AMAZING HOW MANY IDIOTS — YOU, DAN SNYDER — HAVE TO SELL SPORTS TEAMS

The horror of Washington football fans appears over, with Josh Harris’ group paying a record $6 billion for the wreckage of a scandalous reign — the latest example of an owner caving under pressure

     The art of removing a villainous sports owner from power has become as exhilarating, in the most abominable examples, as winning a championship. It shouldn’t be an easy process, considering these men are barricaded by billions and protected by layers of influence. In short, you have to be a complete idiot and/or creep to lose a team in America.

     But wealth breeds greed, which begets corruption and dirty deeds in the sphere of elite white-male privilege. So here we have Daniel Snyder, lowered into the sludge of the losers’ club. He’s the latest leper, pried from a reign of shame in the nation’s capital by a dizzying, repulsive trail of scandals and lawsuits. Attach him to a growing list of undesirables pressured to sell franchises in recent years — Robert Sarver, Jerry Richardson, Donald Sterling — and the lessons should resonate in all cities where owners are failing.

     These are far from the only ownership stinkpots. They’re just the ones who were subjected to appropriate media scrutiny, nationally and in local markets, which created raging furors that prompted league commissioners to probe and fellow owners to ultimately turn on their own. The Washington Post’s relentless reporting on Snyder and the Commanders — once the Redskins, the insensitive nickname he’d vowed to relinquish only “over my dead body” — felt much like Woodward and Bernstein taking down a conniving Richard Nixon decades ago. By the end, after two elaborate NFL probes, Snyder may as well be dead, at least in the context of public life.

     He’s finally surrendering, out of energy and ready to flee to Europe, where he spends much of his time anyway — far from the homeland where he’s mocked. Thursday, he agreed in principle to sell his self-sabotaged wreckage to a group led by Josh Harris, who will add an NFL gold bar to his ownership of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils. Before anyone gets hurt celebrating in Greater D.C. — where Snyder’s teams reached the playoffs only six times in his 24 seasons, never sniffed a Super Bowl and plowed through 10 head coaches — do understand the skinny on Harris. He’s the same owner who once enabled The Process with the Sixers, the most egregious case of tanking in recent sports history, and his teams have yet to win even a conference title in basketball or hockey.

     But in the eyes of fans who’ve suffered an all-time fool in a deteriorating stadium somewhere in Maryland, he already deserves a statue. Anyone who replaces Dan Snyder begins as an immediate conquering hero, especially when he grew up in Chevy Chase and attended a prep school in the District before launching a lucrative investment career. The Sixers and Devils are in much better places than when Harris bought them, and though a salary-cap system won’t allow him to become the NFL’s version of Splurgin’ Steve Cohen, be sure that the Commanders will land the new stadium always rejected by area politicians because Snyder was doing the lobbying.

     Workplace misogyny, mixed with financial irregularities, turns a bad owner into a rotten disgrace. To hear dozens of women who revealed details of a toxic workplace culture within his franchise, sexual harassment was more common than touchdown passes. Snyder was alleged to be in the thick of the sleazefest — a former cheerleader and marketing manager for the team told Congress that he put his hand on her thigh at a team dinner, which came years after he settled a sexual assault claim for $1.6 million. The dirt on this man and his servants piled higher than the Washington Monument.

     Last he was observed at a game, in Chicago, Snyder was bearded and somewhat disheveled, almost unrecognizable, looking like Steve Carell after he was fired in “The Morning Show.” In any other workplace, he might face jail time for overseeing a piggish environment. Instead, he’ll pocket a record $6 billion, the going price of business in America’s most popular and prosperous sports league, for all his wonderful contributions to the NFL experience. Not even his longtime ally, Jerry Jones, can save him this summer, when the issue isn’t whether three-quarters of 31 voting owners will oust him — but whether the vote will be unanimous. It wasn’t long ago when Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, hardly a saint himself, declared that Snyder “needs to be removed.” Lingering rancor could cause future disruptions for owners if he spills damaging secrets about them in a tell-all book, or as part of a sweeping lawsuit. But the league must move on nonetheless. Football in Washington is too important.

