D.C. Sports Bog Live: Feuding Wizards, Redskins, Caps and more

D.C. Sports Bogger Dan Steinberg was online Tues., Nov. 24 to break down all your questions about the Redskins' heartbreaker in Dallas, the Caps, the growing discontent among the Wizards, the Nats and the latest sports news and your questions and comments about his latest bog posts.

A transcript follows.

Read Dan's daily smorgasborg of the bizarre side of D.C. sports at the D.C. Sports Bog.

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Dan Steinberg: Well, here I am, briefly. I missed the Skins Podcast this morning, the highlight of my week, because I have to boogie to FedEx Field momentarily to cover a Thanksgiving food handout event. The owner will be there. Never know when he might speak to the media, I guess. So I'm gonna cut this short around 12:20, which is fine, because I write too many words anyhow.

So, quickly quickly today, peoples.

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Annandale, Va.: Thanks Dan, for the revolution.

I know you don't actually cover the team as a reporter, and you may not have had the chance to interact with other teams. But, from what you've heard from colleagues maybe, do you have any idea how Snyderatto are viewed by the front offices of other teams?

I can't imagine that either is taken very seriously by other front office people. Doesn't this lack of respect automatically lessen the leverage that Snyderatto has in any sort of negotiation with other teams over football matters? I'd think so.

Dan Steinberg: Whoa, don't thank me for it. I just try to write about it. And as much as I like to joke around, I'm not trying to write anything inaccurate. If fans weren't angry, I certainly wouldn't want to pretend they are.

And I'm feeling less and less Revolution in the air lately. Maybe people are getting sick of the whole thing, which would be the biggest Revolution of all. But maybe they just got rid of their anger in one big burst, and now are waiting to see what comes next.

As to the rest of your question, you're right, I'm not the right person to answer it. I know some Redskins fans think Jason La Canfora had an axe to grind, but I still remember his post when Cerrato was promoted, in which another team executive was (anonymously) flabbergasted.

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Washington, D.C.: I am 27 years old and have witnessed my friends from other major cities (New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia) get to celebrate one of their team's national championships. As a life long Redskins, Wizards, Caps, and Orioles fan, my last faint memory of victory was the 1991 Redskins. I'm not sure I can stand much more sports related agony. I'm not a big hockey fan, but it seems like our Caps are our only chance of success. How much longer until I can join in a victory parade again?

Dan Steinberg: So we're saying D.C. United and colleges don't count, right? I think NBA teams need Hall of Famers to win titles, and NFL teams almost always need dominant offensive lines, and so I think you're at least six years away from thinking about an NBA title (no idea who comes into town in that span) and maybe three or four years from an NFL one. I mean, from even hoping for one.

Hockey, who knows. You need a hot goaltender, I guess, but there's nothing to say Varly couldn't be that guy. People who know more about hockey than I do will continue to raise concerns about the current defense, but the Caps are at least in the discussion, and should be for a long time.

That said, this is D.C. Drink the champagne now; you can buy more if you need it.

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Suburban Cincinnati, Ohio: Hi, Dan

I am a U-Va. alumnus. I couldn't agree more with John Feinstein's column this morning about Virginia and Maryland football.

We are not going to be Ohio State (and I am also an OSU alumnus), where people complain if they lose two games or didn't win big enough. If Virginia has a series of seven- or eight-win seasons, that is fine.

I am in the minority, but I think Al Groh should keep his job. He has won, he is a good representative of a University he loves, most of his players earn their degrees, and the man can coach defense. (Offense is another matter, but that's why he brought in the new guy.)

My question: when Craig Littlepage lets him go, as Zack Berman and many others report, will that be the result of columnists around the state urging his departure or because behind the scenes boosters are willing to fork out the $4 million to expedite his "retirement or resignation." Is it media pressure, fan pressure, or both that puts a coach on the cliche'd "hot seat?"

