24 and the entire Fox Noise Shebang.
So where, you may be wondering, is the downside? Like losing all that crap would be a bad thing? OK, sure, I would miss The Simpsons and House. But sometimes sacrifices have to be made. And as it happens, I've got half a dozen unwatched Simpsons episodes on my DVR, and the House episodes I could catch on USA.
Which brings us to the Giants, who being an NFC franchise are usually on Fox. But there's the joke! Miss the Giants? Hardly! They're the joke. Good riddance. Take them all, please.
What made the Giants' season doubly hilarious was the high-stakes game of chicken Time Warner Cable was playing with a scumbag who makes Scumbag Dan look like a choirboy, Rupert Murdoch. (I believe that in some translations of the Bible Rupert makes his first appearance as a public scumbag in the Garden of Eden sequence in Genesis, where other translations have "a snake" or "a serpent" giving Eve that great advice about the apple.)Rupert, you see, wanted that TWC should give him some astonishing amount like $4 per TWC customer for Fox "content," on the theory that somebody might be watching it. This year's year-end threat had us threatened with losing all of News Corp's TV programming, including American Idol and 24 and the entire Fox Noise Shebang.
So where, you may be wondering, is the downside? Like losing all that crap would be a bad thing? OK, sure, I would miss The Simpsons and House. But sometimes sacrifices have to be made. And as it happens, I've got half a dozen unwatched Simpsons episodes on my DVR, and the House episodes I could catch on USA.
Which brings us to the Giants, who being an NFC franchise are usually on Fox. But there's the joke! Miss the Giants? Hardly! They're the joke. Good riddance. Take them all, please.
MICHAEL WILBON ON "NICE GUY" JIM ZORN
Meanwhiile, on the WaPo website Michael Wilbon's got a nice column, "Zorn's long, sad vigil finally ends." He makes clear that Zorn was in way over his head as a head coach, that the Skins were in fact shockingly unprepared for NFL combat, and yet he's "an especially decent sort," who has been subjected to two years of pretty much nonstop humiliation. He describes him as "a nice person you'd rather go to dinner with than some of the more successful coaches in the NFL."
Wilbon too seems unoptimistic about the prospects of the impending Shanahan regime, not least because of the degree of control he will insist on, which Wllbon insists just doesn't work in today's NFL. He takes obvious delight in the current great fortunes of another nice guy, Norv Turner, who was hounded out of Washington, only to emerge, in San Diego, as the hottest coach in the game.
And you know, it's nice to read Wilbon, rather than watching him and Tony Kornhiser shouting at each other on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption. In fact my new image of sports TV is the hilarious show that Tracy Morgan guested on a couple of 30 Rock episodes ago, where the screen was split into quadrants housing four "sports guys" who simply shout simultaneously at the top of their lungs.
I would have loved to find a clip of it, but NBC seems to be doing a super-efficient job of keeping the Internet scrubbed free of any evidence that anybody is watching let alone enjoying its shows. To be fair, it probably doesn't happen very often these days. And you have to wonder, assuming the new ownership deal for NBC goes through, whether Comcast is going to be as tolerant as GE has been having the 30 Rock people savaging them week after week.
Meanwhiile, on the WaPo website Michael Wilbon's got a nice column, "Zorn's long, sad vigil finally ends." He makes clear that Zorn was in way over his head as a head coach, that the Skins were in fact shockingly unprepared for NFL combat, and yet he's "an especially decent sort," who has been subjected to two years of pretty much nonstop humiliation. He describes him as "a nice person you'd rather go to dinner with than some of the more successful coaches in the NFL."Wilbon too seems unoptimistic about the prospects of the impending Shanahan regime, not least because of the degree of control he will insist on, which Wllbon insists just doesn't work in today's NFL. He takes obvious delight in the current great fortunes of another nice guy, Norv Turner, who was hounded out of Washington, only to emerge, in San Diego, as the hottest coach in the game.
And you know, it's nice to read Wilbon, rather than watching him and Tony Kornhiser shouting at each other on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption. In fact my new image of sports TV is the hilarious show that Tracy Morgan guested on a couple of 30 Rock episodes ago, where the screen was split into quadrants housing four "sports guys" who simply shout simultaneously at the top of their lungs.
I would have loved to find a clip of it, but NBC seems to be doing a super-efficient job of keeping the Internet scrubbed free of any evidence that anybody is watching let alone enjoying its shows. To be fair, it probably doesn't happen very often these days. And you have to wonder, assuming the new ownership deal for NBC goes through, whether Comcast is going to be as tolerant as GE has been having the 30 Rock people savaging them week after week.
THE WINNER AND STILL CHICKEN-MASTER IS . . .
By the way, if you're wondering about the great war between Rupert M and Time Warner Cable, of course in the end TWC caved. Even after running a campaign to get us customers to urge them to play hardball in the interest of keeping cable costs down, you knew they would be afraid to face customers enraged by the loss of American Idol. So they'll raise our rates even more than they would have otherwise. TWC is a company that lives with both hands in its customers' pockets, squeezing every last penny out of us they can.
(I sometimes wonder why I hate my cable and ISP -- and now phone -- company so much, even though they provide a pretty good service. This is why: the feeling that they're always got both hands reaching deeper into and rummaging around my pockets. In my humbling experience, it's almost impossible to have a conversation with a TWC customer rep without winding up paying more.)
