Forcing Dan Snyder to Sell Team Over Ticket Money Would Be So NFL

Since Daniel Snyder purchased Washington’s NFL franchise for $800 million following the death of previous owner Jack Kent Cooke, his fellow owners have been willing to overlook more than two decades of questionable workplace conditions for women, a racist team nickname and allegations of sexual misconduct against the owner himself.

However if Snyder’s fellow owners, who have been more than willing to let him control a franchise that has just two playoff wins since he took over and routinely makes embarrassing organizational blunders, conclude that he cost them money by withholding money that should have been surrendered to the league’s visiting-team pool, his uncomfortable reign over what should be one of the NFL’s legacy franchises could be coming to an end.

Should that happen, it would be the red-white-and-blue NFL shield demonstrating its true colors, again: green.

According to ProFootballTalk, if it is proven that Snyder and his team did not pass along the 40% share of ticket revenue from each game that is supposed to go into a NFL-wide pool to be distributed equally throughout the league, it would be Snyder’s “death knell” as an owner. “Given the potential implications of this specific claim, which if true would undoubtedly bring down Snyder, it’s hard to imagine that the league and the team will remain silent,” per PFT.

Thus far, the NFL has stayed silent about the matters — perhaps while a covert investigation is taking place? — but the Commanders, the new name of Snyder’s team, pushed back against the notion that anything untoward had taken place with ticket money on Monday. “There has been absolutely no withholding of ticket revenue at any time by the Commanders,” the spokesperson said, via Daniel Kaplan of The Athletic. “Those revenues are subject to independent audits by multiple parties. Anyone who offered testimony suggesting a withholding of revenue has committed perjury, plain and simple.”

Whether the allegations against Snyder and his team are legit remains to be seen, but if they are proven to be true it sounds as if he won’t be able to pay his way out of the situation as he has in the past. That’s a good thing, as Snyder is one of the worst owners in professional sports and would probably be the worst were it not for James Dolan. However, Snyder has been a terrible, embarrassing and borderline criminal piece of the NFL family since 1999 and it will be downright terrible, embarrassing and borderline criminal if the only thing that finally gets his fellow owners to kick him out of their club is messing with their money.

Sad as it is, that sequence of events would also be following the typical NFL playbook, which seems to dictate that the only infraction that incurs a true penalty is hurting the league’s stream of revenue. Snyder should probably have been gone long ago, but if messing with ticket revenue is what finally gets him punted out of the league it will be akin to Al Capone getting sentenced to federal prison for tax evasion. In a way, that’d be the real crime.