D.C. Sports Bog

Agent Zero on Abe Pollin's death

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:23:33 -0500

(By Nick Wass - AP) Gilbert Arenas's return to his Agent Zero persona sort of coincided with the death of Abe Pollin, which led to a surprising number of laugh-out-loud obituary moments after Tuesday night's one-point win over the Sixers. This is, apparently, how the Wizards mourn. For example, a reporter asked Gilbert for his favorite Abe Pollin memory. "You know, after every win he would slap the [bleep] out of you in the face," Gilbert said, cracking up the room. "He'd be walking around, slapping everybody. I just remember the players used to come in, and when he was getting ready to slap you, they'd just give him the duck-in." Then Gilbert showed us the backwards dodge move he'd use to avoid getting hammered in the face.I asked Gilbert whether he ever slapped Pollin back: "Ooooooh, no," he said. He was also asked whether he ever engaged in

Dan Snyder remembers growing up a Bullets fan

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:14:10 -0500

Daniel M. Snyder stood in a FedEx Field concourse Tuesday afternoon, wearing casual slacks, a Redskins parka and football gloves, and helping distribute around 3,500 turkeys to Prince George's County residents. It's the sort of event that can help humanize an owner, and I suppose it did, to some extent. One man called out Snyder's name so effusively the owner blushed. Another older woman reached in for the sort of awkward hug we've all been a part of while leaving Great Aunt Bertha's. But as noted below, his post-turkey interaction with the media was sort of uncomfortable and brief and unenlightening, like interviewing a press release in a parka. About two hours later, after news had broken of Abe Pollin's death, Snyder called into his own radio station - ESPN 980 - and did more to humanize himself than thousands of turkey giveaways could ever accomplish. "When I was a

Daniel Snyder speaks again

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:02:35 -0500

For the second time in recent weeks, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder addressed the media during a Tuesday charity event, this time a Thanksgiving food basket giveaway at FedEx Field. A large group of media members gathered around Snyder in a stadium lobby while about a dozen players and hundreds of corporate volunteers handed out 3,500 turkeys to Prince George's County residents in the stadium concourse. "The community of Prince George's County is just so important to us," said Snyder, who had spent more than an hour handing out turkeys and interacting with the public. "And obviously with FedEx Field here, we're just happy to give back, and this year we're doing a little bit extra, as everyone should nowadays." NBC's Lindsay Czarniak then asked the only questions of Snyder. "Dan, talking to people in the community here, they know what a big difference you make," she began. "And this

Wizards need to name names

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:14:21 -0500

The past week of Wizards' soap operettas could have perhaps easily been avoided if the players who were throwing bombs at anonymous teammates would have just been more specific. Then we needn't have worried about exactly who was mad at whom, who wasn't talk to which locker mate, who thought which teammate was beefing with which friend of that other guy who's dating the girl from across town's sister's neighbor's plumber's mailman's masseuse's sleigh driver's best friend's mother's daughter's mother. Or whatever. Let's review the messy chain of events that finally led to differences resolved. (And for the record, it goes without saying that what I really think should happen is players should stop ripping each other in the media. I'm just joking with the rest of this.) (I also think it's beyond bizarre that DeShawn Stevenson showed up to LeBron James's after-party last Wednesday. But this isn't the

Featured Advertiser

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:14:21 -0500

Wall Street Journal covers the Burgundy Revolution

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:59:31 -0500

The big national media folks are covering my favorite little indie band, and so I'm going to react with the usual mix of prideful satisfaction over the validation and immature resentment over them not totally getting it. The Wall Street Journal sank its teeth into the Burgundy Revolution this week, under this fairly provocative headline: "Are the Redskins Losing Washington? Another Bad Season and Continued Missteps Are Loosening a Disparate Region's Ties to Its Team." I'm even going to quibble with the headline. Maybe I'm living in a warped bubble of passionate sports bloghood, but to me this Revolution stuff has been mostly about anger, not apathy. If people didn't care so much, they wouldn't be so upset. Also, "another bad season" feels wrong to me. They weren't bad last year, and they weren't bad the year before. Over the past five seasons, the team went 37-43 with two playoff

