The Lousy Taste of a Losing Team

by J. Brown

The Washington Redskins are a terrible team. Most people who follow football know this, and it's been this way for a while. After winning the Super Bowl in 1991, they've made the playoffs only five times in the past 23 years. They spend each off-season hyping their fans with buzz phrases like "potential", "improvement" and "high expectations" before inevitably trotting out another sub-par roster, year after year. The owner of the Redskins, Dan Snyder, seems more concerned with accruing revenue than with actual winning, and he hasn't shown any signs of changing his ways in the near future.

How can this be? How can this perpetually unwatchable team possibly be making Snyder money? Well, the main reason is because the NFL is a revenue-sharing league, which basically means that every team gets a share of the money the league makes as a whole. Still, Washington was the 3rd-most valuable team in the league a year ago, meaning they were somehow making more money than 29 other NFL teams. Although the specific sources of this money are unclear, it can be assumed that most of it comes from TV deals and merchandising. That means people are watching this terrible team on Sundays and wearing athletic gear with their racist name emblazoned across the front (that's a whole different story). Having lived in DC for the past five years, I can attest to the fact that the Redskins have a large contingent of faithful, die-hard fans. Why?