     Only the NFL, of course, can command an outrageous sum in a climate of economic uncertainty. Just last year, the Denver Broncos were sold for $4.65 billion, almost double the previous high. Richardson received $2.2 billion from David Tepper when a sexual harassment spree forced a sale of the Carolina Panthers. Don’t even think about spilling a tear for any of these rogues, who benefit from their boorishness. Sarver, late of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns after widespread incidents of workplace harassment, is pocketing $4 billion from brothers Mat and Justin Ishbia. Nine years ago, when Sterling’s mistress recorded his racist comments and leaked the tape, Steve Ballmer swept in and paid $2.2 billion for the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers.

     Doesn’t seem fair. A scoundrel wreaks havoc in a market and a league, then walks away with a stinking windfall. But as a personal legacy maker, nothing brings more attention to a mogul than the purchase of an NFL team. If Snyder didn’t accept Harris’ $6 billion, a group led by Canadian Steve Apostolopoulos was willing to bid more. Only Tilman Fertitta, owner of the NBA’s Houston Rockets, grew queasy and went home. “I’ll be flat-out honest, I made a bid on the Washington Commanders for $5.6 billion,” he said on CNBC. “That’s the value that Forbes had them at, and at some point you’ve got to draw a line in the sand on everything and that’s where we are. If they can get somebody to pay them more than that, good luck to them. I own a franchise, so I love them selling for a lot. But at some point, I don’t think $6 billion is the right number.”

     Jeff Bezos might have paid $7 billion. But as the owner of the newspaper that has nailed Snyder to the cross, he had no chance of winning the bid and didn’t make an official offer. Besides, the league likes Harris and particularly appreciates that Magic Johnson is part of his group, giving the NFL what it so desperately lacks: Black ownership. Don’t be shocked if Bezos eventually buys the Seattle Seahawks in the town where he accrued his Amazon fortunes.

     The sports landscape is filled with owners who should be forklifted out of their comfort zones. Jones continues to fight dirty-old-man scandals that have more than raised eyebrows; yet, as one of the league’s power players, he is safe — and protected by soft media in Dallas. Same goes for Robert Kraft, he of the taped rub-and-tug episode in a massage parlor, in New England. As I’ve written, Jerry Reinsdorf is cushioned by Chicago media who refuse to investigate sleazy episodes: a former head trainer is suing the White Sox after they fired him, he says, because he’s gay; and an autistic batboy won a private settlement after accusing Omar Vizquel, then a fast-tracking manager with the team’s Double-A affiliate, of crude sexual-harassment acts inside the Birmingham Barons’ clubhouse — a story originally covered up by Chris Getz, the White Sox’s assistant general manager for player development. Doesn’t this disgusting compilation sink to the level of Snyder’s workplace?

     For an owner to be extracted, there must be a racial or antisemitic slur (Sterling and Marge Schott), a marital divorce that leaves a team bankrupt (Frank McCourt) or workplace toxicity in the #MeToo age. James Dolan finally has serious playoff action in New York, with the Knicks and Rangers, but he experienced fan hostility long after the former NBA commissioner, David Stern, said he wasn’t an example of “intelligent management.” Al Davis withstood courtroom battles with the NFL and handed down the Raiders to his son, Mark. Few sports owners have been less successful than the Ford family in Detroit, the McCaskey family in Chicago and the Angelos family in Baltimore, yet they carry on because their houses are clean. Presumably.

     Sometimes, new ownership is a life-changer, such as when an inept Chris Cohan sold the Golden State Warriors to a transformative Joe Lacob. Or when the feuding McCourts sold the Los Angeles Dodgers to Guggenheim Partners. And sometimes, it doesn’t help at all, such as when Jeffrey Loria sold the Miami Marlins to Bruce Sherman — and stiffed the city with a $2.4 billion stadium bill.

     Then there was Harry Frazee. He sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees, launching the “Curse of the Bambino” in Boston, and had to pawn off the Red Sox under a bankruptcy cloud. That happened in 1923.

     One hundred years later, the question is how long football in D.C. will be cursed by the Danbino.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.