How can Daniel Snyder not be ousted as owner of the Commanders if he hid money from the NFL? | You Pod to Win the Game
Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson and Frank Schwab discuss the never ending scandals involving the Washington Commanders and their owner. Now Snyder is being investigated for cooking his books and not making the proper payments to the league from his franchise’s ticket revenue. Could Snyder escape another ousting? If so, what does he have over the rest of the league that keeps him in place despite all of his transgressions. Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
CHARLES ROBINSON: I feel like the scandals that continue to happen with Washington so far, I'm not like, wow, I never would have expected that. Like so far, the DEA raids their facility during the season. You're kind of like, Yeah, that was a little bit of a surprise. But you know, I mean, you know, the toxic workplace environment, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform that's been looking into the workplace environment there will now front office sports reports that, hey, maybe Washington was keeping two sets of books.
As soon as you hear two sets of books, the first thing you need to think is either money laundering or you're straight up hiding income. And the allegation here, which they have strenuously denied, is that Washington was not reporting the full amount of ticket revenue from opponents coming in and playing at their place, right.
And the way the NFL works, all 32 franchises take a portion of percentage of your opponent's ticket revenue that you make, and you all put it into a pot and then they divide it up between the 32 teams. And that's supposed to help small market teams equalize with large market teams, all these different things. And that's why you get complaints from some of the franchises that pack in the stadiums.
So the insinuation here is that Washington was hiding a portion of this ticket revenue and thusly, not sharing part of its finances with the rest of the league. I can tell you, there are a lot of things you can survive as an NFL owner. I just really, truly believe that when it comes down to fraudulently hiding, and this is just an allegation right now, allegedly fraudulently hiding money from Jerry Jones, from Stan Kroenke, from Robert Kraft, it's going to turn the room against you pretty quickly.
I don't even know how to describe the survivability of Daniel Snyder if somehow this turns out to be true and he still remains the owner of the Washington franchise. It's just incomprehensible to me.
FRANK SCHWAB: I mean, it's incomprehensible before that. And like you said, you're talking about this were we really shocked that the possibility of somebody alleged that they're keeping two different books and maybe keeping revenue to themselves? No, not at all because of everything else that's gone on there. And again, just allegations at this point, and their lawyers are being very aggressive.
And that's one thing, there's no backing out now. They've basically said, this is a straight up lie. There's nothing to this. Bring it on. Anything you want to bring in court, we'll fight. So OK, you basically gone and aggressively fought this.
And here's the thing I've said about Snyder, and I think we've talked about this here, I've talked about it elsewhere, but I'll repeat it again. Daniel Snyder's a bad guy. Like, we've had decades now of a lot of stuff that's gone on to know he's a bad guy, but I could at least, understand in my head at some point if he was good for business.
If NFL owners were like, this guy is a scoundrel basically, but Washington's doing so well like, he's good for business, we're making a lot of money. No, he's running that franchise into the ground. Like, they can't fill that stadium. The stadium stinks. They can't get a new one. He has taken one of the marquee franchises because of where it's located, and absolutely is ruining it.
Business wise, he's bad. And now, you have this on top of it. Like, again, you're right. What does he have? What blackmail does he have on these other owners?
CHARLES ROBINSON: Right.
FRANK SCHWAB: And it's not like it's unprecedented, they ran Jerry Richardson out of town. Like, you could run an owner out of town. We've seen them that happen. I don't get it. I don't understand.
And Yeah, I agree with you. If this is it, if this actually happened, do they have proofs that? There are two different books and they're withholding revenue? You can't survive that. How could you? How could you go back to an owners meeting after that.