A sign policy so backward that even a caveman wouldn't come up with it

Remember that colorful sign in the garbage can outside FedEx Field on Monday night, the one sending best wishes and love to a husband in Afghanistan?

Well, now the sign has an owner. The owner was 20-year old Jada Bello, a lifelong Redskins fan from Harford County whose husband Thomas -- a Philly fan and Army medic -- can only watch the Eagles when they're on national TV games.

So when Jada decided to go to this particular Monday night game, she told Thomas, who's been overseas since January and who missed the birth of his child. He expressed jealousy.

"I told him I'd bring him a sign to kind of represent for him, to tell him that I love him and that I'm proud of him," she told me on Tuesday.

She hadn't heard that the Redskins recently changed their policy to ban all signs; not surprising, since the policy just sort of disappeared from the team's Web site. So she brought her sign, and she got through the first line of security, but then was called back and told that her sign broke the rules.

"I just think it's ridiculous," she said. "Now, I could understand if my sign would have offended anybody, but there's no way my sign could have offended anybody. It was a personal sign between me and my husband."

Which is sort of the Redskins' point. All signs are banned, not just signs critical of ownership. Fans who have brought the same banners of support for years also reported a roadblock this week.

"We have an absolute prohibition," Redskins Chief Operating Officer David Donovan told my colleague Mike Wise on his 106.7 The Fan radio show this week. "We don't care what they say."

Granted, it'd be tough to show discretion with a crowd of 90,000 people. But how, pray tell, did cardboard-and-marker become such a threat to the game-day experience?

"They get in the way of other people viewing the game, and people get poked in the head," Donovan told Wise. "That stuff happens."

Over the past two days, I've gotten dozens and dozens of e-mails and other messages expressing outrage about this new policy. In the past four years, I believe I've gotten zero messages from fans of any local team complaining about obstructed views because of signs, and zero messages from fans of any local team complaining about being poked in the head by signs.

I mean, poked in the head? This is a stadium in which people regularly stumble around while holding, and occasionally tossing, bottles full of beer. And you're trying to protect people from being poked in the head with poster board?

"I wasn't intending on holding it up the whole time," Jada said. "If somebody would have told me it was blocking their view, I would have had no trouble putting it down. I poked myself in the eye twirling my towel. The poking in the head [argument] is ridiculous."

Towel? Oh, that's right, the Redskins were handing out potentially dangerous and view-obstructing rally towels. Also, according to three unsolicited e-mails I received from fans, at least some entrances were offering small promotional posters. You know, the kind with the little pointy sticks holding a glossy scroll that opens up with a message? In this case, the message being "GEICO."

So to review, poster board signs sending best wishes to service members in Afghanistan: No. Pointy-sticked scrolls advertising Geico: Yes.

"Hopefully there is a soldier in Afghanistan named Geico who saw the game and had his or her spirits lifted by the love and support of those signs," a commenter observed on my blog.