An Open Letter to Fans of the English Premier League

Dear Lads (or Blokes, or Geezers, or Yobs, or Whatever the Hell),

I would like to state unequivocally that like most of my countrymen, I know fuck all about your version of football. As you can probably tell by our performances in the World Cup, your national game just never caught on here.

But upon giving the state of your sport a passing glance, I am able to find certain similarities between our football and yours. For instance, in the rampaging dullard category, you guys have Milwall while we have Philadelphia and Oakland. Some things are just universal.

Just like you, we also have high ticket prices, overpriced food and drink, jerseys that were made by a kid who got paid a bowl of rice for his labors being sold for $100, and public funding schemes for new stadiums in order to pacify owners who have money literally falling out of every orifice in their corpulent white bodies. And like you, we are justifiably resentful of such things.

To be sure, there are teams who are at least providing a quality product on the field (or pitch, or whatever) both on your side of the pond and ours, which eases the pain of a watered down nine dollar beer somewhat. But for most real fans of the game, the football experience both here and in the UK is a long march of misery and failure, punctuated by minor ticks of misplaced joy. I’m sure that fans of Queens Park Rangers would have a great deal in common with fans of the Cleveland Browns, who are on occasion rewarded with a decent year, but for the most part are left to suffer the indignities of losing season after losing season.

A poor team is bad enough, but bad ownership and management makes the whole experience even worse. Stupid trades, coaches who couldn’t manage a successful bowel movement much less a football team, ridiculously overpaying unproven or past their prime talent, these are things that are not exclusive to either American or British football.

For instance, the team that I support is the Washington Redskins. (Yes, we know, it’s a racist name, but believe me when I tell you that the name is the least of the team’s problems.) The Redskins are currently owned by an incompetent, greedy, vindictive, awful little shit of a man named Dan Snyder. He bought the team for $800 million in 1999 after the death of Jack Kent Cooke, whose smart stewardship of the franchise led us to three separate NFL Championships from 1983 to 1991. The Skins have not even come close to that level of achievement since.

Dan Snyder bought a team with a fanatical built in fan base. Despite Washington’s reputation as a transitional city, the D.C. area is actually mostly populated by people who come from families who have lived here for multiple generations, myself included. And we live and die by this team. It wasn’t like Mr. Snyder had to engage in an uphill marketing battle to really sell Washington Redskins football. Heroin dealers have a rough time of it in comparison. The time spent on the waiting list for season tickets is about twenty years. It isn’t uncommon for new parents to put their infant’s name down on the season ticket list in the hopes that they will be able to afford them when their names finally get called. (This is actually becoming more and more unlikely.)

Upon buying the team, Mr. Snyder immediately began to treat this devoted fan base as if they were nothing more than dogshit with ATM cards. He jacked up the rates for everything, including parking, which is particularly bad because the stadium is hell and gone out in Prince George’s County and is mostly inaccessible by public transportation. Tailgating, a tradition as old as football itself, has been forcibly curtailed. The idea that people are eating their own food and drinking their own beer before entering the stadium is blasphemy to Dan Snyder, who would much rather squeeze nickels out of his devoted fans by forcing them to pay for poorly made $10 chicken tenders and hot dogs. It would not be absurd to imagine Mr. Snyder bottling his own knock off brand of Coca-Cola or brewing his own shitty beer in the basement of Fed Ex Field in order to maximize his profits.

He has plastered every available surface of the stadium with advertising. (Do bear in mind that when an American says that there is too much advertising, you better fucking BELIEVE that there is too much advertising.) Any stoppage in play is met with a series of adverts for cars, sodas, beers, mutual funds etc. Not on television, mind you, but on the twin giant HD television screens which dominate both sides of the stadium. The broadcasters deliver the game from “The Popeye’s Fried Chicken Broadcasting Booth.” (Seriously. They actually say this.) Time outs are referred to as “Jiffy Lube Time Outs.” There are barely any advertising free seconds of broadcast when you listen to the game on the radio.

As you probably know, the global economy is in a recession, but since Dan Snyder personally isn’t, he sees no reason why those who cannot afford their season tickets should not be taken to court in order to be made to pay up. A season ticket contract is an actual contract, after all, right?

So, in short, everything that you guys hate about America? The rip-offs, the principle of money over all, the idea that absolutely everything is for sale, the Cui Bono horse shit that makes us big and loud and blazing and fucking impossible to deal with at times? Dan Snyder embraces this sort of thing with a passion that is embarrassing to watch, and expensive to experience.

He also makes my beloved Redskins awful.

The traditional role of an owner in American football is probably the same as the proper role of an owner in British football. Be rich, shut the fuck up, look magnanimous, hire people who know what they are doing and write the necessary checks (or cheques, or whatever) needed to cover the costs. Dan Snyder does not do this. He is the only thing worse than a micromanager. He is an incompetent micromanager.

He meddles. He hires. He fires. He chooses the talent. He is hands on about every aspect of the running of the actual team, despite the fact that the closest he ever got to playing football was getting his ass kicked by the guys on the team at his high school. He also has the attention span of a nine year old that has put cocaine on his morning corn flakes, losing interest in coaches and players on which he has paid absurd amounts of money and jettisoning them when they fail to instantly turn things around. The Redskins now have such a horrible league wide reputation for front office meddling that no coach in his right mind would be willing to take the job. It’s the equivalent of a restaurant owner camping out in the kitchen during the dinner rush and second guessing the chef while he is trying to get the plates out the door.

The “General Manager” of the Washington Redskins is a “General Manager” in the sense that Elvis Presley’s karate instructor was “really teaching” the King how to be a black belt. Vinny Cerrato is a sycophantic, powerless yes man who does what he’s told. His is a job that could be done by quite literally anyone, from Lilly Allen to Flavor Flav, from Aaron Aaronnsen to Zoe Zayers. No skill, initiative or counsel is required. Just be an efficient bag man and you too could be the General Manager of the Washington Redskins.

And the play on the field reflects all this. To put it in terms that you might understand, if the National Football League used the practice of relegation, the Washington Redskins would be playing high school teams in Montgomery County by now.

So why am I troubling you about all this? Why would anyone in England give one tenth of one percent of one shit about some god awful American billionaire and his embarrassingly named team?

Head’s up, Nigel. This unbelievable dickhead is sniffing around your neck of the woods.

Two years ago he was creeping around London, trying to make a bid on Tottenham. And he won’t stop there. Believe me when I tell you, this guy is not Malcolm Glazer. Manchester United has apparently continued to be a good team despite Glazer buying the team. Dan Snyder is the reverse King Midas of sport. Everything he touches turns to shit. If he buys Aston Villa or Arsenal or Man City or Wolves or whoever the fuck, you can guarantee that overnight this guy will think he’s channeling Pele and will start making all the personnel decisions of the team to absolutely catastrophic effect.

There won’t just be advertising on the front of the jersey. Each individual ass cheek of the players’ shorts will be for sale, as will their socks, cleats and probably their jockstraps as well. Ticket prices will go up. EVERYTHING will go up. Beer, food, jerseys, whatever. That’s what he does. That’s WHO HE IS.

Dan Snyder is first and foremost a businessman, and in Washington, D.C. his business is peddling misery. We figured that maybe we should let you guys know before he starts exporting that product to you. Judging from the You Tube evidence, y’all are pretty good at rioting over there. That should come in handy in the event that this blight on the soul of my city buys one of your teams.

Best of luck, chaps. Just do remember that we tried to warn you.

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