Atlantic 11 Week I: Rivalry renewed

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:53:12 -0500

Welcome back to another year of local college basketball voting. Due to Redskins fans complaining about the front office, and then somehow finding their way to my blog, and then my traffic numbers going up, we now have easily the largest voting pool in Atlantic 11 history. To start, there were 109 voters eager to judge the difference between William & Mary and Morgan State. As always, the 27 Division I schools in D.C., Maryland and Virginia are eligible. With so many voters, several of whom appear to be bad at filling out online survey forms, every single school managed to attract at least one vote. Bear in mind that with this many voters, I can't possibly monitor for horrific voters, so some bad apples might slip through, like whoever voted for Liberty, which is 1-4 with a win against Southern Virginia. This is the poll's fourth year; the previous

Vernon Davis goes curling

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:54:04 -0500

I don't usually brag and boast, but I'll make an exception right now: there might be no person better qualified to copy and paste the embed code for this video of Vernon Davis curling than your author. Think about it: From September through December of 2005, I covered Davis as the Maryland football beat writer, and two months later, I spent the entire month of February covering Olympic curling in Pinerolo, Italy. Has anyone ever covered Vernon Davis and curling in such close proximity? Highly doubtful. Plus, I used to live two blocks away from Vernon Davis's grandma. (If you doubt my curling chops, See here, for example, in which I attended an Italian cover band's Dire Straights performance with the New Zealand curling team. Man, those were the days.) Anyhow, for reasons unclear, the AP moved a two-minute video introduction to curling, starring Vernon Davis. "I'm a hybrid

Theismann calls Skins' system "horrific"

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:46:20 -0500

I'm having a hard time figuring out whether Joe Theismann thinks the Redskins' play-calling system is good, bad or medium. I guess the system has its positives and its negatives, its supporters and its detractors, its highlights and its lowlights. And sometimes you just never know who's on which downward sloping side of the team's play-calling trapezoid. So, Joe, do you want to clarify your position, maybe? "It's horrific!" he said on his ESPN 980 show Monday morning. "Horrific! Terrible! Stupid! Dumb! Everybody's got something that they're responsible for. It's like having three people run an organization, and not one person capable of making one decision. You have one person in charge of the passing game, you have one person in charge of the running game. That is the most absurd, ridiculous thing I've ever seen, and we see the results of that when you see the Redskins burn

Fletcher: Dallas 'didn't deserve to win'

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:04:20 -0500

(By Jonathan Newton - TWP) After Sunday's 7-6 thriller, the Cowboys are now 5-1 all-time against the Redskins in one-point games. (The teams have also tied twice.) The "1," though, is fairly well-remembered, and makes lots of Washingtonians' lists of the greatest Skins-Cowboys moments of all time. That would be the 14-13 Monday Night miracle in 2005, full of all those Mark Brunell and Santana Moss heroics in Dallas. The Cowboys had been dominant throughout that game. The Redskins had been thoroughly inept on offense, and still had a doughnut late in the fourth quarter. Man, do I love doughnuts. But Moss scored with about four minutes left, and then caught the go-ahead touchdown with 2:35 on the clock, just six fewer seconds than remained when Patrick Crayton reached the end zone on Sunday. "You have to learn to close the show, and we didn't do that," Cowboys coach

Wilbon on TK-Wise: Bring on the Steel Cage

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:14:44 -0500

Things that are depressing: D.C. sports imploding. Things that are more cheerful: D.C. sports personalities gnawing at each others' necks. And thus, enough with the Redskins and Wizards for a minute, and let's get back to Kornheiser vs. Wise vs. Kornheiser. It's a heckuva lot more fun. Michael Wilbon was on 106.7 The Fan's LaVar and Dukes Show Friday afternoon, and Chad Dukes wisely asked him about D.C.'s hottest sports feud. "Mike, I gotta ask you about a situation you are very close to," Dukes began. "We've become friends with Mike Wise; he's a great dude, I really like him. I love your show with Tony Kornheiser and enjoy reading him. This rift of theirs, you know both of these guy, they are talking about it on the radio. What is your take on all that?" "I have two words," Wilbon responded: "STEEL CAGE!!!"