And is there anything more than a snowball's chance that he stays?

washingtonpost.com: John Feinstein: In College Park and Charlottesville, football fans lack a sense of place (Washington Post, Nov. 24)

Dan Steinberg: I don't know that situation well enough to guess, but these aren't exactly killer media markets. I have trouble believing important executives at important institutions are making seven-figure financial decisions based on stuff that people like me are writing.

Let me also comment a bit about Maryland football. On The Sports Reporters on ESPN 980 last night, Andy Pollin was sort of arguing in favor of Fridge by saying that Maryland isn't and never will be a football school, and asking why top prospects would want to come here, etc. That strikes me as absurd. How does Maryland get top prospects in basketball? How does Boise State become a national power, in Boise? How did Maryland win the ACC early in Friedgen's tenure?

I'm not saying they should compete for national championships every year, but I think it's reasonable to expect that seasons like this one should never happen.

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Bethesda, Md.: Hey Dan, big fan of yours. I am curious if you knew the name to the song that is played at the Verizon Center after a Wizards win? I have tried contacting the Wizards myself but can't seem to get a response from them. If you could shed some light on this mystery I would very much appreciate it. Thank you.

Dan Steinberg: Yeah, it's called "Tear Da Club Up," by DJ Class. I wrote about it once here. Sorry for the long link

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2007/01/bug_the_bog_wizards_victory_mu.html

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Washington, D.C.: So basically you're to blame for all the Wiz's internal strife, right? You and the fact that Nick Young's natural disposition is to smile. I love these dudes, but they are reaching. Just win some games y'all.

Dan Steinberg: Who knows what will happen. I'm increasingly leery of ever saying anything because sports teams turn things around so dang quickly. If I lived in Tennessee, I'm sure I'd have spent six weeks ripping the Titans and would now be laughed out of town. And I think two of their wins show that they're theoretically capable of being a playoff team.

But jeez, judged only by on-field/court performance and locker room dynamics, they're literally in worse shape than the Redskins, which is just remarkable.

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The District: What happened to Tuff Juice? You never want to see a teammate call out another teammate in the media, but Gilbert is right. Tuff Juice is turning the ball over, taking ill-advised shots, and complaining to the refs. What happened to the tough hustler from two years ago? What happened to the chip on the shoulder? Maybe we should just call him "Juice" from now on?

Dan Steinberg: I thought about this the other day. I can't argue with anything you say, but I think Caron Butler is one of maybe two current athletes in town I'd have trouble writing anything bad about, ever. The other athlete is/was Ben Olsen, who's calling it quits today, in an event that I have to miss to cover Redskins handing out turkeys.

Yes, this shows that I'm not objective, but it's my general understanding that I don't necessarily have to be. Put that on my resume, huh? Anyhow, I have no idea what happened, but I'll go with the Wizznutzz theory that giving up Mountain Dew hasn't worked, and he needs to go back to doing the Dew. Better than Honeydew, for this team.

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Charlottesville, Va: I think I heard that the Wiz will honour Ben Olsen after the third quarter in advance of his retirement announcement.

I didn't know that the NBA fans were big MLS fans, too.

Did you have a clue?

Dan Steinberg: Yes, this is true.

Ben Olsen is a big Wizards fan and has been to lots of games. There are also some nice relationships between people in the two front offices. And it gives the Wiz an excuse to offer a special on some $14 tix, after Ben's uniform number.

In terms of fan overlap, there may be more between the Caps and United, but whatever. Great gesture.

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Charlotte, NC: Please compare and contrast the Wise v. Kornheiser feud with the Arenas v. Butler feud as well as the impact on their respective "locker rooms".

Dan Steinberg: Well, Kornheiser and Wise don't share any "locker room" whatsoever in 2009, so I'm not sure anyone is really feeling the rift there. Also, the comparison just doesn't work; Gilbert and Kornheiser are the bigger names, but Gilbert and Wise have more mental problems. Gilbert and Kornheiser are less squeamish about stabbing you in the back with an icepick than their counterparts, but Gilbert and Wise are best able to charm their way out of any mess.