Although I have resolutely opposed "tiered" cable pricing, where you get charged according to which services you use rather than for the total package (the tiered pricing just seems too easy an opportunity for the cable operators to stick it to us with à la carte prices), in this case I would gladly make an exception.
By the way, if you're wondering about the great war between Rupert M and Time Warner Cable, of course in the end TWC caved. Even after running a campaign to get us customers to urge them to play hardball in the interest of keeping cable costs down, you knew they would be afraid to face customers enraged by the loss of American Idol. So they'll raise our rates even more than they would have otherwise. TWC is a company that lives with both hands in its customers' pockets, squeezing every last penny out of us they can.(I sometimes wonder why I hate my cable and ISP -- and now phone -- company so much, even though they provide a pretty good service. This is why: the feeling that they're always got both hands reaching deeper into and rummaging around my pockets. In my humbling experience, it's almost impossible to have a conversation with a TWC customer rep without winding up paying more.)
Although I have resolutely opposed "tiered" cable pricing, where you get charged according to which services you use rather than for the total package (the tiered pricing just seems too easy an opportunity for the cable operators to stick it to us with à la carte prices), in this case I would gladly make an exception.
In fact -- and here's my proposal, Time Warner Cable -- I might actually be willing to pony up, say, an extra buck a month for a cable lineup that's Guaranteed Murdoch-Free.
UPDATE: JUST HEARD IT ON THE RADIO --
THE NEW TOM COUGHLIN KEEPS HIS JOB!
Straight from the mouth of management. Defensive coordinator takes one for the team, but Coach The New Tom Coughlin is coming back! Just think how many Sunday afternoons that frees up for Giants fans next fall!
UPDATE: JUST HEARD IT ON THE RADIO --
THE NEW TOM COUGHLIN KEEPS HIS JOB!
Straight from the mouth of management. Defensive coordinator takes one for the team, but Coach The New Tom Coughlin is coming back! Just think how many Sunday afternoons that frees up for Giants fans next fall!
We're 8-8! We're 8-8!
Let's just hope the Mike Shanahan era in Washington gets off to a really horrific start! This one's for you, Pipsqueak Dan!
Let's just hope the Mike Shanahan era in Washington gets off to a really horrific start! This one's for you, Pipsqueak Dan!
UPDATE II: IN COMMENTS, A FASCINATING
LOOK BACK AT PIPSQUEAK DAN'S CAREER
A couple of really great comments, including this stroll down Memory Lane as Pipsqueak Dan builds his fortune, leaving kind of nothing behind, reminding us of another famous American pipsqueak. Must read!
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Labels: football, Fox TV, Rupert Murdoch, Time Warner Cable
posted by KenInNY @ 9:00 PM
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3 Comments:
Dan Snyder is an interesting figure. I looked at his wiki page one day, and I realized his business history is just by product of over other over valuing his business ventures. Almost none of his pre-Redskins purchases exists, and his post-Redskins purchase, corporate operations (i.e. Six Flags) were in bankruptcy a week after he bought them.
His business acumen works in infinite growth environments such as we had in the 90's in effect with crazy monetary policy, but Snyder can't operate in a limited environment such as the NFL because all he knows is how to more money.
The Deadskins over Snyder's term have been great defensively especially when you consider the Time of Possession. So what does Snyder do in the offseason where his QB and his O-line are jokes. His star RB has clearly slowed down from his college and Denver days. He guarantees 86 million dollars and a ton of cap space to best defensive free agent who has history of dogging it after he gets what he wants.
Look at Six Flags, the genius thought he could cut services and make more money, but cutting services led to more people not coming to the parks.
Snyder is the corporate America icon. He only understands cutting and not building. He chases coaches away, and he tries to run the team while mismanaging his other corporate interests.
As far as sports go, Snyder is like that guy who talks about his March Madness picks as if they were brilliant and incisive decisions and has only one upset in the entire dance. If it is an upset its Duke in a down year against a sweet team thats not like UNC or Kentucky.
We are just fortunate Snyder didn't lobby to be in the Bush administration instead of buying the Skins.
Also come on, firing Coughlin would be bad voodoo.
Snyder has that Bush sense of business acumen. If he was trying to find oil in Texas, he'd fail just like Bush. I don't know why any coach would want to work for Snyder. In any field, there are just some companies you don't go to work for if you value your sanity or your career. The New York Knicks are another sports franchise that is a total loser because of ownership. As for the Giants, Coughlin lost his team long ago and I doubt he'll get it back. The players just won't play for him the way they should. The Giants ownership is very conservative and will take 3 years to see what is already obvious.
I'll say one thing for the Jets. They actually give a damn.
Very interesting, Anon -- thanks for sharing all that. (i guess somebody around here has to do some heavy lifting.) It sure fits the Pipsqueak Dan we know and sneer at. And well said, Bruce, as well.
Speaking of sneering, how can anybody not want to spit in Tom Coughlin's sour puss? Whether it's the Old TC or the New, he's got it all going. When everything briefly falls in place, as it did that one season for him with the Giants, he can surprise you. But otherwise he's just an SOB control freak who doesn't know how to control a team!
Think he can match this year's finely balanced 8-8?
Cheers,
Ken
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