Running back on owner: 'This person's heart is dark' Brad Biggs
John Riggins, the Super Bowl MVP and Washington Redskins icon, has taken his YouTube act against Daniel Snyder and Vinny Cerrato to a new level.
The outspoken and loquacious former running back found a much larger platform from which to attack. He’ll be featured tonight on Showtime’s “Inside the NFL” and he’s firing new ammunition at Snyder in what sounds like it has become personal in an attack in which he questions the character and heart of the man.
“I’ve been asked this question a lot, when they say do you have an ax to grind, and I think anytime an older player criticizes or says anything about his former team, unless he’s throwing Bon Mots at them, that all of a sudden you get a, ‘What’s he griping at,’ type of thing?’’ Riggins said in a transcript released by Showtime. “Maybe that’s the case. But truthfully I do have an ax to grind and I just realized I have been a little bit disingenuous. But this is a bad guy that owns this team. I’ll just tell you that upfront. Bad guy. And if the commissioner is worried about potential new owners and saying some of these guys shouldn’t apply, he might want to police his own inside guys.’’
Wow.
APDaniel Snyder
Bad owner? Well, his record isn’t very good. Bad guy? Sure, the Redskins aren’t letting fans carry signs at FedEx Field. But bad guy? That’s something entirely different.
“Because his business practices, I think,’’ Riggins said when pressed how Snyder is bad. “I don’t want to say they are unethical, but I don’t think it’s a place, a climate that is created there where people can be successful. It’s driven all by his ego and everything has to come from him. And I just don’t think you can be successful in those situations and when you are dealing with someone with the mindset of a child and yet owns a franchise in the NFL. I think you have some problems there.
“I am saying that I don’t think that this franchise can be successful where you have people saying, ‘Oh this person Dan Snyder wants to win. He wants to win.’ It’s all about priorities, what’s my priorities? The priority is it’s all about me. I have to have my needs met then I want to make money, and or those are one and two, and then I want to win. You can see by the decisions that are made. I don’t know if you have agreed with anything I am saying so far, but at this point, I would think you would say, `Yeah, I’ll go along with that.’
“This person knows nothing about football, absolutely nothing. I don’t think they have a clue how a football team comes together, how it works. And yet they are the ones that are basically calling all the shots through a puppet, which is Vinny Cerrato. That is my take on it. I speak for the fans because these are the people that paid my salary for all these years. They are the ones that need to know that this is a bad guy.’’
At that point, Cris Collinsworth points out that there is a vast difference between being a bad executive and a bad person.
“Let me put it to you this way,’’ Riggins said, “this person’s heart is dark.”
Follow me at Twitter: BradBiggs
dan snyder is a joke i agree with riggins he does not no football he is playing fantasy football at a new level. maybe he would do better at running 6 flags or maybe he is cause i heard they filed for bankruptcy also.he does own that to.you should hire the right people for the right job and let them do there job and he should do what ever it is that he does
Riggo better have some facts to back that up because what he's saying borders on slander....But he's right, Snyder's a horrible owner and Skins fans -- and the NFL for that matter -- deserve better.
Riggins may very well be right. We don't know much about how these owners do business. All we have to go on is the teams performance and what we read and hear about them. Synder has continually blown it in free agency and foolishly traded away all his draft picks. It seems that over the years I have never heard anything good about the guy. A few years back I remember he trashed the owners suite in Dallas after a Skins loss. Obviously very immature. Seems I read he charged the Ravens to park their team bus infurating Art Modell. Riggins may very well be right!!
I undrestand what John Riggins means referencing dan snyder's dark heart.
What the team did to Jim Zorn in front of he entire country is cruel and unfeeling. You dont gut a man and make him stand there and take it.They should have fired him and moved on.
Remember, that Riggo has worked for Dan Snyder on his radio station in the past. He has had dealings with the man. So, if he says that he is a bad person he does have some basis of experience for holding that opinion.
His heart is dark. Anyone that has his lawyers sue fans that can no longer pay their contract on season tix and drives them to bankruptcy is a dark soul. Every other team in the same situation cancels the contract and then resells the tix. He sicks his lawyers on them instead. The only reason he stopped is the bad pub he got when the Post ran a story on it. This is the same man who made Gregg Williams twist in the wind even when he was handpicked by Gibbs to be his successor. Snyder made him interview for 10 hours and wait 2 weeks before letting him know he wasn't his guy. When he fired Norv Turner after a game, he made him wait in an office for 2 hours in FedUP Field (aka FedEx) before firing him. When the players come in after a win, he greats them outside the locker room giving high 5's. When they lose, he stands outside the locker room with his arms folded and glares at them. This is a weasel, dark little man.
I think Buckaroo Banzai summed it up pretty well. On top of that there's just a long list of people leaving Redskins jobs in bitter and unpleasant ways. It's not enough to axe someone; it has to be a public firing with humiliation and poor-mouthing on the way out of the door. It started when he first bought the team and laid off most of the support staff almost immediately.
Defenders may say "yeah, of course people always talk bad when they get the boot." But that's just not true. The NFL is full of guys who've been fired working for and with other guys who got fired. It's part of the game. Successful organizations learn not to make everything nasty and personal. Don't burn your bridges; what goes around comes around; sometimes things don't work out, etc.
Organizations mimic - and amplify - the personalities of their leadership. Riggo is right, the Redskins organization acts like a petulant child. And that comes right from the owner. Does that make Snyder a bad person? I don't know. But it does make him an ineffective leader. And as a Redskins fan who is never going to meet Snyder, that's honestly what I care about.
I have been a life long redskin fan and will always be. I know several people who worked intimately with Mr. Cooke for many years they all quit Danny boy, the inside scoop is he is a dark hearted soul. They also say he truely has no interest in making a winning organization & could care less about redskins fans. Dan do the people who truly care for the organization and love the team and players a favor. SELL THE TEAM!!!!!!!!!! GO RIGGO
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Nov 04, 2009
08:32 PM
Snyder goes out on Halloween wearing the Darth Vader costume once,...... and is forever branded by Riggins as a man who's "Heart is Dark".
I'm guessing that the job interview for Riggo didn't go real well a while back?