By the way, remember those WaPo fisticuffs from a few weeks back, and the suggestion on Redskins Nation that this was analogous to Sellers vs. Portis? At the time I thought it was a fair, if ridiculous, point, but the thing about the WaPo is that we can go weeks or years without seeing many/all of our colleagues. I just sit in my living room and transcribe radio interviews. So it doesn't matter how much I might hate Rick Maese, if I never have to see him. Athletes, however, have to see each other all the time, including naked in the shower. Big difference. I've never, ever seen Rick Maese naked in the shower.

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Navy Yard: for all the complaining that local college football fans do, at least you aren't Northeastern. In a rather unusual move, they've decided that a football program simply isn't worth the hassle and the money could be better spent elsewhere. So, Maryland, U.Va., VaTech, and the rest, at least you still have poor football teams to complain about.

NU is the second Boston-based university to cut football in 12 years.

Dan Steinberg: Fine.

I'm now going to ignore this to complain about the fact that I have to go to FedEx Field to watch a turkey giveaway instead of posting a photo of Nyjer Morgan with Blondie. Sheesh.

Yes, I volunteered to go to the turkey giveaway, why do you ask?

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Reston, Va.: I heard Andy Pollin say that as well and almost drove off the road. TCU, Boise State, CINCINNATI (?!) - these are all Top 8 BCS teams right now. You're telling me Cincinnati is a football school but Maryland cannot be? You're telling me people would rather move to Boise than the D.C. Area? Really?

Such a dumb argument.

Dan Steinberg: Cool, I can now post this and re-argue the same thing I already argued. Awesome.

One thing I forgot: the argument that the ACC is a bad conference. Really, it's a bad football conference? THEN SHOULDN'T MARYLAND BE ABLE TO WIN MORE THAN ONE GAME IN IT? No?

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Arlington, Va.: If the Wizards were all celebrating Thanksgiving together - who would have the job of turkey baster?

Dan Steinberg: Not sure, but Gilbert definitely does a nice job of twisting the knife.

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Bad news judgement: Ben Olsen's retirement is a real news story, unlike Redskins handing out turkeys in a staged PR event. Besides, The Post has something like nine reporters on the Redskins beat so let them cover the non-news while you go commit journalism.

Dan Steinberg: I'm pretty sure Steven "Steve" Goff will be all over it. And I'm not sure that much "news" will be occurring in either place; we already know that Olsen is retiring, and we already know that turkeys are dead and will be given away to families in need.

Also, you never know when some of the turkey hander-outers might decide to address the media.

Also, this will allow me to spend the rest of my day fighting with the wireless Internet connection at some Starbucks in Landover.

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Frederick, Md.: Dude, "Revolution" is wrong, all wrong as a term for what's going down with irate Redskins fans. "Revolution" implies a takeover of power, like those bearded Bolsheviks a century ago, or the scowling Ayatollah in the late 70s. What we've got here is, at best, a very weak boycott of team apparel and related trinkets, and lots and lots of whining. I see Snyder so freaked out, he's yawning at the side of his indoor heated pool. Win a couple of games and everyone is back. "Revolution." Ha.

Dan Steinberg: You might be right. When I started with the term, I was kind of joking. Then it seemed more and more apt, as people were posting banners on highways and the team was explicitly banning dissent and so on.

But I can't really argue with you, not after the showing of fans at the Broncos game. Maybe the first wave has become disillusioned and mad and whatever else, but another wave of proles showed up behind them willing to eat the gruel, or whatever the right metaphor is. And as always, I don't blame anyone. This is fun, and if you're still having fun at games, I'm not going to tell you to stop.

