Hail to the Redskins: Washington Partisans Finally Unite Behind Something

Jan. 10 Bloomberg) -- At last, amid one of the most partisan times ever in U.S. politics, a unifying force has emerged in the nation's capital. The Washington Redskins are in the playoffs. The National Football League team, winner of three Super Bowls during the 1980s and 1990s, finished the season with five straight victories to qualify for its first postseason appearance in six years. The momentum continued with a Redskins playoff win over the weekend.

This is no small matter in a town where the waiting list for season tickets numbers 150,000, where the Redskins have sold out every game for 39 straight seasons and where skybox seats at the team's FedEx Field are the ultimate status symbol.

``The Redskins are the buzz,'' said former Republican U.S. Representative J.C. Watts, who quarterbacked the University of Oklahoma football team two decades ago and has seen his share of manic sports fans. ``They just have an aura in this city that other franchises just don't have.''

Democrats are on board, too. ``Everybody can be rooting for the Redskins,'' said Peter Fenn, a Democratic political consultant. ``It doesn't matter what political stripe you are.''

``The Skins are on a great roll -- everyone is on the bandwagon now,'' Washington Mayor Anthony Williams, also a Democrat, said in an e-mail. The mayor is a ``huge fan'' who wears his Redskins ball cap most days when he's not a work, spokesman Vince Morris said.

`Returning to Glory'
Washington advanced to the second round of the playoffs by defeating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 17-10 on Jan. 7, even while setting an NFL postseason record for fewest total yards (120) by a victorious team. Fans only care that they won.

``The Redskins own this town,'' said Kevin McDonnell, 36, a Redskins season ticket holder and co-owner of the Web site Dallassucks.com., devoted to the Redskins' archrival, the Dallas Cowboys. ``We've been one move short of returning to glory.''

Fever signs abound. A meeting of the Washington Rotary Club last week, with former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the featured speaker, kicked off with ``Hail to the Redskins,'' the team's fight song, rather than the usual ``America the Beautiful.''

City Sports in downtown Washington has been selling two or three burgundy-and-gold Redskins jerseys, at $65 each, every day since the team clinched its playoff berth Jan. 1, according to saleswoman Keevette Moore. Before that, she said, the store sold ``one a day, at the most.''

Seattle Next
The Redskins' success has contributed to a jump in sales of big-screen television sets at a Circuit City Express store in Arlington, Virginia, said Deedee Smith, assistant store manager. ``We're selling between six and nine TVs now while in a regular week it's closer to three,'' she said.

``It is strange and sometimes peculiar how wins and losses affect us,'' Watts said. ``When the Redskins are winning, people are going out to eat a little more, they're going to buy more clothes. It's good for the psyche.''

The Redskins, who won 10 games and lost 6 in the regular season, travel to Seattle on Jan. 14 to play the top-seeded Seahawks, who won 13 games and lost 3 in the regular season. A win would put Washington in a conference championship game the following weekend against the winner of the Chicago Bears and Carolina Panthers game on Jan. 15. The next stop after that would be the Super Bowl.

The Redskins made the playoffs on the last day of the regular season, helped by the league's ninth-ranked defense and strong performances from quarterback Mark Brunell, running back Clinton Portis and wide receiver Santana Moss.

Gibbs's Return
``I said the Redskins were good enough to go to the Super Bowl back in training camp, and people wanted to send me straitjackets,'' ESPN analyst and former Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann said in an interview. ``But when you look at the NFC playoff teams, every game now is winnable.''

Coach Joe Gibbs, 65, a 1996 inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame who is in the second year of his second stint with the Redskins, once was considered a football genius. After the Redskins finished 6-10 last season for its third-straight losing season and fell to 5-6 with just five games left this year, the whispers started:

After an 11-year absence from the NFL, had the game passed him by?

``I was starting all over again, and to be quite truthful, there were a lot of other first-year coaches that did a lot better than I did,'' Gibbs said at a press conference after the Redskins' final regular-season game.

Skybox Lobbyist
Unfortunately for the hometown fans, because the Redskins are seeded last, they will have to play all their postseason games on the road. That means politicians and other VIPs will be deprived of the opportunity to be wined and dined at FedEx Field's skyboxes -- which run from $90,000 to $220,000 a season -- by lobbyists and corporations.

Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff frequently hosted lawmakers, their aides and agency officials at his FedEx Field skybox. Among them, according to e-mails released by a Senate committee and an Abramoff plea agreement, were Ohio Republican Representative Robert Ney and a Justice Department official who tipped Abramoff off to an agency report recommending action affecting a client.

When they're not being used for fund-raisers, skyboxes ``are utilized by congressional staff and members, so every game results in tremendous benefits politically,'' Abramoff wrote in a May 2001 e-mail.

The lack of any Redskin home games during the playoffs is probably a moot point for the lobbyist, who pleaded guilty last week to felonies including conspiracy and fraud. Redskins fever or not, his former firm, Greenberg Traurig LLP, doesn't have any skyboxes, spokeswoman Jill Perry said.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Curtis Eichelberger in Washington at ceichelberge@bloomberg.net;
Jonathan D. Salant in Washington jsalant@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: January 10, 2006 00:04 EST