Cerrato discusses an aging offensive line

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:55:15 -0500

I was glad to hear Vinny Cerrato discussing the perils of having an aging offensive line without much depth during his ESPN 980 radio show last week. I was encouraged to hear him note that having such a line was one of the problems with the 2008 Redskins. And I was--I don't know, pick a word, stupefied? dumbstruck?--that the thing that got him talking about aging offensive lines was, yes, that's right, the Cowboys. This all happened when Cerrato--wearing his Official Media Person hat--was interviewing ESPN's Ed Werder about what to expect from the Cowboys, which is just unspeakably bizarre to begin with. Cerrato brought up some of Dallas's injuries. "The biggest concern, obviously, is the injury to Marc Colombo, which forces Doug Free, a former fourth-round pick, to make his first career NFL start, and disrupts the continuity that they have had on their offensive line," Werder said, as

Zorn: "It is bleak"

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:25:50 -0500

(By John McDonnell - TWP) That was kind of unfortunate. Leading and shutting out Dallas in the Cowboys' ridiculous home stadium for most of the game, then losing by one at very end after two missed field goals feels more nauseating than losing to Detroit, I think. "There's no loss tougher than this," Doc Walker said at the end of ESPN 980's radio broadcast. "This makes you sick to your stomach, to be here in this cesspool and lose." A few quick reactions. Bleak "I really believe this is a special team of players who will not just chuck things in," Jim Zorn said. "Being 3-7, it is bleak. You know, being 3-7 is bleak. And yet we're gonna come back, we've got another big name next week, we're gonna look at our roster, and patch it up and go again." All that being said, I'm going to focus

Redskins still hate Dallas

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:20:46 -0500

This was predictable, but when I posted the other day how Dexter Manley and Darryl Grant still hate Dallas, out came the comments about how those were the good old days when real men knew how to hate The Star, when winning was more important than making a few bucks, when various organs would be left on the field, etc. And maybe so. Certainly those guys won a lot of games, and certainly they helped elevate the rivalry to the point that it would star in strange athletic ad campaigns, as seen above. But I figured it was worth pointing out that there are plenty of current Redskins who at least know how to hate the Cowboys. For example: "I've been playing against them for so long, it's pretty much the same emotion every time: you hate em, period," Mike Sellers told CSN's Kelli Johnson. "If you have to

Dexter Manley on making Danny White cry

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:14:44 -0500

(AP archives) If you've ever heard Dexter Manley talk, you know that it can be a sometimes baffling yet thrilling experience. His answer to one question will quickly veer to something else entirely, then something else, then something else, then a plug for Certified Building Services, then a sharp dash of pathos, then an aside about Joe Gibbs, and then finally he'll be interrupted and asked something else after 15 minutes or so. So trying to piece together two of Manley's radio interviews this week, both on ESPN 980, is a bit of a job. But let's get to some highlights anyhow. Like, here was when he was asked about knocking out Danny White during the 1982 NFC championship game at RFK, which remains one of the indelible images of this Dallas-Washington rivalry. "I could tell as he was going down, he was whining like a baby, and I

Earl Boykins bench presses more than you

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:57:54 -0500

Earl Boykins man is listed at 5-foot-5, 139. His max bench press is 315 pounds. This makes him the Wizards' strongest pound-for-pound player. And a lot of people, I told him, are surprised by that number. "I think they should be," he said. "I think they should be." Teammates, too. I guess to NBA veterans and longtime observers, the 315 number is sort of legendary, but to newcomers, it's still a shock. If Shaquille O'Neal could bench a number in the same proportion to his weight, he'd be hoisting 736 pounds. "That's amazing for a guy that little in stature, but he's got a big heart," said Randy Foye, whose all-time max was about 290. "It's just amazing to think about It like that, a guy that small can bench that much." "That's a lot of weight," said Mike Miller, who joked (I think) that his max is 105.