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re: And I'm feeling less and less Revolution in the air lately. : I can only sustain a certain level of anger for so long. I got sick of being angry, and I got sick of hearing the same stuff over and over when listening to Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin. They sound angry even when they're happy. Listening to them made me less angry because it made me think we were getting a little out of hand with all this anger.

Dan Steinberg: I do agree.

Also, the team has at least looked better for the last 10 quarters, but again, if that's enough to quell the anger, then the anger wasn't really about much in the first place, was it?

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Winter in Washington: Dan -- Winter Games -- are you at least going to cover them?? There's a high likelyhood of Ovie-related antics. Seems like you should be on that. Happens only once every four years.

Dan Steinberg: I agree that it would be fun, but no, we don't have the travel budget for that any more. We'll just sit back and cry as Yahoo!'s Puck Daddy dude gets all the Ovie antics.

I'm not sure if Tarik is going or not. If so, he'll make everyone else cry, I promise.

Anyhow, if I'm a local sports blog, something like Nats spring training would probably be better use my time and energy and Marriott points.

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Suitland, Md.: How do you feel about Chico Harlan's comments that credit (or condemn) you for exposing his resigning from the Nats beat?

Dan Steinberg: He was just joking. I checked with him, and he's fine. At least, publicly. Maybe he's gonna pull an Arenas and say that he has no problem with 33 of his 34 co-workers.

Honestly, stuff like that instantly shows up on D.C. media blogs, and I always feel like if we want to own the D.C. sports news, that should include news about us. Trust me, if/when I resign, get fired or get another job, I'll tweet the heck out of it, and then write a blog post blasting myself.

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Houston: As much as Suisham's missed FGs stabbed my in the heart, you gotta feel for the Texans (the AFC team I am trying to adopt down here). The kicker (who is the only person to play in every game since they became a franchise) missed a game-tying FG at the end of the game in two of the last three weeks - to division rivals, including in Indy, where they have never won. I mean, we're playing for draft picks, but the Texans are actually playing for the postseason.

But, I must say, as much as that loss to Dallas hurt, it was nice to see them stink for the second week in a row.

Dan Steinberg: Dallas doesn't just stink, they stink a lot. And playoff wise, they stink even more than the Redskins. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but gosh, it's just about impossible to imagine the Cowboys doing anything in the postseason for yet another year, right? That's not an insignificant compensation.

And as much as Brown might have gagged, how about Rob Bironas? He's awesome. Rob or Rod? Either way, he's awesome. Glad I dropped him in fantasy.

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RE: Maybe people are getting sick of the whole thing: That, and the realization it was never going to work. Did people really think FedEx would ever be half-empty on gameday as a result of a boycott? Or that Snyder would get frustrated and sell the team? Or maybe people woke up to the fact that 106.7 has a very real financial interest in stoking the anger against the team.

The "revolution" was always a pipe dream. If people are finally realizing that, more power to them.

Dan Steinberg: I don't think people thought it would be half-empty because of boycott, but I think some people did indeed think it would be largely empty because of indifference. If they lose long enough and badly enough, eventually there will be more empty seats. But right now, no, we apparently haven't reached that point. Plus, that Broncos game was played on the absolute best football weather day in world history.

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Minneapolis, Minn.: The revolution has died down because they won one game and almost won another.

Which shows how paper-thin this revolution really is. This season may have allowed the discontent regarding management to bubble to the surface, but fans are willing to overlook those sentiments if the team wins.

If Danny can purchase a 9-7 team in an uncapped year, he will buy out the revolution.

Dan Steinberg: Wow, the Royalists are invading!

I can't argue with this. Can you imagine the feeling around town if the Skins had actually held on to win last week? People would be a lot more serious with the playoff talk. I guess there are really three issues here

1) On-field performance

2) Front-office structure

3) General fan treatment

I think 1 will always be most important. For a lot of fans, 2 is becoming increasingly important, because they believe that the guy signing the players has not done a great job and therefore the hope for an improvement in (1) is not too great. For at least a few fans, (3) is the larger background, and something that wouldn't be solved by a 6-0 win in Dallas. But I think those numbers might be pretty small.

