Ticket to ride.

I had to laugh at the Washington Post story about the Laurel, Maryland, NFL franchise that sold their tickets to brokers rather than to the deluded fan base. Ever since moving to the District in 1993, I realized that even though Washington had three professional sports teams (remember, 1993 is before soccer, baseball, and women's pro leagues in some sports came to or returned to town), it really was (and remains) a one sport town. God forbid the Capitals or the Wizards or some other team win a playoff game on the same day that a Toughskins reserve stubs his toe in the shower, because there will be no coverage of that playoff win in the sports pages.

Anyway, I digress, but it should be apparent that I have no love for this monstrosity of a team, this pretender to the name "Washington," whose leadership under Jack Kent Cooke was good for a joke or two, but whose leadership under Dan Snyder is nothing but a string of insults to the fans (of which I'm not one). However, you can't argue with the fact that Snyder knows his audience, and he knows he can treat them with utmost disdain and squeeze every penny he can from them, because they're idiots. Absolute idiots.

So his ticket office is selling tickets to ticket brokers instead of the fans who may wait years to see his subpar product strut and fret their three hours upon the stage. It's hilarious. But Snyder, through a spokesperson, does not like this practice:

Donovan said Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder was unaware of sales to brokers. When he found out, Donovan said, "he was livid" and tried to have the accounts canceled immediately.

Well, of course he was livid. He wasn't getting a cut of the action (and I can all but guarantee you that the ticket agent or agentss responsible for the brokers getting their tickets was probably receiving a nice finder's fee for their services). He's probably sitting in his mansion fuming at the fact that for years he could have been pocketing a few extra bucks by selling to the secondary market.