Another Day, Another Skins Ticket Story

Not to bag on the Redskins for a second day in a row, but this is a bit of a PR nightmare week for Daniel Snyder's organization. After yesterday's story on the Skins selling tickets to scalpers, we get another gem from the Washington Post today.

The Post reviewed lawsuits in which the Daniel M. Snyder-controlled entity WFI Stadium Inc. sued 125 Redskin ticket holders for a total of $3.6 million. The team won judgments totaling $2 million from 34 season ticket holders, most of whom did not hire an attorney and defaulted by not making an appearance in court.

The Post puts a heartbreaking face on the story with 72-year-old realtor Pat Hill, a woman photographed in the story surrounded by Redskins pillows. She still says she's a fan, even as the Redskins won a $66,364 judgment against her, forcing her into bankruptcy. It's like the Stockholm Syndrome of season ticket holders or something.

Snyder is pretty easy to vilify, both for Redskins fans and opponents' fans, too, but as sympathetic a face as Hill presents, signing a deal like this really isn't all that different from buying a house and defaulting on your mortgage payments. While sports may seem trivial and all-in-good-fun, don't forget that they're a business. If you really want to go after Snyder, then this is where you go:

The tickets, forfeited by five fans, were bought by an online broker, ASC Ticket Co. of Gaithersburg, according to a printout from the Redskins ticket system. Some of those sued complained that the Redskins had "double-dipped" -- reselling the tickets while obtaining judgments against them for defaulting on the contracts.

The notion that they would go after the ticketholders and then easily be able to sell them like that to ticket brokers sounds a lot like double dipping, although the very next paragraph points out that getting a judgment against Hill or any other fan doesn't amount to a payment. Not all fans have a spare $60K sitting around to fork over to an NFL franchise. Selling to another entity makes sense in that instance. But, at that point, doesn't it seem just a tad bit greedy for the Skins to not only find a new buyer, but continue to potentially financially devastate an individual?

But I can't really play devil's advocate in this one against the little guy, not when there's something like this in the WaPo piece from Redskins general counsel David Donovan, with regard to a fan who paid a $15,000-plus judgment after he was unable to pay for his seats:

Donovan said he would be willing to give [60-year-old Alonzo] Webb tickets for the 2009 season at no additional cost to Webb. "If he's paid his judgment, I would be happy to get him tickets," Donovan said. "I have no desire to take anyone's money and not give him something for it."

Not surprisingly, Webb declined, saying, "I wouldn't want the damn tickets. It's just the principle of the thing." Can you blame him?

Get more details over at the Washington Post.

UPDATE: As it turns out, the Skins will not bankrupt that poor old woman.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.