Clinton Portis Pours Gasoline on Redskins' Hot Seat

Bottom line: You know that an owner is far too involved in the affairs of a football team when the team’s best player tells the truth on fan perspective. So here we go with Clinton Portis, and the beginning of the end for the Washington franchise as we know it.

“I mean, performance, as a team,” Portis said.

“We’re getting booed coming off the field. So I think everybody in this organization on the hot seat. You know, I think you look at the owner, he on the verge of losing fans."

"You know, how long before people just give up and stop coming? You look at the players, and people want you out of here." Portis continued, "You look at the coach, people want you out of here. So who’s not on the hot seat? Until we come out and play to our potential, I think everybody on the hot seat.”

Translation: The coach can’t call plays. The players can’t execute the plays that he does call. And the owner won’t get out of his own way.

The best part about this is that the fans may actually be waking up to the startling truth. This is beyond being a bad football team. This is a bad organization with a strange mix of arrogance and timidity at the executive levels.

A look around Washington football message boards doesn’t reveal a disenchantment with players, or even the coaches. It’s beginning at the top with Daniel Snyder and his meddling.

Which brings me back to the same point when I always use this space to discuss this team: Why pay for it? Why support the madness? It makes good business sense for Snyder to sell the annual dream and build it up for next year’s hope.

But for coaches who have to make players grow within an ill-fitting system, for players who have to execute under an inexperienced coaching staff, and for both entities to shoulder the burden of an overbearing, egotistical owner, it doesn’t ring the bell of an accommodating work environment.

And the sad part? The coaches and players aren’t that far off from making something good happen.

It’s one thing for me as a blogger to hate the team's nickname, to despise the ownership group, and to mock the fans who blindly support it all. But I feel for the millions of fans out there who are genuinely tired of supporting a poorly run business.

Football shouldn’t be an agonizing exercise in faith and dedication. It should be a community place for you to celebrate competition and spirit for the city of Washington.

Snyder has taken so much of that away, just to earn that extra dollar.

So Clinton Portis is right—Daniel Snyder is on the verge of losing fans. And it couldn’t happen fast enough to a more worthy, greedy individual.