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Orlando, Fla.: Since we've had feuding Redskins, and we now have feuding Wizards, naturally the Nationals are next, right? Who's your money on?

Dan Steinberg: Jose Guillen. Straight locker room cancer.

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Alexandria, Va.: I am a fan of the Redskins, Nats, and Wizards. I don't care about hockey or soccer. Give me a reason to live.

Dan Steinberg: College bowl pools. The greatest reason ever to watch Purdue play UNLV, or whatever.

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College Park, Md.: Can you start talking Terps hoops? Don't look now but Gary's got a team in place that could do some big things....

Dan Steinberg: Certainly they're no match for Chaminade.

But no, you're right. The Williams kid and the Padgett kid, to use the radio parlance, both seem like good kids, not in the sense that your parents believe you're a good kid but in the sense that they're diaper dandies who can flat out play, to use more awful words because I don't feel like thinking of other words.

As always, if I could get season tickets to any one D.C. area sports institution, I believe I would select terps basketball. More so this year than last, for sure.

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West Chester, Penn.: please watch the field goal before halftime in slow motion. because the football was higher than the goalposts, it appears that it may have been good by the television angle . I may be crazy, but please just watch it yourself and comment.

Dan Steinberg: Ok, I've now gotten a blog commment, an email and a Web chat question about this. Three different people, or one?

I'll watch it. but I trust the people who are standing directly underneath the goal posts more than I trust my television angle, and I haven't seen or heard one Redskin protest in any way about this.

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Brunswick, Md.: Yeah, I know the sign ban is old news and that it is hard to divine someone else's motivations, but to me it seems like the timing of the Redskins sign ban points strongly to Dan Snyder doing it just to avoid embarrassment on national TV during the MNF game. He was trying to create a Potemkin village-like appearance of happy fans. Thoughts?

Dan Steinberg: I don't think this to be the case. I"m pretty sure it was in effect, to some degree, during the Chiefs game, and that one probably didn't garner a huge national audience. And the negative backlash and negative media attention they got from the sign ban far outweighed any MNF benefit, in my view. I actually don't know how/why this happened, but I'm glad it's over.

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There Are Still Other Sports Stories: Steinz,

Thank you for taking all the constructive criticism to heart and making your Bog less of a "Redskins Insider II" blog. But now here's more.

Washington National Ryan Zimmerman was chosen a few days ago to receive a Jefferson Award for Public Service because of his off-field activities. This isn't a sports award; other recipients in past years have included Colin Powell, Bill Gates, Barbara Bush and four Supreme Court Justices.

Yet there's been no mention in either the dead-tree or the Web pages of The Washington Post. Isn't something like that news? Or at least Boggable?

Dan Steinberg: Yes, it's news.

Nah, I'm not really sure it's boggable. I guess I don't know what the Bog is, any more, but I'm pretty sure it's not the source for stuff like this. There has to be something value added to it, and what could I add other than "good for you Ryan, nicely done."

To me, this would merit a paragraph or two on Nationals Journal, and maybe a couple sentences in the paper. Maybe something longer about his public service, but you know it's tricky to do those things without making them entirely boring.

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Rockville, Md.: Is it just me or have the comments in the Atlantic 11 gotten off to a slow start? I'm not sure I find any of them funny or even clever. It's a shame there are all those voters and not one comedian between them. Or maybe I'm too harsh and some of them are funny just not to me.

Dan Steinberg: Well, maybe the fault is with me. I get hundreds of comments and have to pick 11, and I try to do it sort of rapidly so that I don't spend all day on one item of limited interest to the world. So I'll step up and take the blame.

I'll also say I snorted out loud at least seven or eight times reading the comments yesterday, so maybe I'm really really easy.

Ok, defitnely have to run to FedEx right now. Tell the local traffic officers to deal with me kindly, because man am I late.

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