PR Buzz – The Washington Football Mess
True fact – while I am a die-hard Baltimore Ravens fan, it wasn’t always this way.
Growing up between Baltimore and Washington in the early 1980s, there was only one option for football, one I inherited from my family, the Washington Redskins. The Colts Mayflowered their way out of Baltimore when I was an infant and the Redskins were a machine!
With Coach Joe Gibbs, owner Jack Kent Cooke and a stable roster of players, they were a premier organization in the NFL.
When the Ravens came to Charm City in 1996, I took them as my AFC team. Slowly, I shed the pretense of having two favorite teams.
Check the Twitter icon – it’s got the Ravens tattooed on it!
Fast forward a dozen years and the Redskins are a team in turmoil.
Hall of Famer John Riggins has made his anger known!
Let’s bullet-point the big points this year:
- Record: 2-5
- Coach Jim Zorn was publicly stripped of his offensive playcalling duties
- Those playcalling duties are in the hands of a man who, just 4 weeks ago, was a bingo caller at a retirement home
- The top two offensive linemen are injured. Randy Thomas AGAIN and Chris Samuels might be forced to retire
- The man in charge of player acquisitions didn’t prepare for this, even though he said he anticipated both injuries
- “Stud” running back Clinton Portis isn’t producing
- The team sued an elderly grandmother who had trouble paying her season ticket bill because of the recession (they later dropped the charges, but the PR damage was done)
- The media is no longer allowed to interview FANS anywhere on stadium ground, including pregame tailgate parties
- Signs are all banned – even the one from a woman trying to send a message to her husband who is serving in Afghanistan
- T-shirts critical of ownership are banned
- When a radio station tried to organize a “fans-only” rally in a parking lot by the stadium, the team BOUGHT that parking lot and cancelled the event
- In the off-season, they publicly attempted to trade their starting quarterback…and failed…leaving the man they obviously didn’t want taking snaps
- Their new defensive stud has a reputation for not giving 100% most of the time…and he is criticizing the team’s effort
- A preseason player posted on Twitter that all Redskin fans work at McDonald’s flippin’ burgers
- None of their 2008 draft picks have had any meaningful impact in 18 games
- Hall of Fame RB John Riggins posted a mega negative rant on YouTube
Basically, this all adds up to a huge disaster of epic PR proportions!
How do you go about fixing it??
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