What happened to all those die-hard Redskins fans?
Pittsburgh Steelers fans took over FedEx Field last week. Must have been 20,000 Terrible Towels waving in the stands that forced the Redskins offense into a silent count.
A silent count at home.
Now thousands of tickets are online for Sunday’s Dallas game. The Cowboys have always drawn big crowds at FedEx, but fears of another opposing occupation have forced the Redskins through their radio station to give 50,000 burgundy towels at the stadium gates so local fans can be spotted.
Maybe they should be white flags because Redskins fans are surrendering home-field advantage.
This is getting ugly. The Redskins are amidst their best start since 1999 and fans are bailing faster than Sarah Palin supporters.
For shame.
Money’s tight and Christmas is coming so selling tickets to Steelers and Cowboys games for serious dough is understandable. That both are night games and bring little sleep before heading to work stinks, too.
But, don’t sell your tickets to opposing fans. Times were tough some years at RFK Stadium and you didn’t see visiting fans by the thousands. This new stadium with its wine-and-cheese, premium seats crowd has fans watching from inside the club level on TVs. Ridiculous.
The Redskins, in their silly reactionary way, are distributing rally rags so the Steelers’ Terrible Towel episode won’t be repeated. Please, this is an amateurish response. You can almost hear Dan Snyder yelling, “We need towels, too.” Yeah, that will fix the problem. It’s insulting. And why 50,000 towels instead of 91,000 for a capacity crowd? Are they expecting 40,000 Cowboys fans who don’t want towels?
But Snyder isn’t the problem here. The Redskins have Dallas, New York and Philadelphia remaining and tens of thousands of fans are missing. Maybe it’s the price of mediocrity since 1993. The Redskins culture has moved on to other things.
Has the recession really hit Redskins fans so hard they have to sell their tickets? And why do Steelers, Cowboys, Giants and Eagles fans have more money than Washingtonians? There are fewer Cincinnati tickets for sale online than Washington and the Bengals are awful.
It’s time for some soul searching around Washington, which has long suffered a poor national reputation as a mediocre sports town. The sight of empty seats and Cowboys fans filling FedEx will be another stain.
What a shame.
Rick Snider has covered local sports since 1978. Contact him at [email protected]
