Washington Redskins Owner Dan Snyder's Refreshing New Approach

Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Jason Taylor, Donovan McNabb, Albert Haynesworth, Mark Carrier, Steve Spurrier, Jeremiah Trotter, Irving Fryar, Todd Wade and Adam Archuleta are just a few men who were once given a lot of money to be members of the Washington Redskins. 

With the exception of Smith, none of these men gave the Redskins much in return. Many gave next to nothing, with their only Redskins highlight being them cashing a paycheck along the way. 

With three winning seasons and two stints in the playoffs since he bought the team before the 1999 season, Snyder's overall record is 84-106 so far. Not what he had hoped for after plunking down $800 to buy the team. 

Mike Shanahan in currently the seventh head coach under Snyder. Joe Gibbs, a Hall of Famer and Washington icon, was one of the seven. In his 16 years leading the Redskins, he had two of his only three losing seasons under Snyder. 

Snyder had gone most of his time as the owner without a general manager. He had inherited Charley Casserly when he bought the team, but fired him after the 1999 season.  

One of Casserly's last good moves for the Redskins was acquiring all of the New Orleans Saints 1999 draft picks so the two teams could swap positions in the first round. Washington still got the player they most desired by selecting cornerback Champ Bailey. 

Snyder went a decade before hiring Bruce Allen as the eighth general manager in franchise history. The son of Hall of Famer and Redskins legend George Allen, the fifth general manager in team history, Snyder is hoping the son can reach the successes his father had for the burgundy and gold. 

Snyder spent the 2000's decade mostly relying on Vinny Cerrato. Cerrato was hired from a San Francisco 49ers team that was coming off of several successful seasons. While Hall of Famer Bill Walsh was the architect of those teams, Snyder hoped Cerrato had learned something from the guru on how to compile a winning team. 

This was not the case. Cerrato ran the player personnel department with the sharpness of melted marshmallows. Marty Schottenheimer, hired as the Redskins head coach and given power of personnel decisions in 2001, saw this and fired Cerrato immediately. 

Schottenheimer was fired after one year and Snyder brought back Cerrato, since no other team was interested in hiring him. The job Cerrato would do until 2009 had many observers think he did it with purposeful spite by trying to destroy the Redskins as a payback for his firing. 

Snyder and Cerrato were called "Dumb and Dumber" by members of the media. Though Snyder did innovative moves by allowing fans to watch the team practice, he also caught the ire of others by continually raising ticket and parking prices. Snyder also confined tailgating while charging fans extra for doing so. 

He prohibited fans from bringing in signs to home games, a move that has been heavily criticized. Snyder also sued season ticket holders unable to pay for tickets immediately because of the U.S.A. economic recession. The moves helped a team drop 11 spots in popularity amongst fans. 

But the losing was a big reason for the decline in popularity of one of the NFL's most historic and popular teams. Things had gotten so bad under Cerrato that a fanbase considered one of the most knowledgeable and supportive in all of professional sports was publicly showing their disgust. 

Cerrato finally left after the 2009 season. A year that some thought turned Dan Snyder around some. Though he swung and missed on McNabb last year, the owner seems to have found patience with the team as Allen and Shanahan attempt to overhaul it. 

Snyder is unlike any other owner in the National Football League. While most look at their teams as just another business venture, Snyder is a genuine fan of the team. 

Other owners are outsiders to the town they bought their teams in, but Snyder was born and bred in the Washington Metropolitan Area. After growing up in nearby Silver Spring, Snyder attended the University of Maryland. He began his excellence in business there. 

After piling up tons of cash at just 34-years-old, Snyder fulfilled a dream when he bought the Redskins. He had grown up following and cheering for the team his whole life, so becoming owner gave him the opportunity to be with the franchise he loves. 

The young Snyder made it important to put his own footprints in the franchise immediately by revamping the brand new stadium previous owner Jack Kent Cooke built. It is unfortunate that there are few reminders of Cooke around the stadium today. 

Perhaps age has bred more wisdom upon Snyder today. He has admitted he is a fan, not knowing exactly what it takes to build a team. Yet he has done a lot to bring the city a winner by overpaying people to join the Redskins. 

He listened to Cerrato and forked out wads of cash to aging players who were once great with other teams. Players who soon proved to have next to nothing left in their arsenal after signing with Washington. Though these moves hurt the team, Snyder's passion was obvious in his overextending himself just so the Redskins could win. 

Bruce Allen recently cut a few high-priced veterans and told them that the Redskins were heading in a youthful direction. The Redskins have needed a complete overhaul since Snyder bought the team, so it now appears Allen and Shanahan have begun the process. 

While this new direction will take time, patience will be needed by everyone involved. Redskins fans can only hope Snyder doesn't become frustrated and blow up the front office again in another futile attempt to get a Lombardi trophy. 

It will take time, perhaps the entirety of the five-year deal Shanahan signed in 2010. Perhaps it will take longer, but it has been a refreshing offseason in 2011 by not seeing Snyder open up another bank vault and emptying it on another aging superstar whose best days are long behind him.